​Dear members of NCTE's Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English,

After receiving the email from the NCTE Executive Committee distancing themselves from your statement, I of course went looking for the statement. And once I read it, I saw that though it took a partisan stance that NCTE Official couldn't sanction, it was a call to talk. Not to remain silent. So on my private blog, no official NCTE connection, I'm accepting the invitation.
 
I agree 100% with the committee that ignoring the current situation is a deadly duck and cover. As English teachers, we encourage our students to step into each other’s shoes; we build bridges through reading and writing and talking. If we can’t discuss this with civility and compassion, who can?

I’ve posted the committee’s statement in its original form, and then, by way of starting a respectful dialogue, edited it to remove triggers, acknowledge pluralism, honor multiple identities and keep people in the conversation, instead of shutting it down.
 
The CaRBTE Statement:
 
Statement on Palestinian Genocide from NCTE’s Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English
 
The Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English believes ignoring current global realities hampers students’ ability to learn, process, and comprehend the world in critical ways. Silence does not protect them; it only leads to erasure, pain, and ignorance. As ELA teachers, we have power to elevate and humanize Palestinian narratives for students. This is good for all students in our ELA classrooms. Hopefully, their growth in understanding impacts future policy, as well.
 
Disrupting prevalent knowledge and bias presents an opportunity to engage in critical media literacy. Through investigative methods, problematizing narratives, and asking questions about what we’re hearing in the media, ELA educators can offer students a powerful and critical skill set to combat dehumanization.
 
We, the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English, stand for Palestinian’s right to self-determination and justice. We stand against genocide. We recognize that until Palestine is free, no one is free.
 
My edits:
 
Statement on the Israel Hamas war from NCTE’s Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English
 
The Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English believes ignoring current global realities hampers students’ ability to learn, process, and comprehend the world in critical ways. Silence does not protect them; it only leads to erasure, pain, and ignorance. As ELA teachers, we have power to elevate and humanize Palestinian and Israeli, Muslim and Jewish narratives for students. This is good for all students in our ELA classrooms and beyond.
 
Disrupting prevalent knowledge and bias presents an opportunity to engage in critical media literacy. Through investigative methods, problematizing narratives, and asking questions about what we’re hearing in the media, ELA educators can offer students a powerful and critical skill set to combat dehumanization.
 
We steadfastly resist Islamophobia and antisemitism. We challenge the conflation of Palestinians with Hamas, and Israelis and non-Israeli diaspora Jews with the Netanyahu government. These misconceptions breed bias and hate. We abhor the ongoing terror, the loss of life, home and family. No nation’s child is less important than another’s.
 
We, the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English, stand for the right of all human beings to have self-governance, safety and basic necessities. We call for an immediate cessation of the violence, for humanitarian aid, and international support for negotiating a sustainable, humane peace. We recognize that, in the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, nobody’s free until everybody’s free.
 
Resources for teaching:
[TK]
 
Reading list for teachers:
[ditto]

​October 21, 2023

​[Confused, heartbroken, lonely. Raw first draft banged out upon awakening. I will never get this one right, nor will I get to listen to and learn from the people I’m connected to, if it sits on my computer.]
 
I had a dream. Literally. Last night. A weird little nightmare of sorts. Or a maybe a gift, because it crystallized some of my thinking, my obsessive thinking, over the past two weeks.

I’m protesting in front of the Capital building for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Around me are my fellow humanitarian Jews, and Muslims, allies, people who look like the beautiful mosaic we occasionally are, in this country. The police begin arresting us. Nearby, I see--packed in the crowd with me—an old student, an Arab-American Muslim woman I taught as an 8th grader at least twenty years ago, and who was one of my favorites. I manage to make my way to her and we embrace. We hold each other in warm reunion, and hang on, offering unspoken comfort as horror rips a faraway part of the world, with ripples for both of us.
 
While we’re hugging, two cops come close and fasten handcuffs and a leg cuff on us—grass green plastic affairs, and there’s only one set of cuffs for the two of us, so we’re united in our arrest. Don’t ask me how this works. It’s dream-magic, where one set of cuffs is enough.

I woke up today with the song “Sleigh Ride” in my head--specifically, with the opening riff of sleigh bells that this city kid associates more with Salvation Army Santas on the street than with pastoral rides through snowy fields. But whatever. It’s December, and I was hearing the bells and singing-jingling-ring-ting-tingling in my head, when I opened my eyes this morning. That song sounds like colorful lights to me, like snow, like hot chocolate... like, yeah, a long vacation from school! I cranked up the Ronettes’ version on my computer, and sang along.
 
