A Teacher in NYC Tells the Children, “Look for the Helpers”

We all must demand a ceasefire now. Our witnessing and demanding change is how we can all be helpers for all children.

Each lockdown drill further crushes my faith in this country’s commitment to children. Afterwards, I feel beaten down and less confident in our national moral compass. I teach 7 and 8 year old children. I know them well and I love them. In the best of years, we become a little family and in the most challenging years, we strive to be in community and to be kind to one another, which is no small task. 

There is a special ugliness in the fact that we have to be prepared for situations in which the children must be silent and make themselves invisible for survival. Each time, I ask myself if we would get it right in the worst case scenario— quickly, quietly lock doors, pull shades, hide without a peep. Would I have the presence of mind to try to reason with someone endangering our lives, to put myself physically in front of the children I promise to protect? To help my kids understand why we have safety rules at school, I ask them on a regular basis, “What is the most important part of my job?” They roll their eyes and say “to keep us safe” and then they say “and teach us and have fun with us.” 

During the drills, I hold the hands and pat the backs of the kids who tell me beforehand that they are worried. I hush the giddy ones who giggle at the discomfort and shush the kids who take the quietness as a good opportunity to make a fart noise. Afterwards we talk about how it felt to be quiet, in the dark. I battle myself not to be upset with the children who made noise and who moved around too much because what we’re asking them to do isn’t natural for them. I feel angry that I— that we— have to take time to do this. I’m forever trying to figure out if I should let it go a little when they act silly or if I should make them all do it just right because God forbid, we could all be killed. It makes me tired and it’s hard to be hopeful. I imagine myself, in a firm and self righteous tone, saying to members of the NRA, “You would change if you ever performed a lockdown drill with small children.” 

We tell the kids, when something bad happens, always look for the helpers. Before we begin each drill, I smile and reassure them that they are safe, it’s just a practice, and we take turns naming the people, the helpers, at our school who are here to keep them safe. 

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However, it’s not a drill in Gaza. Children and families who are still living there are hiding in what’s left of schools, attempting refuge amid a terror so extreme it can only be called genocide. If the children survive, the trauma that will evidently inhabit those small bodies for the rest of their lives is inconceivable. It’s a stunning testament to resilience and spirit that amid the accounts of brutal violence, there are videos of children dancing and singing their love for their home, Palestine. 

In October, I would start any conversation on the nightmare that did and did not begin on October 7th with something like “the situation is so complicated.” I increasingly found myself feeling the need to prove my Jewishness as if me knowing who I am isn’t enough. As if people would somehow misconstrue my criticism of Israeli leaders and the IDF as antisemitism, which they did. 

One of my parents comes from a Christian family and the other comes from a family that is Jewish with our roots in Eastern Europe. I learned about being Jewish from my mother. Our Jewishness was cultural rather than religious. Passover was our favorite Jewish holiday. It was an opportunity to understand that liberation is interconnected. At our table, there were people from all over the world sharing their stories, experiences, hopes. What my mother taught me about our family’s culture is that at root, Jewishness is about miracles born from unity, resistance, and a striving for universal freedom. In the old testament, the sea parted for the Israelites to escape tyranny. Let us imagine that 2,000 years later, we can fathom collective survival and mutual respect. 

I began this writing with my own experience I suppose because even in the drill I feel disheartened. The short blip in the day can make one feel lonely somehow. By contrast, no classes, no school learning, no playing or being with peers for months due to utter upheaval of daily life and constant proximity to danger in Gaza is almost unbearable to see. I won’t look away or pretend that what I don’t want to see doesn’t exist. 

We can’t look away from and thus erase the children and their families hiding in hollowed out schools. I will not read the headlines that strategically publish phrases like “prisoners under 18”  and let that slide without knowing what the outlets don’t want me to think about. They are talking about children who are Palestinian and so their identity makes them no longer children. Recent accounts suggest up to 10,000 children may have been killed by military forces and countless are buried under rubble. Thousands more famished and without clean water as bombs drop on fertile, abundant farmlands. According to the UN, 1,000 children have undergone amputations without anesthesia while medicine, food, and water wait at the border with no ceasefire to allow the helpers to bring them in. Forget prosthetics, aftercare, physical therapy, counseling. All these children have names and stories just like my students have names and stories. Sometimes they get in trouble with their teachers and parents. Sometimes they fight with their siblings. They laugh, they play, they get scared, they want candy, they want to be children. They are real and they deserve to live and grow.

Survival and freedom of one group can never cancel out another. Today we face the brutality of what happens when we see and believe only one part of a story. Today and every day I choose a Jewishness that sees and honors Palestinian rights not just to live, but to a peaceful, joyful, respected existence. 

We all must demand a ceasefire now. Our witnessing and demanding change is how we can all be helpers for all children. As a teacher of children in this country, I ask myself “what will these young people say as they grow up, to the adults who turned their backs on the Palestinian people, the thousands of children?” 

I am not signing this essay with my name because I think teaching is important and I feel a responsibility to these kids. Our country has become a place where freedom of speech only counts for some speech and some people. Teachers and educational leaders are losing their jobs for speaking out. I hope that my writing is helpful to other teachers facing the conflicts that I am facing. 

-A Teacher in New York

 December 31st, 2023

Published by Vox Populi on an open license. Please copy and share widely.