Tag Archives: Students

Education

A Call to Action

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This has been quite the week. I’ve listened to, read, watched, and followed as much of the news as I can possibly stomach and talked about it to anyone who will listen, which is the vast majority of my liberal bubble. The voices outside my bubble, however, are getting louder. I’m glad every day that I live here in New York City where our local government promises to maintain the systems currently in place to keep this city safe, welcoming, healthy, and sustainable. And then I immediately begin to wonder about those who feel the way I do but are not supported the way I am. My heart goes out to all of you. We are here for you.

The negativity and discomfort in the air is noticeable even in my middle school classroom, which is the impetus for this post. An experience I had with my sixth graders this week has me thinking about the world my students are growing up in, how different I wish it was, and how we need to reform education if we ever want to make our world better for everyone.

In My Classroom
We’re in the midst of a unit on Ancient Greece in sixth grade social studies and we spent a couple days discussing art and architecture and what it tells us about Greek values. The Met has a wonderful Greek wing in its permanent collection and we went there on a field trip earlier this week.

Prior to the trip, I went over rules and behavior expectations with my students and the following conversation took place nearly verbatim in all three of my sixth grade classes:

Me: Boys, you need to wear kippot to The Met just like you do at school.
Boys: WHAT?
Me: This is a school trip so we behave and dress like we do in school.
Boys: But people hate Jews! What if we’re shot? What if people follow us? What if we feel unsafe? What if there’s a bomb?
Me: You will be fine. People wear kippot in public every day and they’re fine.
Boys: But what if we’re not?
Me: Myself, the other chaperones, and the museum guards will take care of you. That’s our job.

I had this conversation three times. This week. In the suburbs of New York City. In 2017.

On the Streets
Obviously, my students are scared. Though we didn’t discuss it in class, I wonder about the instances of antisemitism that they’ve encountered in their lives. I wish I could tell them that such experiences are uncommon, but they’re not. I wish I could tell them that things will get better, but I’m beginning to question that, too. New York City is the most Jewish city in the country and the US has the second-highest population of Jews in the world. (Israel is first, though by under a million people.) That my students, growing up in and outside of this most Jewish city, are concerned about antisemitism is heartbreaking.

Again, I am left wondering about the many people who don’t live in our bubble here. I grew up in a town that was not very Jewish next to a town that was very Jewish, so I got used to explaining myself and what Judaism meant but it wasn’t a foreign concept to anyone I encountered. (Until college, but that’s a different story.) And yet, the synagogue I grew up in was vandalized more than once in my memory.

I can’t blame my students for being afraid, not when I’ve seen more antisemitic graffiti here in New York than anywhere I’ve been, particularly since Trump’s election.

Racism, antisemitism, and hate for Muslims, immigrants, the LGBT community, and women have all come out in the open since the day in November when everything changed. We all heard Trump’s discriminatory rhetoric during the campaign. None of this virulence is a surprise.

So the question becomes, “Now what?”.

Of course, there’s no right answer. The only wrong answer is inaction. In the words of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel:

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

I can’t tell you what to do. I can only hope that if you’re angry or afraid or hurt or concerned, you choose to do something about it. We have clearly sat back for too long without making our voices heard and we can’t afford to do that again.

What To Do Now
There is literally no time to waste. This isn’t going away and it isn’t getting better. And it won’t, unless we decide to act.

While my friend and I drove to work on Friday, we made phone calls to a list of senators to ask that they not confirm Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. We left messages where we could but unsurprisingly, most of the mailboxes were full. The media have done an excellent job explaining why her appointment will be damaging to our schools. Here’s Trevor Noah’s take because if you’ve read this far, you could probably use a laugh.

If you’re in need of a starting point, Forbes, The Advocate, and Slate all provide viable suggestions for involvement. To summarize:

  • Donate to a variety of organizations that have pledged to support anyone in need of help in any number of ways
  • Attend marches and protests
  • Make phone calls to elected official
  • Volunteer for good causes that are short staffed
  • Run for local political office
  • Get involved with communities that need support
  • Change your consumption habits
  • Pay for good journalism

Doing anything is better than doing nothing.

