This year, Richmond Public Schools chose to require a clear backpack for all students, regardless of age.

I couldn’t help but feel a range of emotions watching these children with their see-through bags boarding buses.

I am thankful RPS is taking steps to respond to the changed society we find ourselves in. And though I find myself blinded by fury that our children are the ones being asked to—quite literally—carry many of society’s problems on their tiny backs, I can find hope here. This is about helping our children make the best of the world they currently find themselves in.

I’m hopeful about the small steps taken. I want to conjure the optimistic. I want to think of the good that can buoy our parent hearts this school year.

One can’t help but grieve what has evidently been lost — an outright, unquestionable trust in the safety of our surroundings, most especially our schools: where we send our babies.

I also found my mother heart surprisingly… calmed, even if only remotely, by the efforts of RPS for our children, because within the ravaging fear that comes with the two images of “school” and “shootings” side by side, comes an even worse feeling of helplessness. The feeling that there’s nothing we can do; the feeling of being forced to accept an inability to defend our children from a place we sent them, most days, against their own will.

It’s worse than just a lump in our throats; it leaves us gutted. We’re petrified to see a text pop up from the school: Is this the text that tells me there’s an active shooter in my child’s building?

The terror, the rage, the desperation, the despair—parents are familiar.

But I am encouraged that our children are learning, quite literally, that transparency leads to healthier spaces. I am optimistic this will create a generation of children who move through the world with an elevated conscious care of themselves and others around them.

It’s energizing, even, to visualize these young students sitting in places of power and telling their story: “I once had to wear a transparent backpack due to the fact that in 2019, gun injury became the leading cause of death among children aged birth to 19 years. Moreover, the United States has had 57 times as many school shootings as all other major industrialized nations combined (as found by Dr. Luke J. Rapa in his study of school shootings from 1997 to 2022.)"

It makes me sad this is part of their story—school shootings were, fortunately, never imagined as a possibility in my school years—but I become tingly with pride to imagine future them taking ownership over this issue that has haunted the halls of their own childhoods, and bringing about significant change for future school halls.

But what about their privacy?

As adults, we give up our privacy daily for convenience—“enter your email and phone for 20% off”; “accept geolocation;” “allow this website to track your activity”—and the older generations have fought this. Perhaps our littles will come out of their childhood—where absence of their book bag privacy played a direct role in the safety of their teachers, friends and themselves—with a new perspective on privacy; how it functions and moves within our society and within our own minds and bodies.

I spend plenty of time grieving what has been lost in childhood. One example is endless unsupervised outdoor play. But as a mother of two small children, I need hope, and when I see these littles and their see-through backpacks walking into school, some hope exists that they will learn from this experience and make significant, life-altering changes for future children.

Because I believe in them, even when I doubt most of our world.

Sheena Jeffers is a Richmond native, mother and writer living south of the James. A Virginia Commonwealth University graduate, and the author of LIVING TIDAL. She wants to hear your thoughts, questions and topics. You can reach her at: sheenajeffers@gmail.com.