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BY JOHN SNYDER
OF PASCACK PRESS
WESTWOOD REGIONAL SCHOOLS—Seventeen people, most of them residents of the Township of Washington and the Borough of Westwood, took to the microphone at the Westwood Regional School Board meeting of Feb. 28 to speak their piece.
The main topic was local school security in the wake of the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed and as many were hospitalized.
Superintendent Raymond Gonzalez led the meeting with a call for vigilance and urged students and their parents not to post messages irresponsibly.
He said the district had just passed social media postings along to the police for review, though he emphasized that nothing forwarded was seen as a security threat.
Against that backdrop, Christine Browne O’Neill, who teaches journalism, creative writing, and basic skills at Westwood Regional Middle School, took to the microphone to say she was determined to get to a summer program in India through the International School for Jain: Teaching for Peace and Nonviolence.
She said the district had not approved her request for professional development funds for her to attend the program, to which she was one of only a dozen teachers accepted from the United States this year.
Instead it had directed her to focus on reading and writing workshops for her students.
“If this topic does not relate to every single educator in our district and our country then I am dumfounded and disheartened,” she said.
Then other speakers replaced her at the microphone, demanding tougher “fortification” of the schools, with one Westwood resident calling for reinforced doors and entrances with a secure vestibule “like an airlock.”
O’Neill, who has just begun her 32nd year teaching in New Jersey and her 29th year teaching in the Westwood Regional School District, followed through on the travel and training—both at her own expense.
This July, she and her group travelled Northern India for three weeks, visiting Delhi, Jaipur, Pune, and Jaigaon, immersed in the study of Jainism and ahimsa (the practice of nonviolence in mind, body, speech, and consumption) through lectures and lifestyle.
They toured seven schools, where they were welcomed with performances, observed classrooms, and had dialogues with teachers and students.
The International School for Jain: Teaching for Peace and Nonviolence’s website sets the annual summer program’s tone with a quote by Colman McCarthy, director of the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C.: “If we don’t teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence.”
O’Neill told Pascack Press Sept. 4 she met and lived with teachers from across the United States as well as professionals from New Zealand, Zimbabwe, France, and India.
Calling herself a lifelong learner, she said she is eager to apply much of her new knowledge of ahimsa to her teaching.
She said she observed how the values of peace, nonviolence, and community were a focus in schools she toured.
“We met with Indian students and were participants in their morning meetings, where mindfulness and meditation were routinely practiced,” she said.
The experience, she added, was “powerful and enlightening.”
O’Neill said she plans to leverage information she obtained about Gandhi to enrich her students’ participation in the annual Mahatma Gandhi writing contest sponsored by the Association of Indians in America.
She said she also picked up inspiration on infusing some of what she learned into her classroom, “through classroom management, community building, and mindfulness to enhance the existing Zen With a Pen for Ten session” that runs daily in her creative writing classes.
She also is eager to share her adventure with her World Cultures Club members this fall through photos and videos. She brought home cookies, candy, and bindis (a colored dot worn on the center of the forehead) to enhance the experience for her students, as they will spend a meeting learning about India.
She didn’t mention how much she paid to attend the summer program, but its website says the session she attended cost $650.
In 2016, as a language arts teacher, she participated in a summer study tour through the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) through Columbia University. As part of a group of 20 teachers, she travelled through China and Japan for 17 days. She met someone through the program who referred her to the nonviolence program.
Jainism, traditionally known as Jain Dharma, is an ancient Indian religion with up to five million adherents. Followers are called Jains, which is derived from the Sanskrit word jina (victory) and connotes the path of victory in crossing over life’s stream of rebirths through an ethical and spiritual life.
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