Each year the congregation where I am an Education Director joins with a few others to run
a retreat for young high school students. We spend Shabbat together outside the walls of our synagogues and we
sing, pray, learn, play, laugh and build community. We have been fortunate to be able to
offer an extensive special education program within our religious school for
the past twelve years. Including
students from our school that have special needs and ensuring that they are fully
included in this retreat experience is a high priority for me.
So I’d like to share a story. Our weekend retreat was well under way and it
was lunchtime on Shabbat. I stood in
line alongside a student from my school that happens to be blind. A young man from another synagogue stood in
front of us and offered to let us go ahead of him because he “certainly didn’t
need to get to the food first.” (This
was a young man who is often misunderstood and judged based on his appearance
and weight, rather than the quality of his character.) My student leaned in to me to say that she
didn’t understand what he meant. I had
to explain to her that he had just made a self-deprecating remark about himself
in reference to his weight. Her response
was “Oh”, and while it was clear that this made her feel bad, she just had no
real frame of reference for what he was saying. And that’s when it dawned on him.
I watched his face light up, his whole demeanor change and he addressed
his next comment to my student directly.
“Wow,” he said to her, “You are so lucky! You never have to judge people
on their appearances!”
I won’t lie, I still get goose bumps. And honestly? The weekend could have ended there and I would have considered it a
success.
Rabbi Chanina taught,
"I have learned
much from my teachers. I
have learned more
from my colleagues than my teachers. But I have learned
more from my students
than from all of them." (B. Talmud, Taanit, 7a)
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that inclusion “takes away from” the learning of the other students. It’s just wrong.
Don't miss a post from Removing the Stumbling Block:
No comments:
Post a Comment