During the last few weeks of school we noticed so many examples of the need for community in classrooms and the school. A student in grade one lost her father. It happened very close to the anniversary of one of her classmate's father's accidental death last year. Five and six year olds handle loss in a very different way than older people, it seems. It makes it hard for the adults to know what to do with the children's matter-of-fact honesty about the situation. Then we had another shock as the father of three of our students died. His children, aged 11, 9 and 7, came back to school after a few days, and seemed to resume their normal routines. Then, one of our teaching assistants had to fly down to Arizona as her father had passed away suddenly. She came back, fragile and bruised by grief, but carried on with her work. Finally, the baby hamsters, born unexpectedly a week earlier in the K/one class room, and promised to two of the students as take-home pets, were found lifeless on the Tuesday morning before the holidays began.
So much loss. However...
I watched with admiration as one teacher helped the other deal with the small, hairless bodies of the hamsters, putting them in tissue in an empty Tim Horton's Tim Bit box. The children all wanted to see the bodies, so it was lucky they did not dispose of them before the bell. I watched with amazement as the collection envelope for the family filled with almost five hundred dollars in cash from teachers and parents. I watched with gratitude as the friends of those children who had lost their father rallied round them with wordless support. Many other acts of kindness, putting things into perspective, reminding us to be mindful, gentle with each other, not so inclined to grumble and criticize, more inclined to appreciate. God bless us everyone.
