Teacher Stories…Post 3 out of 3: In Remembrance of Peace

In Part #1 of this three-part series, I took a look at an incident that happened recently in my home province of Nova Scotia. In this incident, an uproar ensued after an elementary school principal made a request within her school community that any veterans who might be thinking of attending the school’s Remembrance Day assembly do so in civilian attire out of respect for students at the school who might be traumatized by the sight of soldiers in uniform. Many adults, including the premier of the province weighed in with their comments and opinions, the vast majority of which severely criticized the actions of the principal and added phrases that included “woke culture” being at the root of it all. Childhood classmates of mine even joined in on the public pile-on. Many started sharing anti-immigrant memes on social media, telling those immigrants who didn’t seem to like our traditions that they could go back where they came from. All in all, it was an incident that had ugly overtones to it. So, in Post #1, I responded by talking about how multiculturalism has played such an important part in my growth as an individual human being. I, also specifically spoke about living and teaching in Canada’s largest, most culturally-diverse city of Toronto.   

In Part #2 of this series, I spoke about my experiences as a teacher of small children throughout my career. Specifically, I talked about how young children usually don’t understand abstract concepts such as nation states and remembrance. Instead, they tend to view the world through hands-on, tactile experiences. I always approached Remembrance Day from the aspect that these soldiers helped to keep us safe from harm. Children may not understand the geo-politics of the times but they do understand what it means to feel safe. Thus, I always had a small intellectual way in when it came time for Remembrance Day services at my schools. Overall, in Post #2, I spoke of how the process of intellectual growth comes from an accumulation of these tactile experiences and that it all takes time to take root. Furthermore, I introduced one of my own teaching strategies to help children become more aware of the world in which they actually lived. That strategy was called the “Canadian of the Week”. This was an educational vehicle that I used to introduce famous people who had an impact in the lives of the children. One such person was children’s author Robert Munsch. In talking about his life and accomplishments, I highlighted a book that he co-authored with a young Lebanese girl named Saoussan called From Far Away. This book chronicled the experiences Saoussan faced as an immigrant to Canada who had fled from a war torn country.  The purpose of sharing Saoussan’s story was to show you how the world can seem so completely different when viewed from a child’s perspective. Things that may seem obvious to us as adults can be viewed with a completely different lens by children, simply because of their own experiences (or lack thereof) and the state of their intellectual development at that point in time. This brings us to today’s post.

The story of the Remembrance Day controversy in Nova Scotia did not happen at a public place such as a community cenotaph. It did not happen at a local Legion hall. This incident also did not happen at a hockey rink, a church, a shopping plaza or a park. Where it did happen was an elementary school.  Elementary schools are special places. I oughta know because I spent thirteen years of my childhood and thirty more years as an adult working within the walls of elementary schools in Nova Scotia and in Ontario. One of the first things I can tell you about that is that there is a distinct difference between my experiences as a young student and those later in life as a professional educator. All of you reading these words have probably sat in a classroom as a student at one time or another during your lifetime. But not everyone has seen how a school works from the perspective of those in charge. Today’s post will take you inside the staffroom to see how the adults in the school work together to create school climates in which students can feel safe and achieve personal growth. So let’s begin at the end of a school year and let me walk you through how school staff function to meet the needs of the children in their care. I believe this is critically important to understanding how that whole Remembrance Day request came to be in the first place. Let’s open the staffroom door. Come on inside everyone. Here is how it all happens. 

A typical Canadian school year runs from September to the end of June. By the time we arrive in the month of June, there are few surprises left for us, as educators, to discover. We know the kids inside and out at this point. June becomes a time of reflection and of final assessments. It is a time when we focus on measuring the extent of the growth each child has achieved under our care and reporting as such in their final report card. The majority of the students do what is expected and have managed to become more knowledgeable, confident and physically mature. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to have watched these kids change into better, more capable versions of themselves over the course of the year. However, for some students the end of the school year does not bring an end to the learning challenges that they may face. Every classroom tends to have students who struggle, for one reason or another. For those students, this sense of struggle is usually identified long before the end of the school year. In most cases, those students requiring extra support have had special assessments performed on their behalf that result in the creation of something (at least in Ontario where I worked) called Individual Education Plans. An I.E.P. is a document that accompanies the regular report card. In it, the I.E.P. will outline specific areas of need for a student. It will be created based on evidence provided by the classroom teacher, as well as assessments from other skilled experts as necessary such as speech and language consultants, physical therapists, behavioural consultants and, of course, the special education teacher employed at the school, along with the school administration and anyone else who may be deemed necessary. An I.E.P. will indicate goals for improvement in very targeted areas and will advocate for resources needed to accomplish this. In this case, resources may be in the form of specialized equipment, access to therapeutic treatment and it also may be in the form of physical help from someone hired to be an educational assistant or support worker. All in all, I.E.P.s drive a lot of the support that is necessary for some students to successfully navigate their way through each school day. They are a very important component of how schools operate. Most importantly for this post, they are the result of teamwork from school staff.

