Why I volunteer

By Beth Povlow, JCRC member and Stand Up for Justice Chair

I moved from a city school to a suburban school in the Philadelphia area in eighth grade. I dressed differently. I spoke differently. I was shaped differently, and I was a different religion. In fact, about a week after entering that school, I was absent for Yom Kippur.

When I returned after the absence with the excuse note from my mother saying that I had been absent for a religious holiday, I was told it was an unexcused absence. I was kept after school for detention that day. My parents were not notified.

I never told my parents about it or about the rest of that school year. I was totally shunned by the other students for a very long time. I was never a shy person and wanted to make friends. At lunchtime, I would sit down at a table with other students and say “Hi.” They would all immediately get up and move to another table without a word. I stopped trying after a few weeks. Socially, school was very lonely, although I loved what I was learning. Then, many months later, in the beginning of May, I was at my locker getting books after lunch when I heard someone softly say my name. It was a girl named Reneé and there was a group of girls behind her, watching….

“I want to be your friend,” she said.

“But then they won’t be your friends anymore,” I replied looking at the semicircle of girls behind her.

“I don’t care. I have seen the way you have been treated and I want to be your friend.”

Reneé changed my life. We remained fast friends through high school.

To me, the most important thing is for people to be loving and kind to each other. As a high school teacher, on the first day of class, I told my students I had only two rules: kindness and respect. They thought I was referring to how they should treat me. I immediately corrected that. I told them that I would treat them that way. I then told them that the hardest thing for them would be to treat each other like that. In a short time, my words came true, and I would take the time to explain.

Since moving to Florida, I created Stand Up for Justice (find it at Jewish Naples.org) I also created the Coalition for Quality Public Education when I saw that a new school board was intending to make policies detrimental to education in Collier County. (C4QPE is its website. Check it out!)