I’m Jewish by birth, with deep cultural roots and shoots, atheist in my brain—or maybe shifting to agnostic as I age, and beginning to lean Buddhist in my body and soul. But I love December and Christmas in New York. I also feel like an outsider, a tourist in someone else’s country at this time of year. This week, I will walk 

Dear Dr. Krislov,

I’ve always taught in school communities that were beautifully diverse—in race, identity, class, learning profile, politics and more. Pace is no exception. What an honor and satisfaction it is to teach first gen students at a university ranked number one for intergenerational economic mobility; to teach students poised to high jump over trenchant, systemic hurdles; to teach young people coming to our city to fulfill dreams of filmmaking and business and, really? You want to be a divorce lawyer?? You gotta love them, and I do.

I am an Oberlin alum (1980) and xxxxxx and xxxx’s cousin. [Krislov is a former president of Oberlin and good friend of my ex-hubby's cousins.] You and I had the pleasure of meeting at a luncheon in 2011, when my son was an incoming Oberlin student. I’m also a new adjunct in the English department at Pace.

I’ll forgo sending along my lengthy CV, but in a nutshell, I have taught reading and writing to students from 8 to 80, in public schools, independent schools, and out-of-school time programs. I founded and direct an organization that runs writing retreats and workshops for educators. I am a Pushcart Prize-winning writer, the author of thirty novels for young people, and numerous short stories, essays and articles for adult readers. I have two masters degrees and am working on a doctorate. And… I earn $6,050 for a four-credit course at Pace. The university affords me no health benefits, though I am teaching in person during a pandemic, in a small, poorly ventilated room. Some of my big adjunct paycheck is held back for taxes, social security and adjunct union dues, that currently seem to be going toward bitter infighting over small amounts of money and power, rather than toward an effort for living wages—or even wages in line with, say, CUNY’s. Hence my appeal directly to you, and my shameless name drop of your friends, my cousins, in hopes that you will read my plea.

I know I don’t have to school you about your adjuncts who shuttle between multiple jobs, and qualify for food stamps. We are academia’s dirty not-so-secret, your essential workers, eating in the kitchen when company comes, and wiping our mouths with our degrees from Harvard and your alma mater, Yale.

Why would anyone in their right mind do this job? Well, I’m loving my work at Pace. First, last, and everything in between, there are the students. It’s great to be back in person. To be able to have students move around the room, brainstorming literacy narratives on chart paper, doing guided visualizations while lying on yoga mats, comparing annotation techniques in small groups,  and to watch them—all of them, and not just their heads in squares on a computer—scribbling ferociously in notebooks about a complex, peer-reviewed journal article, while wearing a Tweety-bird mask or a pair of shorts and fishnets, engaged in ways that they just aren’t, after the hundredth class on Zoom.

And what I’m teaching—the power of language and stories and rhetoric—well, it can change lives.

I promised myself that since teaching this course and this age group is new for me, I would allow myself to do it full out, best practice, as if I were being compensated for it. And that once I had it under my belt, I would look at where I could cut corners to make it sustainable. I spent the month of July reading and creating a syllabus (OER and other free resources, only). I’ve attended a couple of department meetings. I’m not required to because, well, I’m not being paid for it. I’ve created thoughtful lessons and materials. I’ve arrived early to move furniture around in my classroom, for a more student-centered discussion. I’ve retaught a class on Zoom for a kid who had to take his pet to get stitches and another who was waiting for PCR results. I’ve stayed after class to support a student whose work is sometimes late because she pays her own tuition and expenses with four part-time jobs in three different boroughs. (Good training for the life of an adjunct, though.) And I teach writing. So there are forests of papers to read and comment on, day and night.

My hourly pay rate is running about what it would have been if I’d taken that job at Trader Joe’s, which I applied to at the same time as Pace. TJ’s would have given me medical benefits, which I need for another year, until I turn 65. I would have accrued vacation pay. And been able to get a raise. Employees at TJ’s are largely happy. They get a discount on the delicious vegetarian chorizo and other products. It’s closer to home than Pace. And I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night worrying, because the guy in aisle six can’t read or write.

