By Aimee Brett Kass
Celebrating the new year and the reconvening of Sunday School after a two-week break, Education Director Samantha Stankiewicz organized a Pajama Party earlier this month, where Sunday School students enjoyed the movie “Batkid Begins.”
This documentary showed how a community came together in both organized and spontaneous ways to support Miles Scott, a boy struggling with leukemia. Miles’ parents contacted the Make-A-Wish Foundation with his request to be a crime fighter alongside his hero, Batman. The foundation fulfilled Miles’ dream and one day Miles would join Batman to come to the aid of the mayor of San Francisco, fighting crime against iconic villains The Riddler and The Penguin.
Miles, at 5 years old, was given his own Batkid costume, was trained acrobatically to have the stamina and agility to be a true partner with Batman, and joined his hero for lunch on the upper floors of a commercial building, where he could view the sea of people who had come out to cheer him on.
The Sunday School students were impressed that someone their age was able to help Batman thwart the antics of both villains, that so many people who did not know Miles came out to make his dream come true and cheer him on, and that Miles had the courage to want to make the world better while he was sick.
Silvia Acosta, chair of Ethical Education, led a discussion after the movie, with enthusiastic and thoughtful responses from students of all levels. Many wanted to know if the Sunday School could get involved with a venture such as Make-A-Wish, a suggestion that will be researched and considered for the future.
Aimee Brett Kass, Sunday School teacher, is a member of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County.
