S'derot: The City That Survives

“Israelis say that Haifa is the city that works,” our guide on the coastal tour said last Tuesday, “Tel Aviv is that city that dances. Jerusalem is the city that prays.” We were in Haifa at the time, and everyone on the bus smiled appreciatively.

The following day, Neal and I went to S’derot, with Karyn London from Atzum. Karyn, as I’ve written before, is the Social Worker for the Roberta Project for Survivors of Terror.

How would one describe S’derot?

It’s very different from the other Israeli cities Neal and I have stayed in, toured in, or been driven through. The other cities are teeming with activity: people walking and talking, automobile traffic, kids playing in parks, people shopping, horns blaring.

S’derot (on the day we were there) was quiet, with few people on the sidewalks, and less automobile traffic. That may have been partially because we were in primarily residential areas, and the open-air market was not operating that day. Or it may have been because many of the residents of S’derot have lived for the last 10 years with regular bombardments of kassam missiles by terrorists from the Gaza strip- approximately 2 miles away. As a result of Operation Lead Cast (from December 2008 – January 2009), the missiles have been almost silenced, at least temporarily.

One might think, with the danger set aside, that residents of S’derot would be out and about – enjoying the freedom to roam their city. Unfortunately, although the attacks have ceased, the fear resulting from them remains unabated for many.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological disorder that many of us are unfamiliar with. It generally results from a traumatic event – physical or psychological – and manifests itself in a variety of ways. Paralyzing fear is triggered by sights, smells, sounds, or memories of the traumatic event. These triggers often occur randomly, with no prior warning. The fear causes the body to react as if it were in extreme danger and to seek to protect itself as best it can. Self-protection becomes the primary goal, frequently resulting in regression from previously-attained competencies. For example, a child (or adult) may begin bedwetting at night. Sleep disturbances are common. Clinging to a safe person in a safe place is critical.

Most of us don’t really understand the complex dynamic between fear, triggers, physiological reactions, and the body’s natural reaction to protect itself. We frequently offer well-meaning advice: “Just push through the fear” or “You can’t let the past event rule your present and future” or “Everyone’s afraid of something: just pull yourself together.” In our society, fear is often seen as a weakness, a lapse of moral fiber, something that can be conquered with just a little willpower.

If only it were that easy.

It’s not.

I can’t begin to envision what it must be like to live through attack after attack; to see my children injured; to experience such profound fear myself and yet know I must find a way to help my child heal. This in addition to the physical injuries resulting from such attacks and the loss of property – and the sense of violation that comes with those losses.

These are the people that Karyn works with. Atzum helps by providing direct services – money for therapeutic swimming lessons or tutoring for a child who’s missed too much school because fear keeps him/her glued to a mother’s side. Atzum also helps provide indirect services – helps survivors navigate the bureaucracy in order to obtain necessary disability payments or home repairs or career training for a life that’s been altered.

Neal and I had the privilege of making three home visits with Karyn on Wednesday.

The first family – mom, 15 year-old daughter, and 9 year old son – still struggle with the aftereffects of a rocket hitting their home. And, oh yes, Mom’s mother who’s had a severe stroke lives with them – lying on a bed in the living room. Mom suffers from mental illness resulting from earlier attacks; also, the son’s vision is impaired and he lost almost a year of schooling because he was unable to leave the house due to fear. The daughter has participated in leadership programs in England and New Jersey – and behind her bright sunny smile, one can see the fear in her eyes when she talks about hearing the missile hit their home. Atzum is paying for the son’s tutoring in hopes that he will be able to re-join his class in September. Karyn’s encouraging both children to participate in after-school chuggim/clubs this coming school year, but a final decision has not yet been made. It’s a testament to how safe the son feels with Karyn that he’s willing to leave the apartment to show us the reinforced, “safe” outdoor playground. He demonstrates the apparatus for us, climbs through the caterpillar and generally acts like a giggly, nine year old boy who’s loving the attention. But the playground is a short car ride away – there’s no place near his apartment for him to play outside safely. So most of his time is spent indoors. It seems safer.

The second family is fairly new on Karyn’s caseload: two children, a mom and a dad. The dad’s PTSD first manifested itself in the early 1980’s as a result of his army duty in the late 1970’s. Mom’s PTSD is of more recent inception. She used to support her family by cleaning houses. Now, neither she nor dad is able to leave their apartment. Recently they needed to make a choice – tutoring for the almost-bar mitzvah aged son? Or shoes for him? … They chose shoes. It’s hard to envision needing to make such a basic choice.