Dr. Krislov, didn’t it feel great to be the number one college in the Equality of Opportunity Project’s study on student economic mobility? To be up at the top of the list published by the Chronicle of Higher Ed? Do you remember what you said? “This list reaffirms Pace’s commitment to successful outcomes for our students and that education is the path forward.” Thank you for taking care of our students. It’s why you and I are in this business. Please don’t forget the people who teach and care for our students. 63% of the teachers at Pace are part-time, non-tenure track faculty. Dedicated, overeducated and experts in our fields. And we aren’t earning a living wage.

Cordially,
Eve Becker​

And his reply. To his credit, he wrote back, politely, within 12 hours. This and a metro ticket will get me on the subway:

Subject line: Thanks for writing/Glad you're here

I'm glad to know this.  (Hope your son had a good experience at Oberlin!).  I am also glad to know you're enjoying your experience at Pace.  

Salaries for adjuncts are part of a collective bargaining process, so can't really discuss that.  But am copying Matt Renna, head of HR, if he can be helpful.  

Happy to say hello sometime.  Best, Marvin

2020, be gone! Disease, othering, civil unrest—uncivil in the extreme—ill will between neighbors... Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
 
My pandemic burden: unemployment, just when I thought I was going to be embarking on an awesome, late life Act IV of my career. I feel suddenly old, my sense of purpose and identity and passion all tied up in work that I’m no longer doing. My city is bruised, edgy like it used to be when I was young. Yesterday, I walked by two men fighting bitterly over an especially large cache of empties, each claiming rights to their picking turf. It broke my heart.
 
But. The merry-go-round that was making me dizzy and exhausted and stressed has ground to a halt, and I’m not unhappy about that. Nowhere to go. No one to answer to. Didn’t I dream this? Nor am I unhappy about pairing down. If I never buy anything but groceries again, my life will be just fine. Social anxiety? Gone. With my social life, but oh, well.
 
My pandemic life is a dystopic be-careful-what-you-wish-for. Changing from foul to fantastic and back again, like a traffic light.
 
I feel for my friends working overtime in front of a screen, and for my former colleagues teaching their students under dysfunctional conditions while simultaneously managing their own kids’ pandemic schooling. I also envy them their jobs, their focus, their success in making the unworkable work—and, well, just their success, period. I want to work again. But not at a breakneck pace. Been there, done that.
 
Every day, I’m grateful for the roof over my head, the food in my belly, the health of my loved ones... and the pandemic lull I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy. I want this annus horribilis to be over for all of us, but the pressure to perform is off, and I like how it feels. I'm scared of the return to full-throttle life, post-pandemic.

Image: Picasso "Femme Couchée Lisant"

We encourage your company to do the same. Feel free to message us to talk about it. 

https://www.changethenypd.org/safer-ny/endorse

​Black Lives Matter.
​#safernyact #repeal50a #policestatact Educate cops. Educate ourselves. Educate our kids.

​Here in the Epicenter, I could bitch. And I could cry. And I do. But there’s something else going on, and I want to name it.
 
Back in March (long ago, in another galaxy), I got called out by an editor for using the phrase ‘silver linings’ when discussing what we might learn from our virtual schooling experiment. “You can’t say that when people are dying,” she messaged me.
 
Really? I kinda think a crisis like this is when those silver linings are most important.
 
Here are some of mine:
 
I love hearing birds and wind and a dog barking over on the next block, without the NYC traffic, the horns, the choppers overhead, the many voices, the street drills, the building construction. The soundtrack is peaceful (okay, absent the ambulance sirens). With the windows wide open and my eyes closed, there’s a peculiar kind of tranquility that I’ve never heard in six decades in my beloved home town.
 
In a funny way, I’m in better touch with my family, though I miss their offline faces keenly. We talk every day. I feel their support, and know they feel mine. In the middle of a pandemic, there’s something unconditional about it.
 
My apartment is comfortable and full of light, and perhaps I’m inventing this, but I could swear that just a few months ago, I was looking at my bookshelves and fantasizing out loud to the boyfriend about some catastrophe where I was stuck inside rereading all those greatest hits. And if that’s not enough, there are the abundant digital stacks at the New York Public Library that I’m getting acquainted with. (Yeah, there’s the little inconvenience of not being able to concentrate on anything but the deluge of bleak medical and political news, but hey, we’re in for awhile, and I feel the reading bug coming back.)
 
