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Woody Woodburn
400 Roosevelt Court
Ventura, CA 93003
Preschool Offers Antidote To Hate
A stone’s throw, albeit by a strong arm, from my home is a preschool. Too, there is a synagogue. Both are wonderful neighbors.
Recently, and appallingly, a swastika was spray-painted on the front signboard of Ventura’s Temple Beth Torah. Children’s World Preschool shares this signboard and within its classrooms grows the antidote for such ugliness.
I know this to be true because my wise friend, Venturan award-winning author Ken McAlpine, says so. A number of years ago, Ken briefly became a “student” at Children’s World and chronicled the experience in my favorite chapter of his terrific book “Islands Apart.” Below are a few colors from the daily rainbows he saw inside the shared classroom of teachers Ronna Streeton and Odette Huber:
“One day I caught the tail end of a small uproar. Someone had pushed Alek to the ground as he was getting a drink from the water fountain. At almost the same instant two girls were in the bathroom, one urging the other to follow her lead, which she did, both of them plunking their hands in the toilet. When it rains it pours.
“So immediately La Famiglia came into the classroom to discuss things. First we lay on the rug and listened to ‘Imagine’ (‘…all the people, living life in peace…’). Then the children sat up. Mrs. Streeton sat in her chair in front of the class.
“ ‘I have some things to talk about,’ Mrs. Streeton said. ‘Remember how we said we’re all a family? Well I’m unhappy with some members of our family now. It doesn’t make me happy when members of my family are doing things that are very, very wrong.’
“Everybody waited quietly. Mrs. Streeton continued.
“ ‘You have to treat others with respect. And you have to know how to make good choices. When somebody says something to you that you know in your brain is wrong, you need to be adult and make the right choice.’
“Of course Mrs. Streeton, Mrs. Huber and I all knew that adults don’t always make the right choices, but we kept that secret. They would figure this out soon enough.”
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Sometimes, of course, adults do rise tall and make the right choices as the following story from writer Cindi Leive reveals:
“When my father-in-law was 58, he volunteered with a group that assists disabled athletes. Fit but no marathoner, he agreed to run the first half of the New York City Marathon tethered to a blind runner who’d flown all the way from Thailand for the race.
“At mile 13, another volunteer would take over. Except: That other volunteer never showed, and there was my father-in-law, exhausted, with 13 painful miles he’d never trained for ahead of him.
“ ‘What did I do?’ he recalls now. ‘I kept going!’ All the way to the finish line – inspired by the even more heroic efforts of the blind man beside him.
“I think of that story often, and not just while running. With the right motivation you can almost always go farther, accomplish more, reach higher than you thought.”
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The children at Children’s World Preschool, I believe, will accomplish more and reach higher than we can imagine. Ken agrees, concluding his chapter titled “The World to Come” thusly:
“If things are done right in little worlds now, maybe the bigger world will one day be a better place.”
It’s a pretty thought, especially when we have the same feelings Mrs. Streeton shared with Mr. McAlpine: “Sometimes I think the world is mostly good, and sometimes I don’t. I try to believe, but it’s hard.”
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.
Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …
- Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com