Dear Nursery School Families,
It has been a tradition in our school, since we opened our doors, for the teachers and children to receive a blessing at the beginning of the school year. Through this act, we acknowledge publicly that we hold teachers and the work of the classroom to be sacred. This is also reflected in the way teachers speak about their work. We think of teaching as a calling, and we come to the classroom with a deep and abiding devotion to children and a fundamental belief in education as an act of weaving hope one day at a time, one lesson at a time, one relationship at a time. We believe, to our core, in the potential for our interactions with children today to make the world better tomorrow. Teaching is a prayer that we live daily.
Classrooms are supposed to be the safest places, where children are free to take emotional and intellectual risks because they are secure in knowing that the walls where their easel paintings hang represent an inviolable shelter for learning and growth. Schools are not separate from the world; rather they are places where children can express and come to understand their deepest feelings and their biggest questions about the complex world in which they live. Classroom conversations nurture the earliest acts of citizenship, and in order for schools to do this work on behalf of our collective future, they must be places where children can look out the windows at the world as it is, and turn back to us to share their questions, their worries, and their imaginings, knowing they are safe. We do this work because we believe in children’s ideas, and we believe in the power of transforming imagination into reality. As educators, we see today’s block buildings and easel paintings as tomorrow’s promise.
Teaching is an act of love and hope. Yet the reality of teaching in America today is that it is also an act of heroism. It should not need to be. As teachers, we routinely prepare for the most frightening scenarios, so that we are ready to respond and equipped to keep children safe. And, to the greatest extent possible, we put this knowledge and training to the back of our minds every morning so that we can sustain the very hope that drew us to this work. We do this because we love children and because the sadness and fear of the world outside our classroom windows only makes our commitment to our work and to children more necessary and more urgent.
Cumulatively, teachers receive as much active shooter preparation in the course of their careers as literacy training. Perhaps more. This is necessary, as are all of the other steps we take to make schools “hard targets.” We spend time and resources that could be devoted to improving our teaching practice and our school libraries on “hardening” ourselves and our classrooms. We do this because we must. We do this because, when a society does not prioritize the safety of its children, it is left to those who are called to devote themselves to children’s care to reinforce the barricades and to put our bodies in harm's way. We do this because we know that the safe spaces of our classrooms must be preserved, and it is on us as educators and schools to preserve them. It should not be so.
No matter the turbulence of the world, teachers are beacons of calm. They receive our children each day and usher them into joyful and inviting classrooms. They bolster the many routines that let children know they are safe and valued. When the world makes us, as parents, feel harried and unsteady, watching teachers welcome our children with unwavering warmth strengthens us. As our children are reassured by their teachers, we are also reassured.
When I went to sleep last night, eighteen children had been pronounced dead in Texas. Eighteen children and their teacher. Eighteen is a sacred number in Jewish tradition. It represents life and reminds us of our blessings. I went to sleep thinking about these eighteen sacred children’s lives and the teacher whose body was not enough to shield them. When I woke up this morning, a nineteenth child and a second teacher had been lost. It is wrenching to find meaning in these losses when we are faced with them so often. And yet we must, because it is only in finding meaning that we are motivated to action. Teachers know this. The work of finding meaning and translating that meaning into action is the work of the classroom on the brightest and on the darkest days. As we find meaning with children, we ask them what they can do to sustain and build upon joyful experiences, and we ask them what they can do to repair and build anew when harm has been done.
The only way to find meaning in this loss, and in the many losses that have preceded it – including the lives lost in Buffalo and on our own New York City subways so recently – is to commit to action and to doing better. We teach our children that we are all responsible for the work of repairing our world. Enough of this burden has been placed on the shoulders of children and teachers, as we instruct them, in classrooms around the country, to shelter behind barricaded doors. We need everyone to share the responsibility of repairing the world that children, teachers, and parents have been holding alone for far too long.
We need far more than prayer. But prayer, at its most meaningful and powerful, should serve to remind us of our values and to call us to live them. Prayer must not be an appeasement. It is meant to be a deep, internal call to action, a call to work for what is sacred and precious. We bless our teachers and our children each year, because, at the JCC, we opened our doors for the first time only days after 9/11, and we needed to be reminded that classrooms can be safe places and that the work we do is the work of peace. This blessing offered teachers and parents the courage, not to pause, but to go forward in that work.
Amen means “so be it.” Let us, today, hear this not as an acceptance of reality or a hollow platitude, but as a reminder to insist upon the peace we wish for our children and to do the work to achieve that peace.
For our teachers
And our students
And for the students of our students
I ask for peace and
Lovingkindness.
And let us say, amen.
And for those who study Torah
Here and everywhere:
May you be blessed with all
You need
And let us say, amen.
May there be peace and
Lovingkindness
And let us say, amen.*
So be it.
The JCC will be co-hosting a short candlelight vigil this evening at 7:15 PM with Congregation B’nai Jeshurun and The Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew (SPSA), that will take place on the steps of SPSA on 86th St and West End Ave, if you would like to join us.
Additionally, please find resources below for helping children feel safe, when they may be observing strong reactions among adults or experiencing frightening images in the media around them.
In sadness and hope,
Alicia
Parenting Resources
Sesame Street in Communities
National Association of School Psychologists
Repair the World
Picture Books
Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes
I Will Keep You Safe and Sound by Lori Haskins Houran
Something Might Happen by Helen Lester
Bear Feels Scared by Karma Wilson
Safe, Warm, and Snug by Stephen Swinburne
*The above blessing is the kaddish d’rabanan, also known as the scholar’s kaddish, the kaddish of the rabbis, or the kaddish of the teachers, adapted by Debbie Friedman.