Caring, Personal Involvement Can Work Wonders
`How was your weekend?”
is a common enough question, bounced across millions of offices and factories around the world every Monday morning.
Answers vary. Typically this question is asked as a courtesy and responses from our peers are quickly accepted, even if slightly negative. Then the day begins, digging into a week of work, with the question given no more thought, unless a true tragedy has struck.
I am a teacher who doesn’t bother with the rhetorical question when I greet my students on Monday morning. There is no need of it. I can quickly see and hear the answer.
When it has been a positive weekend, filled with what they need, I am buried in words - from more than one child at a time - and I try to juggle the exciting sequence of what happened to each of them.
It is the same weekend that you and I relish - the exact balance of sleep, recreation, friends and family. The children, just as the adults, return to their workplace refreshed, and ready for another five days on the job.
For some children, the idyllic weekend is out of reach. They return to the classroom confused and fatigued. Their weekend has been spent in confusion, upheaval and distress. As easy as it is to hear the excitement of the joyful children, the silent sadness is equally recognizable.
The same children who detest the weekend, because of its uncertainty, its brawls, arguments and beatings, are the ones who act out in class two to three weeks before summer vacation. Summer vacation is nothing more than a very long weekend for these children and the pending dread of six to eight weeks without the consistency of school and caring adults causes attention-getting behavior.
It is the same with winter break, around the Christmas holiday. Whereas your holiday is filled with family, food and traditions, some children spend the holiday alone or amid conflict.
We have a new president-elect. His education mantra has been “to leave no child behind,” and that is an awesome task. Our government can’t legislate what it will take to make good his promise. It will take all of us, Republican, Democrat and independent, to reach out into our communities and find one child whose life is less than it should be and change it.
Our government can fund insurance, so that good health is guaranteed.
We can offer programs for working parents to have access to low-cost, quality child care. We can increase the connection between home, school and social services so that more children and families are supported through crisis.
We can make sure that every program designed to assist families to work and provide for themselves is adequately funded.
Federal and local laws can make a difference between a child’s weekend being spent in crisis or in a safe, nurturing place.
The greatest impact, which can’t be legislated, is a caring neighbor who reaches out and is attentive beyond oneself. That caring neighbor doesn’t have to be the person next door. It can be anyone whose sense of community is broad enough to feel and act on what is good for others’ well-being, rather than just one’s own.
A caring neighbor is Shirley Hansen, who saw two young boys exit the school bus each day and also saw that there was no one there to welcome them home. Understanding the work commitments of the father, she approached him and offered to help.
Without financial compensation, Hansen cared for the children for whom she had no genetic responsibility. Each day after school she welcomed two young boys into her home for homework help and snacks until their father arrived home from work.
Hansen, her own children grown and gone, saw a need in her community and filled it.
Find a way to involve a child in your life. Participate in 4-H, Big Brothers Big Sisters and scouting programs. Volunteer in schools, libraries, crisis hotlines or at a homeless shelter.
Our government can legislate programs but it is the face-to-face contact of a caring adult that will “leave no child behind.”