The Blogs: After The Siren

There’s a moment no one really talks about.

Not the siren.
Not the running.
Not the waiting.

It’s the moment after.

When your phone buzzes—
“Event over.”

And just like that, you’re expected to go back to whatever you were doing before.
As if your body didn’t just brace for something it still doesn’t fully understand.

You pick up your phone.
You reopen your computer.
You continue the sentence.

Like nothing happened.

This week, we were told—less than twelve hours before the start of the school day—that we’re going back.

Back to routine.
Back to structure.
Back to normal.

Forty days of disruption, fear, sirens, uncertainty—

And then:
“See you tomorrow.”

I thought a lot about what that means.

Not for me.
For my students.

Because resilience is a beautiful word.

It sounds strong.
Impressive.
Something to be proud of.

And my students are resilient.
But not in the same way.

At the beginning of the war, one of my students — M — had his mom call me.

She told me he was struggling with Zoom.
That the assignments, the structure, the distance learning—it just wasn’t working for him.

I know M.
He’s a great student.
Focused. Mature beyond what you expect from a ninth grader.

So I told her it’s okay.

No assignments.
No pressure.
Show up if you want. Don’t if you can’t.

M came back to school this week and told me, almost casually:

“This was the best period of my life. I thrived.”

He slept well.
He ate properly.
He worked out.
He felt… good.

While everything around him was paused—he stabilized.

And now everything is back.
So he is too.

No friction.
No hesitation.

For him, returning wasn’t just easy.
It made sense.

And then there’s S.

An eighth grader.
Sensitive in a way the world doesn’t always know what to do with.

Emotional. A little quieter. The kind of kid you have to notice—because if you don’t, it’s easy to miss when something’s off.

We came back, and everything moved fast.

Too fast.

Schedules. Expectations. Normal life, reinstalled overnight.

And S is trying.

But he’s been skipping classes.
Pulling back.
Showing up just enough not to disappear completely.

Trying, in his own way, to regulate something that doesn’t have a clear shape.

And I keep thinking—

This is the kind of student who disappears in plain sight.

Not loud enough to demand attention.
Not “fine” enough to blend in.

Just… slightly off.

In a system that doesn’t really know what to do with “slightly off.”

This is what resilience actually looks like.

Not one version.
Not one outcome.

But a spectrum we don’t always make space for.

Today is Yom HaShoah.

Which means sirens again—but different ones.

Planned ones.
Remembered ones.

The kind that ask an entire country to stop.
To stand still.
To feel.

And I keep thinking about the overlap.

About asking students to move forward—to return to routine, to structure, to school—while also asking them to pause, to remember, to carry something heavy.

To hold both at once.

We are very good here at holding things.

Too good, maybe.

We know how to keep going.
How to function.
How to show up even when it doesn’t make sense.

But there’s a difference between functioning and being okay.

And I think sometimes we confuse the two.

I’ll go back to teaching.
They’ll come back to class.

We’ll read texts.
We’ll answer questions.

We’ll try, in whatever way we can, to rebuild a sense of normal.

And maybe, from the outside, it will look like it worked.

But I’m trying to remember—really remember—

M is not S.
And S is not M.