The rising wail of an air raid siren pierced the quiet classroom in the southern Israeli city of Eilat. Inside, students who had been evacuated from their homes after the Oct. 7 attacks were taking part in a workshop aimed at bolstering their personal resilience, and arming teachers with the tools to help them in today’s new normal. The siren was a trigger.

“It varies from class to class, and it is hard to know where [on the emotional spectrum] sirens will affect children, but in this classroom the siren created a lot of fear, and fear is contagious, and calmness is also contagious,” said Yoni Tsouna, CEO of the nonprofit Matzmichim (Hebrew for “uplifters” or “growers”). Marking its 20th year of leading workshops in both formal and non-formal settings across the country, Matzmichim’s 85 facilitators normally work on creating more empathy in group dynamics to combat the phenomena of online aggression and social boycotts, but this year they have found themselves also having to deal with the effects of trauma in the classrooms caused by the prolonged war.

“The siren caused a lot of panic, but the really important thing was that we were just there to show the educator that it is OK, and we don’t have to tell the kids what to do but simply we can ask them: “‘What can help you?”’ Instead of teaching them, you ask them.”

As some children and youth return to their communities in Israel’s north and south, the country and its educators are grappling with how to rebuild an education system that can help them recover — or at least give them the tools to face — the trauma they have experienced. In nearly every classroom, there are children and teachers who have experienced the effects of the war either directly or indirectly, with evacuations, the loss of loved ones, spouses, parents or children in the military and even children who have returned from captivity in Gaza.

“It is a different reality. It is impossible to live a normal life when you know at any moment a missile can fall on you, so we try to suppress it and suddenly [there is a warning siren in the middle of a Zoom session] that gives you a wake-up call,” said Avia Massud, a group facilitator working in the north for Matzmichim.

In Israel’s Arab community, the organization is also facing the effects of the growing criminal violence that has seen 200 people murdered in the past year — including the recent killing last week of a popular principal of a school in the city of Baqa al-Gharibiyye, where Matzmichim holds workshops, Tsouna said.

Since the war broke out they have been working with classrooms that have absorbed children who have been evacuated or with classes of whole communities who have been evacuated, Tsouna said.

“This thing is huge,” Tsouna said. “We work on personal resilience. The classroom can be something that increases resilience. We talk about the social: how the group can be an empowering place in the classroom, or home or teachers’ room that can help us move together in this terrible war. The workshops are designed to create a sense of intimacy and reduce the amount of put downs and jibes the kids give each other.”

The kids are not the same as they were prior to the war, and the teachers also are dealing with a whole different set of stressors along with the rest of the country, said Massud, who is from the Golan Heights.

“The situation we have been in for the last year and a half [makes the classroom very dynamic.] We are also there to help the teacher momentarily, to let her talk and let out her emotions for a moment. They have to constantly take care of the children, but nobody really takes the time to stop and ask them how they are feeling. They are dealing with ordinary issues and with the war,” she said.

On the one hand, teachers and students alike are supposed to continue with life as if all is normal, but their whole reality is abnormal even in the smallest of ways, she said.

“Sometimes we are looking for the very difficult cases, but our whole reality is like this now,” she said.

The facilitators themselves, who are also living the same reality, face the same stress as the students and teachers they work with, but the team is very supportive of each other, she said. Last September, just before the war, they were able to have their traditional three-day retreat, which helped “refill their batteries” and strengthen themselves as a group, said Tsouna.

In some situations the uncertainty and stress has turned into violence among students in the classrooms, Tsouna noted, but they do not focus on the violence or the “problem child” but rather try to create empathy within the student group, by encouraging students in a very practical way to speak out about what they are feeling. The facilitators work with the understanding that some of this violence is a result of the difficult times the children are experiencing not only at school but also at home, he said. Many of them have been exposed to violent videos which they pass on to each other, without the ability to filter out what they should not be watching as adults do, he said. 

“The idea is that a classroom should be a support group — not in a therapeutic sense but in the basic sense, and we are demonstrating [through our facilitation] to the teachers how that can be done through questions students can answer themselves rather than a teacher giving the advice,” he said. “It allows the teachers a moment to observe someone working with their class. We just go in and hold hands together with the teachers in the classroom and are in a circle with them. We show them that…no, it is not easy, we’re not perfect at it nor can we be perfect with group dynamism. This is something that is important for their mental health and it gives them the peace of mind to learn.”

Studies have shown that the more caring there is within the classroom, the more cohesion increases, as does children’s mental resilience and their ability to deal with challenges, both individually and as a group, Tsouna said.

Indeed, Massud noted that through the mainly peer-led discussions the workshops work on making emotional connections between the participants.

“Once you talk emotionally with someone, you become attached to them,” she said.

Back in the classroom in Eilat, some children responded to the siren by asking that others not shout, others asked their classmates not to imitate the sound of the siren or not to run.

“That’s heartwarming because at the end of the day the kids are dealing with their abilities as a group, meaning that children are teaching children. It’s turning the group into a group that listens to each other and that supports intimacy,” he said. “It is not the same as if a teacher would say [don’t do these things.]”

When children shared with one another tips on things they do to calm down in stressful situations: such as listening to music, counting to 10, petting their dog, the other children were much more likely to adopt the suggestions than if a teacher or an adult had told them what to do, he said, and it also started a conversation among them.

“When they give a suggestion to the group, it helps make them feel seen and heard, strong and capable,” said Tsouna. “Like they are someone who has something to contribute.”