As the school year winds down in June, one of the final things that the members of a school staff will do is to sit down and create the new class lists for the upcoming school year. It is a last opportunity to do something for the students under your care to ensure they have the best chance of success for the upcoming school year. While there are various ways that schools do this, for the most part, teachers will gather together in a large room (gym, library, staffroom) and will work together to create new class lists that are as balanced as possible by gender, by academic skill level, by personality types, by the number of students with special needs and, to a certain extent, any special requests made by parents. From my point of view, this can be a very intense process. All of us as educators advocate for our students and attempt to place them in the best possible situations for the upcoming year. Great care is taken. It is an exercise that I wish the general public could see because it truly shows how well teachers know their students and how deeply they care about them. That reminds me of another thing that I wish the general public knew and that is how often we talk about the kids to each other on our own time. If I had a nickel for every conversation I had at lunchtime in the staffroom, before/after school in my classroom or some else’s classroom or out on the school yard while providing recess coverage, I would be rich enough to have purchased Twitter so Elon Musk didn’t have the chance to do so himself.  Educators talk with each other about the kids all of the time. It is truly amazing to see how proud they all are when a student of theirs makes a breakthrough, how concerned they can be when a child struggles and how easily ideas are swapped and strategies exchanged all the while coffee and muffins are being consumed. 

As the school bell rings for that final time on the last day of school, we watch the kids head off on their summer vacations knowing that we have given them our best. Then we turn our attention to the upcoming school year, safe in the knowledge that our new classes will be ok. At least, we are familiar with the names that have made it on to our lists for the upcoming year. As we head off on our own summer break, we do so with a level of mental and emotional comfort that comes with having a decent idea of what awaits in September. Sometimes familiarity does breed contentment and that is a good thing for those who work in schools.

As a new school year dawns, educators are nervous because, despite all of the careful planning that goes into the creation of class lists, the organizing of resources for students with I.E.P.s and so on, that first day and/or week of school in the fall always has an element of unpredictability to it. I have had many “first days’ of school where I arrived for work, grabbed my classlist, headed outside to greet my new students and their families, only to find myself being informed by the office staff that there have been new families arrive to register their children and, as a result, I have a new name being added to my list. Quite often, there is no strategy used to place these new students. If I am teaching Grade 2 and they are of Grade 2 age then the chances are good that this new student will be simply slotted directly on to my classlist. If there is another Grade 2 teacher working at the school and a second new Gr. 2 student arrives, they will get that new student in their class. If a third kid shows up, it is back to me again and so on until no more new registrations come in. Truth be told, the vast majority of these new arrivals turn out to be fine. They work their way into the social milieu of the classroom setting and thrive or survive, depending on who they are as far as their personal skill set allows. However, sometimes that new arrival changes everything. We never can tell how a child is going to react to being placed in unfamiliar surroundings until, in fact, they walk in through that classroom doorway. While many may be nervous at first, they adapt in time. But some kids have physical, emotional, intellectual or psychological challenges that make their entrance more like an intense storm. Some children find the experience to be overwhelming. Thus, they can cry and attempt to run away, they can lash out at classmates and teachers, they can barricade themselves under desks or inside closets, they can throw desks and chairs and much, much more. Having a child in crisis show up unannounced can throw a classroom and a school into chaos. Obviously, the safety of the child takes on paramount importance, along with the safety of the other children and the staff working in that particular classroom. In many cases, the child in crisis is not acting out because they are ill mannered and naughty, it is because of some underlying causes that require immediate intervention and investigation.