The last family we visit is a more financially stable family. The first attack destroyed their roof; the second one hit the front room of their house. Mom relayed that after the attacks her now-ten year old son began to wet the bed, refuses to leave the house without her, and sleeps with her at night. She quit her job because he was unable to function without her physically near him. He’s agreed just this summer to attend camp each morning, allowing Mom to work four hours a day, but refuses to go on field trips to the swimming pool with his camp group. Mom’s working on establishing support groups for others in their situation and has a proposal pending for an afterschool program/ curriculum to be introduced in S'derot to help the children understand what’s happening to them, and empower them. And by the way, did I mention that when he was eight, he wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert which was published in Maariv newspaper asking for him to protect his school?

Karyn works with approximately 15 such families in S’derot (in addition to families across the entire State of Israel who are survivors of other terror attacks). Most of the families she works with are people who would otherwise fall through the cracks. Historically, many families in S’derot lived a marginal existence even before the rockets began to fall. There’s no industry in S’derot. The train from Tel Aviv doesn’t go that far.

It would be easy to think of the families Karyn works with as “victims.” She – and we – prefer to think of them as “survivors” whose daily lives demonstrate great courage.

CORRECTION:
I was in error by saying "There's no industry in S'derot." From my friend and colleague, Arnie Draiman, comes the following: "There is a LOT of industry in S'derot. a big industrial park with some of the biggest names in Israel there - Osem, for example."

Todah rabah, Arnie: thanks for the info.
7/30/09

Family Programs

I’ve been working on a couple of large projects this past month.

Although they’ve been interesting, I’ve found myself struggling with the “brain fog” that often seems to hit in December and/or January, in which it takes a great deal of effort to stay focused and productive. But the days are growing longer and, this week, we were blessed with unseasonably warm weather. So now I know again, that winter will *not* last forever: Spring is on its way!

So, what – you might ask – have I been up to?

I just finished a Tu B’shevat program for a family program at a local synagogue. It was actually a lot of fun to prepare for! As a brainstorming tool, I used a web format like this:

I find it helps me a) make sure I include activities for different types of learners; and b) visualize the interrelationships between some of the areas.

You’ll notice that some of the areas are “content” areas (eg, Israel, Mitzvah work) and some are “modalities” (i.e, writing, art, drama) and some can be “either/or” (texts, music). Depending on the age of the group, I may add other ideas to the web. “Movement” is a popular one, as is “books or stories.” After brainstorming, I share the web with another person to see what ideas it triggers for them.

And then, I get to work!

Especially if it’s a multi-age program – but even if it’s not – I generally try to come up with more than one idea or activity for circle in the web, using Bloom’s taxonomy as a loose guide. For example, if the topic is “Tu B’shevat,” in the writing center, I might offer the following selections:

• Write 15 things that come from trees.
• Write a poem (haiku or acrostic) about some aspect of trees.
• Write a journal entry as if you the boy in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree trying to explain to his children why there were no trees planted on their street.
• Pretend you are an inanimate object that helps people fulfill the mitzvah of bal tashchit/do not destroy. Describe yourself; tell what you do; discuss how you feel when people use you; and provide one rationale for people who ignore you to change their behavior.

Particularly for large-group program, but also for class lessons, I often like to provide participants with a variety of options from which to choose. If possible, I like to do this both when presenting the lesson, but also in reinforcing it through class work and assessment. By providing choices, I find that students are apt to focus more on the content and less on the method. The ultimate question I’m asking them to answer is “What do I know (or what have I learned) about this topic?” A student may do a better job of illustrating what s/he has learned rather than writing a descriptive paragraph. For family programming, the levels of projects also allow parents and children to work together on something slightly more sophisticated or nuanced than the child would undertake on his or her own.

I like setting up “centers” or “stations” for people to work at – it gives me an opportunity to locate several “quiet” activities near each other; to break the group into more manageable subgroups; and gives me a quick view of which activities seem to be attracting the most (or the least) participants. My personal preference is to provide one large block of time for “center work” and allow people to move through the activities at their own pace. For some groups, that sense of freedom translates into chaos – they do better with defined time blocks. In that case, it’s particularly crucial that I provide more than one activity per center, to accommodate those who work at a faster pace than others.

