As I wrote “Happy Thanksgiving!” and traced my hand to make a turkey on the whiteboard of my sixth grade classroom on this particular Monday morning, I overheard one of my French sixth-graders say, “Yeah, but what if the next attack is here?” I thought to myself, “Maybe our lesson on Thanksgiving will have to wait.”
Thanksgiving looked a lot different for me this year. I’m an American, but my yearlong visa to live and work as a middle school teaching assistant in France makes my heart torn between my two homes. I love the U.S. and appreciate reminders of home — usually in the form of pumpkin pie or mashed potatoes. On Friday, Nov. 13th, however, my heart broke for the country where I currently reside.
As I chatted on FaceTime with a friend in Searcy, Arkansas, that Friday evening from my home in Bourg-en-Bresse (250 miles south of Paris), I received a text from a friend that simply said, “Hey. There are shootings in Paris.” Over the next few hours, France and the world watched as the tragic details emerged surrounding the horrific “attentat” (attack) that had just shaken the whole country.
Within 24 hours, the world responded with powerful symbols of solidarity. Dozens of monuments around the world projected stunning displays of the colors of the French flag. Facebook feeds were covered with the iconic stripes of “bleu, blanc et rouge.” I showed a French colleague my Facebook friend list and she gasped at the huge number of profile pictures overlaid with the French flag. She couldn’t believe people so far away cared so much about the hurt that France felt.
My lesson prepared on the history and traditions of Thanksgiving was indeed put on hold as my students asked what I thought about Friday’s attacks. I told them what I remembered of Sept. 11th when I was 8 years old. A small boy sitting in the back raised his hand and sheepishly asked in French, “But will it happen again?” I showed the class a few pictures of cities around the world who had illuminated monuments to show their support — including one of the bridges in downtown Little Rock. We talked about how our fears for the future cannot stop us from seeing the good all around us.
As we moved into our Thanksgiving lesson, I gave the students maple leaves to decorate and write what they were thankful for on. Many created multi-colored leaves and wrote that they were thankful for their friends, families and pets, but others chose to color their leaves to match the French flag and wrote things like “freedom,” “safety” and “French police.”
In this season of thankfulness, the support of the world brings hope and resolve to a country in mourning. While hand turkeys and candy corn may not assuage my students’ fears about the future, cultivating hearts of thankfulness can go a long way.