I haven’t bought anything in seven weeks, except groceries and some quality booze. And man does this feel good.
 
I’ve barely looked in the mirror, either. Released! Age does this to a gal, but social distancing frosts that cake nicely.
 
And then... there are the hours of unconstructed, unhurried time. It’s possible that I’ve dreamed of this every day of my adult life. My deteriorated cooking skills are returning. I’m writing this and that in my notebook--not with any goal or imperative, but just because. I slalomed my way through the crowds in Central Park on this lovely Saturday, keeping my distance, until I found my own slab of rock in a copse of trees, where I could take off my mask and do... nothing. Lining? Let’s call it a whole, shiny silver cloud.
 
What are your silver linings?

​​This awning of blossoming cherry trees in Central Park is a few blocks from my apartment. We don’t have back yards or hiking trails here in the Epicenter, but the park is stunning at this time of year. There are carpets of tiny blue and white flowers edging mossy rocks, trees hung with huge magenta blooms, like tropical fruit, buttery yellow daffodils, tulips--tiny orange ones with petals gathered tightly, generous purple-black globes, ruffled ones, striped ones. There are waterfalls and lakes and winding dirt paths. There are wooded areas and brightly colored birds.
 
There are also lots of people.
 
This has kept me away, during the pandemic. There are plenty of grassy fields where it’s easy to have space. But if you want to take a long walk (I do), there are also lots of fences, where access to clearings is impossible, and unavoidable stretches of road or path, shared with others. And every time I’ve tried to circle the park, during the Time of Distancing, some of those others have gotten too close. The ones with the most entitlement are the runners without masks; there are lots of them, huffing and puffing and sometimes spitting on the ground. Some of the cyclists are maskless, too. These are the folks who need masks the most. They’re breathing hard; their breath travels farthest. Yeah, it sucks to exercise in a mask. It also sucks to kill your neighbors.
 
Today, it was pouring. So, I figured maybe it was a good time to try to get in a cherry tree viewing, before the blossoms were gone. Maybe the rain would keep folks inside. It did. And the park was glorious. There were people with their dogs, a few other walkers, and some runners and cyclists--but not many. Guess which group was largely unmasked?
 
I wasn’t rude. I said please. And besides, it’s mandated in New York State now, dude. Your exercise is not more important than our health. “Fuck you, bitch?” Really??
 
To you, I say, “Go back to whatever state you came from, where you can join the Open America people, and get a haircut and eat a burger in a restaurant and run without a mask.” Because you’re not one of us. We may be in bad shape here, right now, but we’re doing our best to take care of each other. To thank our essential workers adequately. To demand protection for them. To stay the fuck away from each other physically, and to reach out virtually. To ask, what can I do? What do you need? How are you doing? Maskless man, you probably also order delivery every night, and give a non-pandemic tip to the guy who is risking his life to bring you those Thai fried wings. That’s not who we are, in New York. Andrew Cuomo says we’re New York tough. We are. But we’re also New York caring. Get with the plan, or get lost.

Dear Outer Cape friends (and the rest of yooz who live where city folk have country homes),
 
I’m a New Yorker, who has spent part of every summer in Wellfleet since 1965, and lived there for an all too brief year in the early 90s. It’s my favorite spot on the planet (and I’ve traveled far and wide). When I’m sad or anxious and need to picture my happy place, I’m swimming across Slough Pond. I’m a teacher, so a house of my own in your lovely town has always been out of my range; I’m a perpetual renter. But Wellfleet is as close as it gets to a home away from home, for me.
 
I’ve been following the charge by full-time residents that non-resident homeowners stay away during this pandemic. I've been following the angry comments on social media. And I understand. NYers escaping to their second homes are spreading the virus. Buying up precious food and supplies. And soon, taking hospital beds and ventilators from locals who have nowhere else to go. I get it. But. Hear me out.
 