It is important, however, to have both a formal beginning as well as an ending to the program. During the beginning you can set the stage for the experiences the group will be having, and outline whatever specific parameters there may be. The ending provides a chance to summarize the learning as a whole group. Asking “What’s one thing you learned today” will result in more targeted responses than “Did you enjoy the program." I also use the final period as an opportunity to have participants fill out a brief (half-page) evaluation sheet consisting of the same questions I use in my own reflective exercises. I ask both students and parents to fill out an evaluation, with the only difference in the questions being the final one.

1. What did you learn today?
2. What worked particularly well?
3. What should we change next time?
4. Did your child participate the way you thought s/he would? OR Did you get to work with your parent the way you wanted to?
   

Organization helps make a program like this more successful. My next posting will contain some “tricks of the trade” I’ve learned along the way!

The Parent Piece

from a presentation I gave last fall....

As educators, we focus a lot on our students with special needs and our teachers. But there’s another piece that we need to focus on, too: the “parent piece.” I’d like to take off my educator’s hat now and speak to you as the parent of children with special needs.

As an educator, there are several comments I frequently hear from teachers: If they [parents of children with special needs] really cared about their child’s Jewish education they’d medicate their kids during religious school, too.

Medications can help with certain issues. They don’t make the situation go away, but they can make it better – “can” being the operative word. Not all meds work for all children. Every medication carries with it a cost, a side effect. Common side effects with stimulant medications are lack of appetite and difficulty sleeping. So parents of a child on this type of medication face difficult choices -- do they choose to medicate their children, so they have an increased ability to focus and control their behavior – or do they choose to have their growing children eat … and sleep? I have the most beautiful pictures of my daughter’s bat mitzvah that are almost too painful to look at. The pictures were taken after a summer on much-needed stimulant medications – she weighed less than 95 lbs then and looks emaciated..… Parents make the best decisions they can for the whole child.

Why don’t they tell us what’s going on? Why don’t they share information with us?

There are many reasons why parents don’t share information. They may be unaware of their child’s behavior – after all, the parent doesn’t see the child in a school setting. They may think that with our smaller class sizes and shorter period of instruction, their kids can hold it together okay. They may have some of the same glitches their kids have – and find it difficult to advocate, explain or organize themselves in such a way as to be able to share information in a helpful way.

But there’s another factor, one that might be hard for many of us – with our love for school and learning situations – to understand. For many of our kids with special needs, school is not a good place to be. It is where they often feel most incompetent…. and a place where they have no friends. Parents spend a lot of time and energy fighting for their kids – trying to make their kids’ school experiences less negative. For many, they just don’t have the energy to expend in working with a supplement school – in addition to their child’s secular school.

What would we have you do? Listen….. just listen and suspend judgment. Help make your school a safe haven - or "sanctuary," if you will - where they can share their "stuff" without worrying about your response. That's the starting point. The details can be worked out afterwards.

Grishaver + Epstein = ?

So, from Grishaver we understand that many Jewish parents carry "baggage" with them when they bring their children to our religious school. Some of that baggage they (and we) are aware of -- some of it is more subtle, perhaps not even named.

From Epstein, we learn that there are a variety of ways in which parents can (and should) be involved and that parental involvement is key to student success. Most of us already knew that, but she provides the research data which validate our instinctive knowledge.

How to combine the two - that's the question.

Here's what I know about parents, born out by years and years of experience:

• Parents have choices today. They CHOOSE to send their children to our school specifically. Their reasons for choosing our school may - or may not - be nuanced. But they could chose NOT to affiliate.
• Before parents can hear what I have to say about their child, I may need to hear what they have to say.
• People only share "stuff" (about themselves, their children, their circumstances) if they believe it is safe to share.

We know that we need to meet learners where they're at before we can bring them along to where we want them to go. Same thing with parents.

We need to listen (without thinking about our response while they talk).

We need to acknowledge that we understand how they feel, even if we don't agree.

We need to value their children. They are bringing us the very best children they have -- we're not getting the dregs -- but the best they have.

We need to value the trust that they have in us to do the right thing by their children.

We need to understand that any relationship is a two-way street. At the same time, because of the "baggage," we may need to model for them how that relationship should be conducted.

We need to convey that we know they are making the best choices they can for their family. Those choices may not be the ones we would make for our family, but they are charged with the responsibility for making all the pieces fit together for their family.

Not easy, is it? But then, if it was - everyone would be doing it and there'd be no need to grapple with the issue.

