Letter From Leadership 10/17
Dear Families,
It has been challenging to find our words this last week, as we are looked to by the community to try to bring comfort and guidance as we watch horrifying scenes unfold in Israel, Gaza, and throughout the region. In reflection, it begins to feel that the number of leadership letters we’ve written about crises in our world, unprecedented climate events, heartbreaking news coverage of tragedies, and the ups and downs of the pandemic nearly outnumber the letters we’ve composed to share the joys of our community, the love and light of our children. It is perhaps that precise recollection that makes composing this letter feel so difficult. When we think about the lives upended on our planet right now, the volume of lives lost and families impacted, there simply aren’t words enough to bring comfort.
If we look too long towards the pain, misery, and suffering caused by adults, we may start to lose hope for the future. But if we can remind ourselves of the hope we each held - each of you as you brought your children into this world and into your families, each of us as we joined the teaching profession to shape the next generation - we can dream together of a future where safety, love, care, and balance are the prominent topics of news coverage and shared discussions amongst us.
It can be helpful to look for an action we can take, a way we can help, something we can do to try to make a terrible situation better in some way. Today at school, we have visitors from UNICEF, holding grade level meetings for each grade to learn more about how kids can help kids around the world. This was planned months ago. For decades, children have brought home small cardboard boxes in October to trick-or-treat for UNICEF, pooling together collections to help children in the global community. We learned that the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established in 1946, in the years following World War II. The trick or treating for UNICEF began in the United States in 1950, when a small Sunday School class in Philadelphia decided to collect coins instead of candy on Halloween (www.unicef.org) - which quickly spread nation-wide. Tonight, you can see if your children can remember the song they learned today, about kids helping kids.
In school, in our classrooms, we listen in carefully as our children discuss what they’ve seen on the news and what they’ve discussed with their families. We hold space for the threads of the conversations about what they're seeing and hearing in classroom conversations and meetings, and we do our best to teach into our values - peace, respect - for each other and our world, responsibility, curiosity, and care. Every act of love, every moment approached with patience and a listening ear, seems to be an act of rebellion against a rising tide of reactionary responses in a world gripped by fear. We have confronted events that shifted truths we believed to be solid - blue skies turned orange, world leaders appearing to act for the good of a few rather than the good of many, our freedoms challenged and questioned - but within our community, what we have aimed to hold close and remind ourselves of each day is the importance of being together, learning, growing, and dreaming of a better tomorrow.
With hope,
Diane & Malika