I need to backtrack for a second. New York City is like a giant a cruise ship. We live on top of one another, and we can’t get away from each other. Buying groceries or descending to the communal laundry room requires pushing elevator buttons or working door handles touched by many. It’s abnormally quiet, here, without honking horns or the cacophony of voices that normally drifts up to our windows. But the silence is constantly punctured by ambulance sirens. We're indoors, in small apartments with no outdoor space. (A fire escape puts you in the one percent, these days.) We're allowed to go out for a little air and exercise, but the parks are often too crowded to practice safe social distancing. Those asshats on fancy bikes in spandex shorts who race up and down the back route from Wellfleet to Truro in August? Their exercise is more important than staying six feet away from you in Central Park. And our essential workers--the supermarket clerks and handymen and other heros--are riding public transportation to work. We’re infecting each other. We’re getting sick. And there are long lines outside every hospital to get into the ER. Once inside, there are no beds or life-saving equipment left. Our doctors and nurses have no protective gear. I’m scared to dea--well, maybe that’s not the best turn of phrase to use, right now.
 
So, I can also understand why second home owners are leaving town. I might do the same, in their pretty shoes.
 
What about making some new rules that work for everyone?

1. If coming from ‘away,’ you bring enough supplies for 14 days, go straight to your house, and quarantine. Religiously. Lucky you, you’ve got a huge yard and stars and wind in the trees. (Oh, wait, your governor just made this law.)
2. After 14 days, if you don’t fall ill, you can go to the supermarket once a week. Whatever you buy, you buy two of. One for you, and one for a full-time resident who isn’t in your second homeowner tax bracket. Share the wealth. And canned beans.
3. If triage becomes necessary at the Cape hospitals, as it is in NY, full-time residents always get priority. No exceptions. Perhaps this rule sounds Draconian. But our medical resources are running out in NY, and someone like me--I’m 62--isn’t going to get that last ventilator, anyway.

 
Full-timers and summer people working together (social distancing style) to keep everyone fed, sheltered and healthy, might even help shake off some of the town-gown tension that simmers beneath the surface of those gorgeous summer days.
 
And yes, I know this is simplistic. And idealistic. Downright dumb. Irresponsible. And it wouldn't work. (Even in Wellfleet, where I’ve watched the community model how to take care of its own.) I know any movement spreads the disease. And in the real world, we all need to stay the fuck home.
 
So. Maybe I wouldn’t decamp to my second house, after all. Maybe I’d be an upstander and stay put. Close the bridges, if you must. But please understand that we're terrified, and do it without rancor.
 
Stay well, friends in my little Paradise. I hope we’ll see each other this summer, if it’s safe enough to cross the bridge.

March 18th, 2020 (week two, here in NYC)
​
A week ago (which of course feels like a month ago), I interviewed an American tech integrator at a K-12 international school in China, where they have been teaching virtually for more than six weeks. As I listened to her experiences and suggestions, I was struck by how her school’s experiment amplifies the most critical issues in education today: equity, teacher agency, student voice, parent involvement, social-emotional wellbeing, accountability and authentic assessment. I started writing up our conversation, one part how-to, one part editorial, a weird piece for a weird time. (Rough draft linked here, if you care to read it.)
 
But a peculiar thing happened as I was writing. Passionate educator though I am, I started to feel that perhaps it isn't critical, in the larger scheme of things, to teach online for the next few months.  I teach because I fully believe in the power of education to build community, grow thoughtful, active citizens, and promote solutions to the profound issues of our time. I love my work. But if we close our schools down entirely during these difficult months—offline and on—for the greater good, or because online options aren’t working for everyone, it will be alright. Students will learn, as will we, from Italians singing on their balconies. From a parent helping an elderly neighbor. From the ways, both positive and negative, that we respond to this crisis. Some of the learning will be heartbreaking. Some of it will be a light coming through a crack.

And then again... maybe the connections we are facilitating, and the tiny semblance of normalcy are our contribution during this time. Maybe they're consequential. I keep vacillating.
 
Are you teaching online? Please weigh in.

Dear NYT,
 
I am grateful to live so close to Central Park. I don’t know what time Steven Speranza took this photo, showing the park empty because of the crisis, but I am not alone in seeking a little respite there, these days. In fact, every time I've been there this week, the place has been packed. Walking and riding my bike while social distancing has been an exercise (so to speak) in weaving and dodging.
 
To the spandex ball-sack cyclist who gave me the finger for suggesting he was a little too close, slow the fuck down. It won’t kill you to brake a little, if it helps maintain a neighborly distance. We don’t need to see the Manhattan spike driven by a bunch of dudes on fancy bikes. (And yes, the spandex offenders I’ve encountered have been exclusively male, and there have been lots of them.)
 