Parent-Family Involvement

Dr. Joyce Epstein (Johns Hopkins University) has done landmark work in the area of parent and family involvement in children’s education. “There are many reasons for developing school, family, and community partnerships,” she writes. “The main reason to create such partnerships is to help all youngsters succeed in school and in later life.” [emphasis added]

Almost twenty years ago, when Epstein began to publish about her research, schools across the nation began to listen and re-evaluate how – or indeed, if – they interacted with parents. She provided a framework for schools to use in assessing the type and quality of interactions they had with parents. The Parent Involvement Framework defines six specific types of parent and family involvement.

• Parenting (help parents establish home environments to support students as learners)
• Communicating (design effective forms of school-to-home and home-to-school communications about school programs and children's progress) [And, I might add, “use them”]
• Volunteering (recruit and organize parent help and support)
• Learning at home (provide information and ideas to families about how to help students at home with homework and other curriculum-related activities, decisions, and planning)
• Decision-making (include parents in school decisions, developing parent leaders and representatives)
• Collaborating with community (Identify and integrate resources and services from the community to strengthen school programs, family practices, and student learning and development)

In addition to providing the framework for involvement, her work also acknowledges the challenges faced in each type of involvement and the impact of implementation on all parties: students, families, and teachers.

Questions to ponder:

How are parents and/or families most apt to be involved at your school?

How effective are the communication mechanisms in your school – and are they bi-directional or only from school to home?

Do you follow up when people volunteer? Do you let parents/families know specifically what types of assistance you can use?

Do you provide materials to use at home as a means of extending student learning and drawing parents closer? Does the material presuppose a certain education or background level? Is the tone condescending?

Are parents involved at key points in decision-making processes – or are they only involved at the end, after the decisions have already been made? Do you genuinely welcome input – or expect your oversight board to “rubber stamp” decisions?

Do you collaborate with your community – synagogue, movement, geographical region, issues-based interest groups? Do you encourage families to do so? Do you welcome the information that they bring to you?

In summary, I can’t help but wonder how is it that secular schools find it easier to acknowledge the importance of family involvement as an indicator of educational success than many of our supplemental schools do?

Jewish Parents

Two words which often strike fear into the heart of Jewish educators.

“Jewish parents.”

If you ask a group of teachers what comes to mind when you say, “Jewish parents,” these are some of their responses: “Pushy” … “Arrogant” … “Uninvolved” … “Don’t care” … “Sense of entitlement” … “Irresponsible” …”Don’t discipline their kids”

Teachers-who-are-parents are often as harsh in their comments as non-parent-teachers.

When did parents become the enemy? And who benefits when we keep categorizing them as the enemy?

Joel Grishaver takes a long, thoughtful look at parent-teacher relationships in his 1997 Jewish Parents: A Teacher’s Guide. He reminds us that most Jewish adults stopped their Jewish education after bar or bat mitzvah. He says that when they look at us, Jewish educators, they come face-to-face with three things:

1. Their own ambivalent or even bad memories of Jewish schooling…
2. Their own sense of Jewish inadequacy.
3. Their embarrassment over their children’s forthcoming Hebrew School failure (for which they feel ultimately responsible).(pp 20-21)

No wonder it’s so difficult to communicate with our students’ parents! When you add that to the likelihood that the reason we’re probably contacting them in the first place has to do with a problem (behavior, attendance, academic difficulties), the hostility we often encounter makes sense.

Here’s something to think about: How often do we pull a parent aside to tell them something we appreciate about their child? About a kind thing we overheard their child say? About a great point the kid made in class?

Grishaver goes on to ask,

“So here is the question (again): Why would a generation of Jewish kids who hated Hebrew School and who swore that when they grew up they would never subject their own children to the same kind of torture, become parents of the kids who now claim to be suffering in our classrooms?

The answer in one word: “ambivalence.” Ambivalence does NOT mean not caring. Ambivalence means feeing two different ways…. the truth is that most of the parents we work with do care a lot, but they care in different ways than we [emphasis added] want.” (p 23)

To summarize the rest of the section, this is how Grishaver articulates what parents want and don’t want.

They want their kids to

• have a sense of Jewish history, culture and values as one piece of their identity;
• feel good about being Jewish; and
• their kid to be regarded as authentically Jewish, so they can call upon their Judaism when they need it.

They don’t want to 1) have to force their kids to be Jewish; and 2) be embarrassed by their own Jewish inadequacies.

Many parents, Grishaver adds, have three additional desires of which they may not even be fully aware:

1. They want their Jewish past healed.
2. They want a family bond which can keep their family together and provide stability.
3. They want to belong.

That's a lot to think about.