Back in the Classroom
On a fundamental level, I think many problems in today’s society come back to education. We are living in a world that is incredibly diverse in every way, but those in power in America right now have decided that the world no longer matters. Trump’s “America First” means that we are discounting the vast majority of the world. America cannot survive alone. No country can. No country should.

I believe that we need to teach these lessons to our students so that they develop a nuanced understanding of how the world works, global interdependence, and the necessity of working together to advance overall well-being. Putting some people before all others will ultimately harm even more.

Over time, we have developed school systems that allow for little room to have these conversations and engage with the reality of a modern world. Schools insist on desks, bubble sheets, and testing when the rest of the world operates in clouds, inventions, and innovation. The vast majority of schools do not match the real world and do not prepare students for it. It is no wonder there is so much hatred, bigotry, and discrimination against so many different types of people; we don’t have the time and space, or even sometimes permission, in school to learn about what actually matters.

That’s one of the many reasons I am unequivocally opposed to Betsy DeVos as the new Secretary of Education. She has no sense of how the world works and therefore how to build an education system that prepares students to succeed in a future that we can hardly imagine today.

Our students need to be confronted with people who are different from them, ideas that are on opposite ends of the spectrum, crises around the globe today, and projects that aim to solve current world problems. Students today need space to develop their talents, direct their energies, and explore their questions. We need to think very seriously about what we want from our schools and we need to commit to building those schools.

In order to do that, we have to act. Now.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -Aristotle

Education

Building Peace: Know Thyself

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It has been quite a while since I last wrote about peacebuilding. Frankly, there have been other things on my mind, like the US presidential election, living in New York City, and trying to feel better on a daily basis. I recently returned from a much-needed trip to Southern California where, among other things, I remembered what I used to feel like and who I am capable of being. My mum recently told me that I’ve lost my sparkle. I hadn’t phrased it in such stark terms in my head, but I know that I felt sparkly in California.

I felt like me, which hasn’t happened in a long time.

In struggling to feel like myself and understand the changes I’ve been seeing in the world, I’ve been finding it difficult to continue the work I love. I love writing about education, peacebuilding, and working to make the world a better place. It has been difficult to focus on those things when so much of me is caught up in other trains of thought.

But I’ve been thinking a lot. Reading a lot. Time has passed. I went away for a week. According to the calendar, a tough year is over.

So it’s time to start over.

Being
“Write down three adjectives to describe yourself.”

“If asked in complete confidence, what would your students say about you? Your friends?”

“When you think about being happy, what comes to mind?”

I have asked and been asked many varieties of the questions listed above. But rarely when I was a student. My employers and the friends I’ve made as an adult have been much more interested in how I would describe myself than anyone ever was when I was in school. Back then, it was always about what I wanted to do after college. People talked about the future. Rarely was anyone interested in the present.

Continuously looking towards the future seems to reduce or eliminate a focus on today, specifically in making changes today to benefit the world of tomorrow. I think this is problematic for several reasons:

  1. We need to believe in our abilities to have an impact in the world.
  2. We need to evaluate our present options in order to set ourselves up for a sustainable future.
  3. We need to decide today (actually, really yesterday) what kind of better world we want for tomorrow.

I see peace as the keystone in the arch of what comprises a better world. If we cultivate peace within ourselves, it is easier to see what we can do to make the world better because we are in the process of doing it, in our own lives. This means understanding ourselves in order to know why we want what we want and why we’re making the choices we’re making. To what ends, as my advisor in grad school used to ask. Indeed.

If we haven’t decided who we are, we can’t create the world we want to live in.

In working with students, I’ve found that it’s difficult to get young people to articulate who they think they are. Some are confident in themselves, which is great. But many laugh their way around the question, reluctant to sound too self-assured. Some truly don’t have anything kind to say about themselves and are crying out for help to whoever is willing to listen.