To the woman yelling into her phone about the virus as she cycled, keeping pace with me no matter how hard I tried to get ahead of her or drop behind, please be considerate; we’re in the park to try to get a little breather—literally—from this thing.

​To the scooter ride whom I cut off accidentally, I'm so sorry.
 
To the Parks Department, thank you for maintaining our green spaces. Always, but especially now.
 
Best,
Eve

​I'm headed to SXSWEdu in Austin, next week. And I’m nervous that I’ll feel like an interloper at a banquet for the education industrial complex. I’ve been the lucky teacher who has always had the lead role in the design of my classroom—the curriculum, materials, pedagogy, methods, relationships, values, norms, and expectations. In recent years, however, it’s felt more and more like a radical act, to be the master of my own domain. In an era where the phrase “education reform” has been co-opted by market-forces—testing companies, data collectors, producers of packaged curricula, programs and materials—it feels like everybody who has ever gone to school wants to instruct teachers on their instruction. Some mean well. Some are in it for the money. Some both.
 
I’ve got a different idea. And maybe it sounds simplistic or idealistic. Compensate teachers like other professionals, like dentists and insurance agents and scientists. Choose the best, brightest and most creative for this critically important job. Pay for it with budgets now used to support top-down, administration-heavy systems, budgets now used to pay for the huge costs associated with standardized testing, budgets now used to purchase packaged, scripted curricula and programs selected by those outside the classroom. Create lots of time and space for national networks of teachers to share best practices, observations, lessons and materials. Put teacher voices first, in every discussion of education reform. Treat us like the professionals and experts we are.
 
It’s this revolutionary idea that makes me wary about attending South by Southwest’s education conference, where entrepreneurship rules. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been getting messages from attendees who want to meet up and chat about their company’s scalable learning program, or digital solution. SXSWEdu’s homepage says that it “cultivates and empowers a community of engaged stakeholders to advance teaching and learning.” Them’s a lot of buzzwords. And the phrase ‘engaged stakeholders’ tastes like it came out of a neoliberal cookbook. Fewer than 16% of the attendees are actually K-12 teachers, and of those, the majority are locals, with easy access to conference fun, and eligible for the continuing education credits—necessary to maintain certification—that the conference proffers.
 
On the other hand, the website also states that “SXSWEdu extends SXSW’s support for the art of engagement to include society’s true rock stars: educators!” Allow me to poke gentle fun of SXSW's italics and exclamation point, as if this statement is a huge, big-hearted, enlightened surprise. I certainly think it’s the truth. And I’m delighted to have SXSWEdu acknowledge it. I hope I’ll have meaningful conversations about education, and edifying take-aways. I’ve been curious about this conference for a long time. Every year, I attend the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and occasionally the annual conference for the Association of Writers and Writing Program (AWP), both well within my teacher-writer wheelhouse. Maybe this conference, where I feel like the outsider, will bring fresh ideas and perspectives.
 
Conference attendees, please talk to me about how you support teacher agency. And student agency. About equitable and culturally relevant reading and writing classrooms. About authentic writing instruction. About creating joy in teaching and learning. About growing great teachers. Ask me about my scalable learning program, where scale means knowing the individual approach that each kid needs. Ask me about the digital solutions I’ve crafted with basic, free apps, to foster a reading and writing community that centers student voices. Tell me how you support engaged, happy students and teachers. Listen to the 15.84% of attendees who are the experts. I’m going to come with an open mind. And my best rock star attitude.
 
[image = Jeb Feldman’s UnSmoke, a former schoolhouse in Braddock, PA that he converted to an art space and home.]

Thank you for reading. By the way, the Weebly 'like' button doesn't show who has clicked. If you care to identify yourself, please leave a quick comment. Thx. 

Dear Fellow Teachers,
 
This week, I’m heading to NCTE, the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English. (#NCTE19 is in Baltimore, this year, so send your local eating and touristing recommendations.)
 
One of my presentations at NCTE will share some research on what happens when teachers write. I plan on discussing the top two or three themes that came out of my research. I thought I’d use my blog to post the full top ten I worked with, for anyone who’s interested. I’m hoping it will spark some discussion, so please comment at the bottom of this post.

Best,
Eve

What the heck. If I'm going to move my blog over here, I may as well include the feather in my cap. When I was notified (by email!) that I'd won a Pushcart, I thought one of my students was playing a trick on me. I hadn't even known I'd been nominated.

