It's impossible, in your first year as a school, not to respond to the irrepressible enthusiasms of ten year olds for everything from secret Santas to decorating the classroom, etc. in honor of the two holidays which dominate the December shopping season, Christmas and Hannukah.
But, if you have a chance to think about this for the future, what is the right position for a school to take in this throng of powdered-sugar inspired sentiment?
Mine this year was to do as little as possible to acknowledge it. Both the popular mythology of Christmas and Hannukah figured into World History this term, so I got to talk about the connections between the two holidays and cultures in an academic sense. Since the fact that Jesus was a Jew was a brand-new shocking detail to one of my smartest students, the entire contextualization of the famous crucifixion among the murder of over 30,000 Jews during the Roman occupation of Judea may have fallen by the wayside. And that's okay. It isn't important to me that the religious stories attached to periods of history be the highlights of my units. It just seemed like a way to get studets to visualize the events in occupied Judea at the time. Overall, my students knew more about that event than they had before, so I was fairly satisfied at the end of the unit.
Still, it irked me that what followed was a thunderstorm of requests for parties and pleasantries attached to Christmas. Having thoroughly established that several students and myself didn't celebrate the holiday, you'd've thought there would have been more discussion of what, if anything, we should do as a class. Instead there was this onslaught of presumptions which caused the muscles in my back to tighten like hubcaps on a wheel. To keep my back attached to me, I insisted as firmly as possible that nothing was to be done. I reminded my studets of "Separation of Church and State." I told the story of a student of mine early in my career who came to school on a day before the holiday to find my class was watching partying and listening to poetry who said, "I walked here for an hour through the snow, to find you are doing nothing!" Still, no one was moved. A colleague begged me not to do force her to "do any work" 8th period and, by this time, my jaw was so tight, I wasn't opened to making things easy. As it turned out my lesson moved at the pace of molasses, but we got through most of it. We were obliged to clean the classroom to prepare for an upcoming move so we started on that when the pulse and the point had basically become leaden. As we did so, streams of children came down the halls with food to give away, which, at first I prohibited, then gave into as we were closer to the end of the day. Sadly, I saw a colleague feasting on the snacks being offered when I had asked her to check on why these students were outside. Of course, I was making a big deal of nothing -- in the last five minutes before we were to leave, these studets obviously wanted to get rid of extra food from their parties. It was no big deal. Everyone around me had taught real lessons but had perhaps allowed for a little more festivity around them.
Students presented me with presents which I politely refused. I had told one that I could not accept presents -- that would be like accepting a bribe. What I told them were my presents were the questions they asked during class and their good work. They didn't need to thank me in any other way.
The week left me tense and I felt scrooge-like. It wasn't that I hadn't been generous, but I'd been pushed into a corner I didn't like and my views only solidified my exclusion. But, it was all right.
Given that we left off in the middle of a discussion of urban sprawl, I should have done more to talk about organizations who discouraged consumerism and who encouraged helping the less fortunate during the season. I know my students would've liked to hear about this. So, somewhere, next year, I will do just that. And more.
World peace won't be solved by one more Wii machine and one less meal.
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