When I started teaching in 2000 at my last teaching post, I was taken on a tour of the school’s facilities, which you can see here. It would be a seven year journey in a school situated in the most beautiful piece of Israel countryside.
Every year, I participated in an orientation that took place during the last week of August along with 130 other teachers. From year to year, there were a few new faces. Most of the talks were frankly uninspiring about the same topics regarding reinforcing learning habits. I cannot remember any single topic that was so useful for my teaching only the connection with the English staff and the feeling that “we’re in it together.”
The Israeli-Lebanese war of the summer of 2006 changed all that “feeling of togetherness” of the small kibbutz reality into an illusion. I, my husband and child left our small kibbutz on the northern border and lived for 34 days as refugees in other peoples’ houses closer to the center of the country. (The distance between the farthest tip of Metulla to Eilat is approximately eight hours) All we had was a green suitcase filled with diapers and toys and a toothbrush and a few clothes. All throughout that time, I wondered if we would come back to a beautiful renovated kibbutz house - still standing. I wrote in my journal every day alongside the beach in Caesaria, which is home to one of Israel’s famous poetess Hannah Senesh of kibbutz Sdot yam. We took trips along the beach and wondered if the rockets would come as far as those blue crystal waters with the huge electrical plant acting as a target reminding us how close we really were to reality.
When the war finally ended on August 18th 2006, I had managed to get the sand out of our suitcase and the muck from our travels. Prior to that, nobody knew if school would open or not. I figured that this would not be a normal school orientation even if school in fact, did open. The result of that last week of August was story after story relating to the power of human strength and endurance of 130 teachers in times of war. It was my first experience because I had endured the war of its pre-middle-post parts just like a lesson only I learned a lot more than a lesson. School psychologists were available to discuss the tragedy of two of my former students’ who were killed in that terrible war and how to deal with the psychological aftermaths. Nobody had answers. Many teachers broke down. But again, the human strength prevailed and we managed to get our feet in the classroom come September 3rd.
As a group of English teachers, we agreed we would discuss the war, its facts, circumstances, personal anecdotes only if students initiated the need. We all craved for a routine - a return from the living dead and for many, from hell. The entire country was in shambles, millions in mourning and suffering from shock.
I remember that I wasn’t the same teacher not then and not now. In front of seventh, eight, ninth, tenth and twelfth graders, I bravely discussed how I and my husband and then one and a half year old son coped with the war. With my matriculating twelfth graders, I read them bits of my journal which later became a published piece for a creative non-fiction contest, which I entered and won. You can read what I wrote here.
Students all looked to me for answers and asked me questions mainly concerning the more subtle details of how I coped. I told them that part of me wanted to go back to the States. Classroom management and lesson planning were not the first priorities anymore. My values of teaching had shifted from myself and right to my students. They too, like myself, needed a guiding word. I was there to give them hope. And we learned how to cope and hope together even though I didn’t have answers.