In my experience over the years, this is when the importance of school communities really comes into play. Quite often it is not just that child’s teacher who will be involved in helping this student become calm enough so that the process of acclimatization can begin. Usually, it is a team of people from within the school who all are called into action. This team often includes the school principal (and vice-principal, if the school is large enough to qualify for one), the school special education resource teacher, the classroom teacher and may also involve outside personnel from the school board such as counselors and social workers. In a crisis, safety comes first. A volatile situation must be de-escalated before it can be resolved. With resources stretched as thinly as they are these days, it could be a while before school board resource experts might make it to the school. In the meantime, it is often up to the people within the school to handle the situation as best they can. This may mean having to redeploy scarce support staff. For some children in crisis, having a caring adult assigned to them can make a huge difference in how they perceive their place in the new environment they find themselves in. Simple things like knowing where to line up for recess, knowing where the bathroom is or when snack time is scheduled, all help smooth the transition process out for these children. Over the course of my career I have been blessed….blessed….blessed…to have had many wonderful, caring adults share our classroom space in support of such students. The presence of these beautiful humans helped those struggling students to not struggle so much, it enabled our other students to concentrate on their studies and allowed me greater freedom to actually focus on teaching. Having support workers in times of crisis is an invaluable help. They deserve every penny they earn. In fact, if I had all of those nickels I spoke of earlier, I should have used them to give these support workers the raises that they deserve.

But as warm and fuzzy as that last paragraph may have seemed, the truth of the matter is that having a child in crisis in a school and/or in your classroom is a very challenging proposition. There is no sugarcoating it. It takes a lot of work and planning and organization and patience by a lot of people to affect change for these children. It isn’t easy and it isn’t always a successful endeavour. However, helping all of the children in their care is what a school staff does. This is true in the past for me even if the student in question wasn’t one of my own. When a new child is in crisis, the entire school staff is usually informed via an email message or at a staff meeting. At that time, the child is introduced by name and photo(if there is one yet) and the staff is given the particulars of the situation. Those involved on the crisis intervention team will give input as to strategies being used and triggers to be avoided. Other staff will be made aware so they can act as an extra set of eyes and ears in the hallways and out in the school yard. Anyone on staff with experience in similar situations may offer suggestions. The school staff will all go on a heightened state of alert. This is all in an attempt to keep that child safe and happy and to protect those working and learning elsewhere in the school. Having a child (or children) in crisis is a serious thing within a school. Many people are involved in any possible hopes of resolution. But make no mistake, if there is to be any sense of resolution it must involve the passing of time. Children in crisis aren’t just spoiled or having a tantrum, they have deeply rooted trauma that is motivating their behaviour and it just takes a lot of time and a lot of support to affect change. And believe me, when those pathways to change begin to appear, they are still very fragile in nature. It doesn’t take much to unravel months of patient, caring efforts. Which brings me to the point of these three posts in this series.

When I started seeing memes posted by high school classmates about how upset they were at this school principal, I was naturally interested. I may be retired but the fact remains that you can take the teacher out of the school but you can never fully take the school out of the teacher. So I did my due diligence and conducted some research into this news story to see if I could figure out what had truly happened. The first thing that I did was not to believe the social media memes being posted and actually read the contents of the letter that was sent out by this principal to her school community to see if it was as disrespectful to our veterans as many would have the world believe. The message this principal initially posted read as follows: 

“We recognize and celebrate the diverse makeup of our school community, and in being responsive to our students, we warmly invite any service members who would like to attend. To maintain a welcoming environment for all, we kindly request that service members wear civilian clothing.”  

To those unfamiliar with the composition of the school population at this school and unfamiliar with the way schools function at the start of a new school year with regard to the acclimation of new students, this letter could seem to be directed at veterans. Unfortunately, political opportunism soon entered the fray and this became an example of change, of “woke culture” run amok and, as such, it needed to be responded to with vigor and vitriol. Which is what happened. But, what really motivated this principal to make such an unprecedented request? I have an idea.