Published in The Gettysburg Review, Autumn 2010
Reprinted in 2012 Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses

My father sits at the edge of his bed, insisting on his shiny concert shoes. Their lack of traction on a polished floor is treacherous for a man who can no longer stand up on his own, a man who has seized and used every moment of living left to him. But the shoes are not negotiable, nor are the button-down shirt or the pants that need to be safety pinned to secure them to his wasted frame. In an hour or so, my father will find the weight of his clothes unbearable. In a few hours, my father will be dead. But first there is a final concert to play, and there is the proper attire in which to play it. I watch as my mother helps my father get into his clothing for the last time.

Earlier in the day, I held my father’s mottled hand, the baggy skin flaking away, but the grip still sturdy from a lifetime of scaling the strings of his viola. For much of his career, my father was the assistant principal violist of the New York Philharmonic. “You have to know when he’s going to start,” my father whispered from his pillow. He took a noisy, shallow breath in, and released a long, rattling exhale. “You have to know when he wants you to play the beats.”

Well, of course! I thought. Not a black-hooded hooded figure with a scythe, but a conductor with a baton. “You know when to play the beats, Dad-ling,” I said gently, though I hadn’t been a gentle daughter.

“But you don’t!” he said, with more strength than I thought he had left. He hadn’t been a gentle father.

“Well, I’m not the musician,” I said evenly.

He took several percussive but unhurried breaths. “It’s deceptive. It begins with a rest.”

“Oh. A rest.” I pronounced the word lingeringly, softly. “That sounds like a good

​Re: Brief Encounters with White Men ​by Claudia Rankine, NYT magazine, 7/21/19
 
Dear Ms. Rankine,

I don’t have enough fingers to count the diversity events I’ve participated in over the last decade where a white person, struggling to understand their privilege says, “But I grew up dirt poor,” or “But I’m a wheelchair-user,” or “But I’m gay.” The word “privilege” in White Privilege is so easy to conflate with social privilege, economic privilege and other forms of benefits and opportunities. The word “privilege” often puts one more hurdle in the way of white people understanding our White Privilege. I agree with you that the term “White Dominance” might have been a better choice than “White Privilege” for engaging white people in our critical examination--and self-examination--of systemic racism in this country.

In nearly every diversity event I’ve attended, facilitators anticipate the issue of white people who don’t feel privileged. They frequently use as an example Italians or sometimes Irish to address pushback from White Ethnics to acknowledging and understanding our White Privilege. “Your ancestors might have been impoverished, but you still…” or “They may have fled famine…” they begin. But in exactly zero diversity events I’ve attended has any facilitator ever used Jews as an example. Several articles I read recently, while attending a conference at Teachers College, Columbia University on equity, race and pedagogical practices, similarly used examples of Irish, Italians and Slavs, but skipped the Jews. And yet White Ethnic pushback at the events I’ve attended is nearly always from people who, like me, are Jewish. I’ve heard an Irish person cite their White Ethnicity once in a diversity session, while struggling to understand White Privilege. And I haven’t heard a word about it from an Italian.

Not so we Jews. As victims of White Supremacy and hate crimes ourselves, more newly white in this country than many other White Ethnics, Jews who are new to doing work on race and equity are sometimes the folks who have the hardest time understanding that we are both marginalized and reviled, and fully possessed of White Privilege. That they’re not mutually exclusive. And that they intertwine in complex ways.

Blacks and Jews in this country have a complicated history. No more so than now, when being an American Jew is dangerously and erroneously conflated with the Israeli government’s human rights abuses against Palestinians and Israeli PoCs (there, I said it, it's my blog), and when Trump and company use Jews as a battle tool for their reactionary positions without our participation. It feels like we are now as hated by some on the left as we’ve long been by the extremist right. Yet Black universities gave sanctuary and jobs to Jewish professors escaping the Holocaust. We founded the NAACP together. We marched together in Selma. Our allyship has deep roots. But that allyship deteriorates further, each time we leave the messy relationship in the closet.

Every time I hear facilitators talking about Italians, or read scholars on White Supremacy citing the same, I find myself thinking, “Oh, they’re talking about Jews again, but are afraid to name it.”

