Questions from my class:
"Is it coming here?"
"Why is Saddam doing these bad things? Why does he want to fight us?"
"Why are we going to war?"
"Are people dying?"

At our school we are taking a very low key approach to the war. The principal mentioned it briefly at Friday Morning Line Up (an all school assembly) yesterday, but other than that we (the teachers) have been told to handle things how we think our students will best understand. I am very aware of the radicalness (yeah? what word would YOU use?) of my approach to this situation and the fact that although I AM in a country with free speech, I need to use a certain amount of diplomacy when exercising that freedom because of my role in the community. In short, I can't tell my students how I really feel. I can allude to it, I can dance around it, I can guide them there through other activities and our daily interactions, but I cannot tell my class that what we are doing is wrong or that our president is making a mistake. 3rd graders don't understand that kind of thing.

What I can do is relate what is happening in Iraq to our schoolwide program of "Peacebuilding". This months theme is "Noticing hurts and righting wrongs". I can explain that our government thinks that their government is hurting people and we are trying to stop it. This doesn't really cover all the aspects of the war, but it is something they can understand. We talked about the media coverage and agreed that, despite how they make is look, war is not fun or exciting. War is bad and no one wants to have a war, although sometimes it is unavoidable. We mentioned that people die during a war. We also discussed the fact that it isn't all Iraqis that we are attacking, just the leaders who have made some very bad decisions. Most importantly, I assured them that we were safe here in Temecula. We looked at the map, noticing the distance between Temecula and Iraq. We talked about the soldiers are so far away from their families and what we can do to support them. I think we will be writing letters and making artwork to send sometime next week.

Our discussion took about 20 minutes and ended with me reminding them that they can always talk to an adult about any questions or concerns they have. Did I answer all their questions? No. Did I tell them what I thought? No. But did I maybe help a little? I think so. And that is all I can ask for right now.