In her statement (and on the school’s website itself) she made mention of the diverse nature of their school community. By “diversity” I say what I am about to say with the understanding that she was not talking about a diversity of hair colour or fashion styles. I take “diversity” to mean being composed of a number of cultural groups. With that in mind, the next question is who would be triggered and re-traumatized by seeing veterans in uniforms? Well, in the past decade, the world has witnessed three separate armed conflicts around the planet that have resulted in a humanitarian crisis each time. In response to the leveling of places like Aleppo in Syria, various towns and cities in the Ukraine and now, as you read these words, the devastation being heaped upon Palestinians in the Gaza region of the Middle East, there has been a flood of refugees fleeing for their lives to all parts of the world, including Canada. Many of these families have come to Canada in three separate waves of immigration, starting with the Syrians, just before COVID became a thing. They were followed by Ukranians a year or so ago and now we have the Palestinians fleeing Gaza. A majority of those families who have come to Canada in these three waves have done so to escape deadly wars. They are people who have watched their towns being destroyed, their homes flattened and many of those they held dear being killed in violent, merciless ways. It is not too much of a stretch to the imagination to assume that many of these new immigrants arrived in Halifax and ended up being settled in communities where fellow immigrants, like themselves, had already settled into new homes. A diverse community, such as the one that this elementary school serves, would be a perfect place for these new immigrants. If such a conjecture is true then the staff at this school would have started their school year having to help refugee children in crisis stemming from the horrors of war that they have experienced. That is no small task. As trained as that staff may have been when it came to cultural diversity, dealing with victims of post traumatic stress disorder is a very daunting challenge. I am sure that whatever progress they had made in helping these new children to feel safe and welcome felt as if it may have been all for naught if the sight of soldiers in uniform….the very image that seared such terror into their heads and hearts…had been invited into the school. The fact that many of these soldiers may have been senior citizens would have done nothing to diminish the groundswell of memories and emotions that seeing them would have aroused in the minds of these children. At such a young age, most children do not fully understand the idea of remembrance for valor and courage of wars fought for democratic freedoms. All that these children would have felt was that men in uniform, not unlike the soldiers who killed their loved ones, were actually inside of their school. Was nowhere actually safe? 

In light of this, I respectfully declare with confidence that the principal’s message was not at all intended as a slight against our veterans but was, instead, something that any good principal would do, it was an attempt to protect children in crisis from further trauma. The veterans were still invited into the school as guests of honour at the Remembrance Day assembly. It was just the visual imagery of the uniforms that she sought to avoid. 

One of the aspects of this story that has gone unreported are the privacy rules that are at play. This principal is forbidden from actually defending herself in public because of privacy rules aimed at protecting the children under her care. I am sure that she would have liked to honestly explain her school’s situation properly but, to do so and name children from Gaza or the Ukraine directly would have told the world that these children were at that particular school. School boards go to great lengths to ensure that school officials don’t place any student in danger by providing their identity and/or school location without express permission of the parents. In a situation where war exists in other parts of the world, the ongoing nature of these conflicts means that it is dangerous to disclose where children of certain nationalities can be found. Thus, this principal has to remain silent (except for two admissions of general regret for any offense her original email message conveyed). She cannot defend herself against the onslaught of rightwing condemnation. Her silence lends credence to those arguing that she did something grievously wrong. 

The long and the short of this all is that I am a believer in the sanctity of childhood and in protecting children from harm. I hate that so many are suffering from the experiences they are having in war zones. As a retired teacher, I am aware how difficult it must be for them to focus on going to school and learning ABCs and 1-2-3s when all they can think about is carnage and blood and loss and death. I fully commend those people working in schools and in outside community agencies who are dedicated to ensuring these children feel safe and loved. The world can be a beautiful place. There is so much goodness and knowledge to be gained by opening ourselves up to people and cultures different from our own. If nothing else, I hope that some of my former classmates read this post and take from it the idea that social media is one of the worst places to garner information from. The world is often more nuanced than social media algorithms and talking points would have you believe. Do your own research before jumping to conclusions that help to perpetuate stereotypes and hatred. Most of all, try to see the world through the eyes of the children living in it. As a demographic group, children are the absolute best!

My experience as a teacher at Remembrance Day is that while many children don’t truly understand the ideals being commemorated, they do understand the idea of paying respect to adults who make them feel safe. For most children, talk of war and the soldiers who fought for our freedom is simply that, talk. They are blessed to have never had to experience war first hand. However, for those who have, nothing is more important than helping them to feel safe in their new land. If exposing them to images of trauma is anyone’s version of teachable moments or providing lessons then I think you are on the wrong track. There will come a time for the teaching of Canada’s history and for honouring those who served in wars. There are teachable lessons that can help change the lives of all involved….students and veterans, alike. However, doing so in the middle of a deeply rooted crisis of such an extent that we can’t even begin to imagine, is not that time.  Teaching lessons by exposing students to trauma is not good teaching practice. That should go without saying.

I stand by the initial actions of the school principal when it came to protecting the children under her care. At a time such as Remembrance Day, it is just as important to honour and respect the victims of war as it is those who served.

Just my two cents for what that is worth.      

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