Why? Are we too much of hotbutton topic? Do we hijack the podium too often? (Talking is in our blood.) Is the subject too incendiary? Just too complicated? It certainly is that. Various politicians and public intellectuals of color have recently cited fear of reprisal from American Jews and their allies for their silence on Israeli foreign policy. But leaving Jews out of the discussion on White Ethnicity is—dare I coopt this term?—a kind of fragility.

I get it it, though. I used to speak up about the particular issues of my dual identity as a Jew and a White. These days, when doing work on race, I often, like you, don’t mention it at all. I’m afraid to. Afraid of being seen as the Jew. Afraid of muddying the waters in an acute discussion. And it makes me ashamed. And less of an ally. I’m remembering a professional development session at my school, where I listened to a White-Jewish colleague protest that he was not from a privileged group. And I listened to the facilitator respond by talking about Italians. And I said nothing.

Ms. Rankine, you are one of my literary luminaries. I’ve read work by you with students, and discussed work by you with friends and colleagues. You’re a stunning writer. And brilliant. And deeply important.

So it was with a certain element of disappointment that I read your essential piece. Published in a periodical read by some of the same white guys who skip you in the airport line. And some of the same white friends of mine, authentically trying to look within, who still speak of being “color blind.” And I got to the line asking, “How did Italians, Irish and Slavic peoples become white?” and then, quoting Matthew Frye Jacobson, “…Celts, Slavs, Hebrews and Mediterraneans.” Hebrews? You mean the Jews? And I thought, “Et tu, Claudia Rankine?”

I have a shameful confession to make. When Jews were murdered at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, I was grieved and outraged, like so many people across racial and ethnic and socio-political lines. I tabled my day’s lesson plan for my 7th grade ELA classes, and worked with the Social Studies teacher to quickly create an interactive, culturally responsive lesson on hate crimes. I was deeply grateful that I work in a field where I had a productive outlet for my anger and fear, and where I like to think I make a difference. But there was a little part of me—and I’ve never said this to anyone before—that thought, “Oh, good. Now the country will actually believe that we are victims of White Supremacists, too.”

Because of our White Privilege, we aren’t afraid, when we leave the house, of being stopped and frisked, stopped and shot. Unlike you, we can choose to reveal our identities or not. Step into the exhausting Work or step out. That’s why we had to wear yellow stars on our clothing. To identify ourselves. That’s why most of the hate crimes against us take the form of graffitied swastikas, instead of injury to our bodies. (The exception being observant Jews in religious dress.) But our role in The Work is informed by our hyphenated identities.

I’d like to end this letter by quoting the last lines of your article. Because you said it better than I possibly can. “I was pleased that he could carry the disturbance of my reality. And just like that, we broke open our conversation—random, ordinary, exhausting and full of a shared longing to exist in less segregated spaces.”

​When discussing White Ethnicity in whiteness work, please let’s not erase the Jews.
 
Yours in Allyship,
Eve Becker

Painting: The Beggar of Prachatice by Conrad Felixmüller (1924)

P.S. Please read Greg Thrasher's comment, below. I don't know the guy, or how he found this post, but he calls me out for using Jew to mean white, American Jew. And he's right--that's exactly what I did. I stand corrected for normalizing whiteness. Most Jews are white, with the issues of hyphenated identity I discussed above. But we are, as he notes, a diaspora community and come in different shades and nationalities. I still have work to do and always will. 

Teacher Appreciation​

Teacher appreciation week
With donuts
Can’t thank you
Enough
A roost of confidence
A welcoming pheasance
In the early warning
When you put your chairs
In a circle
Everything you touch
You change.
 
They pile in
Larking their spots
With jackets and colored pens
​And yatter
You open the shades
Sunshine shimmies in

Moved
By a book that you
Read out cloud
The child in the clock
Talks
For the burst time
My own mother, he says
Gave me away
In the dropsicle
And
 
And
 
You speck in
Half a screp
Because he can’t
Finish
 
But you can’t
Fuse the word
Abandoned
A slice of a knife
In a stace with
His peers
 
So you say
The sense
Of being left.
 
(You think bereft.)
 
Yes
He says.
 
His classmates
Nod. Hold
The moment
Before
Venturing and adventuring
Breaking and entering.
 
At the end of the day
The custodians
Put the desks
In rows
That never were
 
Pull the shades down.
As if overnight
Someone from a laboring building
Might sprook into your classroom
And speal some knowledge
Or your weft
Or donuts
 
On off hours.