Primary School: Teachers, Parents, Children Coping with War
The primary school is temporarily two schools in one. The “Yehiel” Waldorf school in the nearby moshav, Tal Shahar, does not have air raid shelters for its students. The WASNS primary school has lent them two rooms. The new kids have also joined a few of the classes, and they have been invited to participate in special active recess breaks that are unique to the primary school. The WASNS sixth-grade students got together to organize one such break and invited the Yehiel kids to participate.
Almost all of the children have returned to the classrooms, to learn in person. The difficulty with the rest is transportation. Once they are in school, the children are drilled where to go if they hear a siren, how to behave in the safe rooms and shelters and how long they must remain there. But getting to and from school they are less protected. (People on the road are instructed to pull to the side, get out and lie on the ground.) Many of the parents now drive their children to and from school, rather than sending them in the minibuses that provide transportation.
For a binational school, dealing with the war and the emotional turmoil is especially challenging. “Jews need one kind of support, Arabs another, and we still try to bring them together and create a whole community,” says school principal Neama Abo Delu. “This war is a new situation for all of us, and we have to learn to cope with it, as well as to help our own families, our children and our children’s families cope.”
Coping, she says, will work best if the parents and school can see eye-to-eye on the purpose of the school and the way it continues to teach friendship, peace and understanding. That is why special effort is now being applied to support the outer circles that help the children cope: Teachers and parents. This includes mental health assistance on levels ranging from mindfulness sessions to psychological help and assistance from specialists in children’s mental health.
“This is a long-term project,” she says. “As things change, we will adapt our approach and continue to build on what we have already accomplished.”
Dialogue in school
The teachers’ dialogue sessions, now led by School for Peace facilitators Michal Mark Zak and Rose Qasem Abdel Khader, are now in their third year, and, says Michal, this has given the group an excellent basis to talk about the present war. They were able to dive right into the dialogue process with a binational Zoom meeting. Neama, the principal, started that meeting off, explaining what kinds of results they were hoping to achieve.
“Everyone has tons of emotions and feelings, but we wanted to get them thinking about how these affect their ability to function,” says Michal, “so we tried to focus on the question: ‘How will I be in my job, tomorrow morning?’” The Zoom session incidentally fell the day before the teachers returned to the classroom; and at the end of the session, the facilitators asked the participants to talk about what they want from their fellow teachers, how they can help one another. One Jewish teacher asked how she would be able to cope if she experienced a panic attack in the middle of the day. An Arab teacher replied to her the that the best way is to ensure she always has another teacher with her. Other issues included how to discuss the situation with the children when questioned. The teachers have now undergone a follow-up uni-national session in person. The uni-national sessions, intrinsic features of the dialogue process, enable each group, Arab and Jew, to say the things to one another that they are afraid to voice in the mixed groups.
Michal and Rose were also asked to take on a parents’ dialogue group, and there were quite a few participants. This group, meeting for the first time, began with uni-national dialogue, and will continue with binational dialogue sessions. The two are discussing with Nir Sharon, the educational director, and Neama, ways they might continue the parents’ dialogue groups in different formats, for example by grade levels.
“I started off these sessions feeling, myself, that all was lost,” says Michal, “but they have given me hope.” She reports that there is genuine interest in cooperation, and in working through the dialogue process to understand and to continue to want to be a part of this community.