It has been the best part of six months since I last walked into the Jungle. I recall my sadness on that visit, as even then, it hadn’t been the vibrant testament to resilience, to the ingenuity of human nature, that had blown me away on earlier visits. It had already been partially cleared at that point, the buzz had been stifled and hushed, many of the people removed, tents were left abandoned and torn by the spiteful sea wind. Its soul had already been lost. Its colour faded.

Today, I find myself looking in as an outsider, distanced and numbed to the horror, watching it on TV from the comfort of my half term sofa. The newspapers today scream stories of riot police, tear gas, smashed and vandalised vehicles, fires, smugglers and rape but that isn’t the place that I remember. Yes, I recall the empty tear gas cylinders that would lie empty and discarded on the floors and yes I heard horror stories bragged from university students volunteering in the camp.

But I also remember a lot of educated articulate refugees with horrendous stories, scars that you could see and scars that you couldn’t, some with younger siblings, many with children. The images jumping out at me from the lunchtime news today are freeze-frames of violence, fear, fighting, flames, occasionally interspersed with a group of young children, eyes wide, clutching one another, the darkness of last night wrapped around them. Children, little ones, not the older, braver, less emotive, more damaged 15 or 16 year olds that they bussed over to the UK last week.

Now it’s not clear what’s going to happen to the many young people left stranded as the camp was disbanded.

Looking back, I remember a Jungle with shops, hairdressers and restaurants, a library where you could get a sweet piping-hot cup of tea on those cold winter days, and a church which welcomed everyone. There was faith. And hope. I remember the beauty and colour of the artists’ quarter, Banksy’s gift by the entrance, the dome shaped theatre and the school. I remember singing ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ (pretty badly) in a freezing wooden classroom and trying to teach those who were desperate to learn, with very few resources.

An entire lost generation of children

I remember being stunned that the sharp, angry, barbed wire fences, that our government had paid to construct around the perimeter of the camp ended just a few short metres from its entrance, no need to scale them when you could simply walk around. I was surprised by the hustle and bustle, the music and laughter, the size and hum of the generator run phone-charging stations. I was stunned that men often lived alone in tents or huts in the camp, as they were not allowed to join their wives and children in the secure government run area, outside of the daily visiting hours. I was shocked that the ‘best’ accommodation in the camp was a series of ugly white converted shipping containers. I was shocked that in modern day Europe there were people living in illegal squalor because it was better than the war torn states that many of them had fled. As a teacher, and a woman, I was appalled that in those dangerous camps of Northern France were an entire lost generation of children, who were there through no choice or decision of their own. Innocents.

I remember being in the Grand Synthe camp the day that the authorities cleared that camp too. I remember the burning flames, the thick black smoke, the fear of the unknown that hung heavy in the air, the beautiful sweet children I had taught, who vanished that day. Who knows where.

In those camps I met children and teenagers (pictured) who taught me about empathy, humility and bravery. I taught maths and English, others taught French or music or geography. The little boys would laugh and point and want to learn the words for the aeroplanes and helicopters, that would often pass or circle overhead. The teenage girls asked me what we call earrings or nail varnish or blusher. Like the children in our schools, they learn times tables and phonics. Unlike the children in the vast majority of our schools, these children do not have access to educational psychologists, social workers, hot running water, their favourite teddy bear. I wonder where they are now.

So now the Jungle is dismantled. Fabienne Buccio tells us that it is ‘mission accomplished’. The news reporter tells me that ‘3000 migrants have been bussed elsewhere in France, the majority happily and willingly’ and yet there are still videos of children in the deserted space that once was a bustling illegal grassroots town.

So what future is there for the children of the camps? Save The Children are telling us that many of them have fled. Scared. Possibly into the safety of the French towns, possibly into the clutches of smugglers or sex traffickers.

Whatever your political view - ‘let them in’ or ‘keep them out’ - it pales into insignificance because surely it is not just teachers who know that education is a basic human right, that schooling and safety are paramount to a better future, that these children desperately need help, be they six-years-old and cute or 16 and a bit hairy.

I am human, and these charming, polite children taught me to smile again when I was low. They also taught me that sometimes we just have to stand up for what is right, no matter the personal pain or criticism. I hope that they find their ways back to loved ones and to safety and back to school. I really hope that those children are okay.

Natalie Scott is TES Teacher-Blogger of the Year and author of the Miss Scott Said What? blog

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