All posts by Rebecca Michelle

Educator, traveler, reader, blogger. Loves learning, black coffee, and friendly people.
New York

‘Tis the Season

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Celebrations in all cultures take place throughout the year, but we are particularly aware of that in December. My family joins about 8% of the US population in not celebrating Christmas, but we do have our own traditions over that holiday that are as stereotypical as one can imagine.

Like most of my friends growing up, we eat Asian takeout (Thai on Christmas Eve and Chinese on Christmas Day) and go to the movies. Sometimes we go bowling. We look forward to it and are excited about it. However, since Judaism follows a lunar calendar and our holidays move around it is also always exciting when Chanukah coincides with Christmas. Chanukah began on Christmas Eve this year, which is only the eighth time this has happen in the last century!

In my family, that meant a lot of traditions at once. Thai food, the new Star Wars movie, and opening the usual first night gifts of a holiday themed tissue box and a box of Chanukah candles. Unfortunately, I missed it. I leave tomorrow to spend my week of school break visiting friends who I haven’t seen in a while and I’m very much looking forward to it!

Our week off started yesterday (not a day too soon, considering the number of students and teachers out sick) and one of my best girls from Singapore who is visiting her family came into Manhattan for a day and a night. The weather yesterday was beautiful and sunny so we spent most of the day wandering around downtown and stopping for shakshuka, coffee, mulled wine, and Mexican food. I love the parts of Manhattan that don’t match the glitter that makes Manhattan a tourist destination.

Little Italy
Manhattan Bridge Arch
Greek Orthodox Church in Chinatown
One World Trade Center as seen from Chinatown
Chinatown

And then there’s my ongoing obsession with street art like this one on the Lower East Side . . .

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. . . and these in Little Italy. . . .

Today is day two of school break and it has been equally delightful. As is any day that begins with bagels.

I passed by this church in the East Village today that reminded me what actually matters not only during the holidays, but on especially on the holidays:

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At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to make a living in the best ways that we can. My holiday wish for all is that it gets easier.

To the cashier at Trader Joe’s today who folded my receipt into a paper airplane and zoomed it into my shopping bag;
to the Nepalese woman I met this evening who told me about the devastation last year’s earthquakes wreaked on her family;
to the baristas who made my hot chocolate, asked about my day, and told me that holiday overtime pay doesn’t exist in New York City;
to people everywhere putting one foot in front of the other, day after day:
Happy holidays, from my home to yours.

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On My Mind

Books Are My Happy Place

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I spent the day surrounded by books and it was great.

Early in the afternoon I went to the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library and browsed around there looking for a novel. I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction this year and my roommate, noticing this, recently gave me a novel that she had just finished. I read it in a few days and loved every word. Sometimes it’s nice to get caught up in someone’s fictional life. Knowing that there will be resolution in 200 pages or so is comforting. At the library, I picked up a novel to get me through the week and put in a hold request for a political science book that I’ve been eyeing for a while. (Because understanding the world is, after all, a lot more important than understanding the convoluted family relationships of fictional characters.)

The Stephen A. Schwartzman Building, the NYPL’s research library, is across the street from the Mid-Manhattan Library and I headed over there exclusively to take pictures. As an NYPL member, I actually can take out books from the Schwartzman Building, sit and read in the gorgeous reading rooms, and conduct research. However, most of what I’ve been wanting to read lately is available through regular library circulation so I haven’t taken the opportunity to do that. (Note the word most.)

Once inside, though, I couldn’t stop smiling.

If everything the world’s religions say about  life after death is true, I want to end up in a library at the end of my time in this world. Or a bookstore. Maybe I can go the Harry Potter route and come back as a ghost! (Thinking of that, is there a Hogwarts Library ghost? Hermione would know.)

I had planned on checking out an art exhibitions today and it made sense to attend the one at the Morgan Library & Museum, which used to be JP Morgan’s personal library. There are currently exhibits on Martin Luther and Charlotte Brontë, as well as several others. My favorite part by far, however, was exploring the rooms that contained Morgan’s floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I kept trying to touch the spines of his thousands of volumes of various shapes and sizes, and was continuously disappointed that the museum staff had done such a good job installing glass panes to protect the books from eager fingers like mine. Illuminated manuscripts were on display everywhere, which I so love.

Being around books makes me feel warm and happy, which was perfect considering the dreary day outside. I just love the endless opportunities to learn, imagine, and step into someone else’s world for a while. There’s real magic in that.

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I’ve been adding to the reading list that I linked at the beginning of this post and I’ll hit publish on that one before 2016 is over. Keep an eye out and let me know what you’ve been reading!

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. . . . The man who never reads lives only one. – George RR Martin

Education

Just a Number

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Being You Isn’t Enough
I overheard a conversation between two young women in the subway earlier this week that provoked a reaction that was at once horror, heartache, and shock. The conversation went like this:

Girl A: How do I get nice skin like yours?
Girl B: Girl, you gotta wash your face twice a day. Do you do that?
Girl A: Ugh no. That’s so much work.
Girl B: But you’ve got to do it. Otherwise there’s no hope.
Girl A: Well, I think if he’s going to like me, he’s going to like me.
Girl B: Yeah, but you need to be realistic. I mean, if you’re a 7 shooting for 11 . . . you have to be realistic.
Girl A: Yeah, that’s true. I think I’m probably . . . well . . . what would you say I am?
Girl B: Haha um maybe 8?

Wow.

Wow.

As the girls got off the train, I was stunned. Since when do women refer to themselves not as people but as numbers on a rating scale, where 1 is presumably synonymous with “troll” and unattainable 10 isn’t even high enough if we’re suddenly including 11? (Not to mention that Girl B clearly needs friends who value all that lies below the surface, which is everything that actually makes a person beautiful.)

Exploring Language
I wonder how we’ve gone so wrong. Have we forgotten to tell our girls to care about who they are rather than what they look like? Have we forgotten to communicate that being a good person, whether male or female, is what actually matters?

Perhaps we have forgotten.

Perhaps we have been so caught up in trying to understand recent world events that we lost track of what’s happening right in front of us. Perhaps we need to take a step back, look at ourselves, and make changes to the ways we talk to and about each other, and interact with each other.

I wonder if this conversation would have taken place in such stark terms (“you’re probably an 8 so wash your face and maybe there’s hope that he’ll like you”) prior to Donald Trump’s election. I wonder if this conversation would have taken place if the popular vote actually decided the next president. There has been a steady devaluing of diversity in this country over the past few months. Reducing any person to a number is just one example.

As an educator, it is my responsibility to model behavior that I want my students to emulate. The way I talk about people matters. The way I talk about world events matters. I want my students to live in a world that is more peaceful than the world they have lived in thus far.

As 2016 draws to a close, I’m thinking about how much more work there is to do and how far we have to go. I’m comforted by the feeling of inclusiveness and community at my school and the way students rally around each other when difficult circumstances arise. Cultivating these behaviors will go a long way in a world that desperately needs a collective spirit.

We are, at the end of the day, all human. We are all responsible for the world we live in and the world we’re building.

Let’s make it a better one.