All We Need is Love

It was a mundane, quiet Tuesday, the first full day I’d had in a while to hunker down and work on some of my bigger projects. And suddenly, so suddenly, my phone buzzed and I saw the following:

In my six years of being a parent of school-age children, this was the third lockdown notice I’d received. But it was the first “hard lockdown”. For those who don’t know the lingo, a hard lockdown is when there is the threat of an active shooter on campus and students and staff flee to hide in the dark corners and cabinets of their classrooms. All must remain silent and hidden throughout the lockdown. I would later learn that at the moment I received the text, one of my daughters was cowered between two bookcases with her classmates and the other was stuffed under a counter in the dark office of the cafeteria. I, and my husband, sat stone cold at our kitchen table, not knowing what to do. The intensity of the panic was so much that the situation became unbelievable. It had to be a hoax, a mistake, something in the neighborhood, but it just could not be true that something was happening at our daughters’ school. We could pick our heads up and keep on working, surely, because at any moment the all clear would come through. I fought through a online meeting I was due to run, assuring myself that it absolutely had to be a false alarm, and when the all clear eventually came through (it was indeed a false alarm), our lives just simply moved on while I thought how insanely lucky we were to have once again escaped any true horror.

But then this weekend, while I was at the gym guiltily enjoying some much needed me time, this flashed on the TV screen:

And my phone started buzzing from relatives around L.A. Were we okay? That wasn’t our synagogue was it? Did we know anyone there? Thoughts and prayers for the San Diego Jewish community… It wasn’t our synagogue and we did not know anyone involved. But my kids had to go to Hebrew school the next day. In one week, they had been through an intensely scary lockdown to then hold their little heads high and march back into school the next day, while also learn about this latest act of anti-Semitism and then show up at their own synagogue less than 24 hours later. Who am I to ask so much of my children? What kind of a parent am I to send them out into this crazy world, again and again and again, with no assurance of their safety and just hoping upon hope that I will tuck them in that night? Who are we as a society to expect that our children learn this is normal? And what the hell are we doing sitting on our laurels taking it all in stride because this, god dammit, has become our new normal? And when it’s all over we breathe deep and say, “Thank god it wasn’t us”.

What does this have to do with education? Because school is the only answer we have. How do we stop this insanity? How do we keep our fellow neighbors from developing such hatred for others that they are driven to kill? How do we teach our children to help each other and love each other so that our grandchildren never have to comprehend the extent of the fear that grips us all today? Education. School. It is the only way I see. Imagine if every teacher cared so deeply about every single student that no student went unnoticed. Imagine if every school had a fully stocked and overfunded family resource center so that every student and every family had access to the resources they needed to be healthy and safe. I read an article once about a teacher who gave her kids a questionnaire every Friday afternoon, asking who they had played with that week and who they wanted to sit with the following week. And every Friday, before going home, she analyzed the answers to look for outcasts. Whose name was not mentioned? Who was not wanted by the group? And then she began the next week by checking in with those students, doing everything in her power to make sure each student under her wing was cared for and loved by not only her, but by their peers as well. Imagine if every teacher did this every week. Imagine if no student were left behind, not just academically but socially as well. Would our world be different? Would this be powerful enough to eliminate these random acts of violence and hatred? It may be simplistic, but I argue that yes, this would be enough. Just imagine the power in every single child being seen, heard and loved. That would change the world. If you are a teacher, reach out to your students. Don’t be afraid of them. Don’t be afraid of their stories. Hear them, see them and work past any of your own biases to love them, deeply. It is your love, one child at a time, that will make our grandchildren safe.