Don’t check your identity at the door!

I mentioned that last week was a busy one at the school and Identity Day was one of the activities that made it so: basically the culmination of a year’s work in the Max Rayne Jerusalem School in the 1st-9th grade classes.



We all struggle with our identities, who we are, where we fit, but in the West we have the luxury it seems, to ‘find ourselves’ which is not the case here.  In a place where history is present always and where ‘narratives’ can and often do collide, it is important in a different more urgent way if you will, to who know ‘who you are’ and ‘how you fit’.

Here, especially at the Hand in Hand schools, students are encouraged not only to look at their own identities: personal, family, community, religious, and national, but at those of their classmates and friends.  Not only to look, but to appreciate and respect that your narrative may be different from mine but it is your narrative and it has value.

future architect 

Identity Day gives the students an opportunity to explore and share who they are in a community setting that delights in and encourages the process, knowing that understanding is a key for the future.





I think LeVar Burton said it well after his visit earlier in the day. "My hope is that these kids are the future of this region. And that their willingness to look beyond labels and to embrace one another as human beings – I hope that becomes the model for generations to come”

That, to me, is a large part of what Identity Day is all about.  



The final presentation is a big event with parents and friends invited to come and share.  Students present a variety of creations from written word and photographs, to drawings and dioramas, singing and dancing.  Some are directly involved in describing their work and what it means to them.  Others like the chorus’, musicians and dancers, present merely for our enjoyment and enlightenment.

Bible Hill and the Scottish Church