Hello, LREI community.
I hope that you are well, having enjoyed the long Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. I want to share my admiration for the Parents Association Community Service Committee for organizing Monday’s Day of Service, and my gratitude for all of those who were able to make time to participate. Much was accomplished. Over 200 bundles of PJs, books, scarves, and cards were delivered to a city-run shelter serving single parents and their children, with additional PJs and books going directly to the Pajama Program. Monday’s efforts also created six boxes of toiletry kits that will be delivered to Project Renewal. A good day’s work, indeed! Thanks, as well, to the leaders of the sing-along, another great tradition. How great did it feel to come together in common purpose? Really great!
I am so glad that the Day of Service has become an annual event, joining our divisional MLK Day assemblies which celebrate Dr. King and his accomplishments and discuss and illustrate on-going social justice efforts. Each divisional assembly fits the needs of the students in that division and differs from year to year. Often there are student presentations, songs, poems, and likely some display of Dr. King’s words. Often we will share a recording of Dr. King’s speech as part of the March on Washington in August 1963, the “I Have a Dream” speech.
The divisional assemblies in honor of Dr. King are a long-standing tradition at LREI. I remember when I first started at the school we would gather ‘round a portable cassette player in order to listen to his better known addresses. The school also had a record collection featuring Dr. King. While today’s easy access to a plethora of Dr. King’s words and images is a vast improvement, back then we had something that we don’t have today, we had access to firsthand experience. There were a good number of faculty members and families who marched on Washington, traveling to the nation’s capital together. Each year a number of these folks shared their story at the assembly, bringing us ever closer to the actual day. As we listened, if we were able to conjure the heat, the length of the trip, how tired yet invigorated the marchers were, how important it felt to be there and hear Dr. King speaking, then we were able to transport ourselves to that moment and be inspired by the soaring images and aspirations of his oratory. We could get so very close to August 28, 1963. Hundreds upon hundreds of “Little Red” students were transported to the National Mall in this way, having a closer and closer experience each year as they heard the story yet another time, and the reminiscences of others began to feel like their own. Alas, there are fewer and fewer of these marchers at the school on a regular basis and while my sharing this story might help a little, the additional degree of separation hampers our ability to convey the true nature of the moment. What to do?
I suggest that it is possible to create a “closer” experience for our students, one that puts current issues and protests in an important historical context, to provide a deeper sense of what it means to join a movement, to demonstrate in concert with others, to stand up and be counted is very much possible. While not exactly the same experience, listening to Dr. Kings’ speech at the March on Washington and then attending this weekend’s Women’s March, for example, will give children a sense of that particular moment in the civil rights movement, a historic perspective, and then the experience of joining with thousands of others in the fight for the rights of women. I think that connecting protest today with protest in the past can help children to see that this is how progress is made; that hard work, dedication, commitment, and protest work. This week is the perfect storm of opportunity—the MLK holiday on Monday, assemblies this week, and a march on Saturday. Can’t make this Saturday’s march? There are many other marches, protests, and service opportunities available that will allow you and your children to join with others in a common effort to address whatever social justice issue moves you. If possible, combine this work with looking through some “window” into the world you aim to influence by reading books, watching movies, listening to music, or, if possible, speaking with someone you know who participated, who was “there,” wherever “there” happens to be. This is what we do in your children’s classrooms every day – create connections—real and deep and meaningful—to the topics and concepts and skills at hand. We find ways to narrow the distance between learning and life, between then and now, between “us” and “them.”
Hope to see you on Saturday,