PlayIsTheWork.com

My children attend an alternative public school. What makes it alternative is broadly defined. One of the components that is important at their school is the sense of inclusiveness—of diversity and social justice. They try to expose children to a variety of cultures—in fact, every year they have a night devoted to what they call, “Many Cultures, One World.” Each class selects a different culture to study and the kids are always immensely curious about everything surrounding the people, the place, what they do, what they eat—really everything!

Every year I go into my kids classes and talk about Hanukah. While I wouldn’t call myself a religious person, I do consider myself culturally “Jewish.” The traditions and history that I was raised with are important to me and I feel really lucky to be able to share it. This year, because the kids are a bit older, they knew a bit more and asked more interesting questions. They also had some very fun misinformation. When I asked the kids if they knew what Hanukah was, one little boy said, “It’s kind of like Christmas for the Jewish people”—well, close but not really. We had a great time telling the story of Hanukah, why we light the candles, eating lakes and spinning dradels.

It’s early in the school year and so I also used my time in class as an opportunity to learn the other kids in her class. Blaise has told me since the beginning of the year about her friend “Christian” in her class. Apparently there are two Christians. I was playing dradel with a group of kids and I wasn’t sure of their names. I turned to the one to my right and I said, “Hi, I’m Sam. Are you Christian?” and he looked at me totally deadpan and said, “No, my name is Noah, I’m Jewish.” We had a great laugh over it.

It’s really lovely to be part of a school community that embraces all of us and invites us in to be a part of our children’s broad education—even the more intangible bits.

Posted on December 19th, 2007 by Administrator
Filed under: Uncategorized