What is Our Role as Educators Post-October 7th? — Principal Mohammad Kundos
In December 2024, we hosted a webinar titled “Anchors in the Storm,” featuring HIH Principal Mohammad Kundos and longtime HIH parent Rebecca Bardach. During the webinar, Mohammad answered a question about how his school and team of educators responded to the events and aftermath of October 7th, 2023.
Below is a transcript of his response, edited for clarity:
“I’ll start by sharing what we did on October 7th and October 8th. In those first moments, when I realized that something big and terrible was happening, the first thing that came to my mind was to invite the whole community and all the staff to a zoom meeting, and remind everyone why we choose to be part of Hand in Hand. To me, it wasn’t about starting a political conversation and discussing who is right and who is wrong, or who started it. It was about being able to have a clear vision of where we want to go.
In times of crisis and trauma, people are not always capable of seeing the path forward—of seeing the “lighthouse”—and our role as educators is to be this lighthouse, and remind everyone that what we’re doing is the most direct political response which can change the reality we’re living in. When it comes to education, it’s simple. I know it’s complicated, but it’s also simple because of the way we educate our students.
For instance, when teach them about values, we tell them that in order to measure values you have to be able to advocate equally for everyone. So if I believe in freedom, justice and equality, then I must fight for peace, freedom, justice and equality for all. That means, I need to fight in the same way for a kid in Gaza, in the same way that I fight for a kid in Sderot. It’s more complicated to have this conversation with the adults, but for me working with their kids in front of them is an educational act that proves to the staff and to the parents that it’s possible.
“In times of crisis and trauma, people are not always capable of seeing the path forward—of seeing the ‘lighthouse’—and our role as educators is to be this lighthouse.”
We were also able to create very honest conversations through our dialogue sessions with the help of facilitators. That’s one thing that Hand in Hand does. We have monthly dialogue meetings in our schools among staff, and in our communities among parents, with the help of professional facilitators. We allow our pain, anger, emotions, confusion to be in the room with us, because we cannot ignore what we feel. We have to put it in the middle, and create a circle that can support everyone.
Even though we may disagree on the political context of what led to what, we are committed to each other as humans. Our students are able to think together, and cry together, and play together, and we are allowing them to nurture this humanistic connection that bonds them together. Then, when we engage in complicated conversations about sensitive political issues, they can have a conversation, and they can disagree and that’s okay. That’s the reality we want to live in, that’s what we want to create in our country. We want to create a free country where we can live in peace with our disagreements.
When it comes to kids, how you talk is very important. I think of it as the “music” of my speech, what I talk about, and how I translate my ideas in a way that ensures the person sitting in front of me can really listen. As a musician I always give the example of how harmonies work.
Harmony means playing multiple voices together at the same time. At Hand in Hand, we teach kids that a couple of narratives can really exist side by side, and we can create a harmony out of them. But it’s more complicated—even in music. Western harmonies, for example, are based on voices that are seen as acceptable in the western world, but there are Middle Eastern quarter-tones which are not part of this western scale. How can we deal with that?
“As educators—we have to take the conflict, and be creative about how we teach it.”
So when we have a music activity, I show the kids the tones and scales on the piano, and what voices we can play in harmony, and I’ll also play my oud for them. And I’ll ask, what do we do when some notes that I play on my oud simply don’t exist on a piano? So I’ll get answers like, ‘You don’t always need to play them together, you can play them one after another.’
They teach me that we as adults should accept the reality that not all voices can be played together. Harmony is just one concept, but if we want people to really listen to each other’s story and narrative, we sometimes need to take a step back, and not force this harmony on them. Sometimes we need to play every instrument or every voice one after the other to be able to give these voices the respect and space they deserve. We have to be creative as educators. We have to take the conflict, and be creative about how we teach it—whether that’s through music, theater, etc.”