I think that one of the reasons for this uncertainty is that we don’t often ask young people what kind of people they want to be. We tell them what they should be. We tell them to be good, kind, strong, courageous, hardworking, polite, respectful. But do we provide them with opportunities to develop those attributes in themselves? Do we ask how they think they’re doing and where they want to improve?

One of my favorite activities with students in any grade level is when everyone sits in a circle and each student writes his or her name at the top of a piece of paper. They pass the papers around the circle, spending about a minute on each student’s page, anonymously writing down something they appreciate about that particular classmate.

To their credit, every group of students has taken this seriously. My favorite part is the minute or two of silence once each student has received his or her own paper and begins reading the anonymous messages. I love seeing their eyes move rapidly through the message, flipping the page over, returning to their favorite notes. I love the small smiles that spread unnoticed across their faces, the eyes widening in surprise and pleasure. I love the warmth that suddenly fills the room and the uncertain giggling when the nervousness breaks and students try to figure out who wrote what. Even when they begin to tease each other again, they keep the most personal messages private. No one really wants to spoil the moment. In every class, there are at least a few who whisper, “I didn’t know everyone thought that about me,” or “Oh! They think I’m funny.” In every class there are a few whose eyes just shine.

We learn what others think of us. But how does that align with what we think of us?

To build peace in the world, we need to understand that about ourselves. We need to know who we want to be and how to become those people.

Learning
In my ongoing quest to figure things out, I picked up The Hero Handbook by Nate Green. I’ve had a copy of it sitting in my GoogleDrive for so long that I honestly don’t remember how it got there. But I’m currently going through a self-exploration period and opened the book in my search for answers. As Hermione Granger aptly stated, “When in doubt, go to the library.”

Green suggests coming up with a list of personal rules to live by, which is something I’ve never actually done. I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions and ruminating over the answers. I’ve learned a lot about myself. There are decisions to make. Determining my guiding principles will hopefully help clarify how to live going forward.

In coming up with these rules to live by, I’m creating a moral code, such as it were, that I hope will help me take responsibility for my decisions, trust my instincts where appropriate, and stand by what I believe to be the best courses of action for myself.

Rebecca’s Rules to Live By

  1. Take care of myself by eating well and exercising regularly.
  2. Practice compassion to myself and those around me.
  3. Connect with friends and family by reaching out, sharing experiences, and acting from a place of love.
  4. Seek out and do things that scare me.
  5. Learn at least one new thing every day.

The five rules listed above are what I need to do in order to feel the best about who I am. This is what I require of myself in order to do what is important to me, which is to make the world a better place.

If I were to ask my students for their rules to live by, I wonder what they’d say? I wonder what I would have said five years ago, or ten years ago, or even farther back. If I’d had to come up with rules years ago, where would I be now? What rules would have changed as I changed? What would have stayed the same?

I’ve tried to make these rules as flexible and pragmatic as possible, but also constrained in the sense that these are five things I will not compromise. Come what may, if I can take care of myself, be compassionate, connect with others, push myself, and keep learning while doing New Thing X, New Thing X is worth it. If I can’t do those things, New Thing X is not worth it and shouldn’t happen.

Peacebuilding
So what?

That’s the question my students are required to answer at the end of any argument, written or oral. So what? Why do we care? Why does this matter?

This matters because I always want to be better. Better at being who I want to be and doing what I want to do, which is make the world a better place. I hope that creating these rules for myself reflects my current (and fluid!) understanding of what I need, what I am willing to do for the work I love, and the level of importance I ascribe to helping improve the world we all share.

I have done a lot of stumbling over the last months and that has distracted me from what really matters. Right now, I’m working to get all of that back on track.

Because the world needs it.

Because I need it.

Peacebuilding requires an understanding of what peace is and what we can each contribute to it. Knowing who I am and deliberately giving myself guideposts to continue growing as that person will help me do the work that I believe needs to be done.

Falling down is part of life. Getting back up is living. – José N. Harris

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.