Today was the best day that I have ever spent at Sheridan without question.

The
kids are going on a trip next Thursday to the National Museum of Jewish History. This is
the first time that they are going on this trip, and I asked my classroom mentor if I could
help prep them. She didn’t seem to really have any ideas about how to prepare in
general, so she seemed more than happy for me to take the lead. After some careful
planning and talking it over with my classroom mentor, today we led a little lesson for the
kids to prepare them for the trip. My classroom mentor and I agreed that I would come
up with the bulk of the lesson but that we would co-teach it, since it is weighty material
and deserving of more than one adult’s attention.
First, I asked the students if they knew what Judaism was. No one raised their
hand. I told them that Judaism is a religion--similarly to Christianity and Islam-- that has
existed for thousands of years. I explained how similarly to how Christianity has the Bible
and Islam has the Quran, the holy book that Jews study is called the torah. I explained
that there are many different interpretations of ideas in the torah, which means that there
are many different ways to practice Judaism. But, I shared that I am Jewish, and for me,
being Jewish means a lot of things. It means celebrating certain holidays, listening to
certain music, and eating certain food. But it also means a commitment to something
called Tikkun Olam. I explained to the kids that Tikkun Olam is Hebrew for “repair the
world.” I asked the kids what they thought “repair the world” meant. We had a
conversation about this and generated some ideas.
Then I told the kids that we were going to transition to something that might seem
unrelated but that was actually connected to Judaism. I wrote the word “PREJUDICE” on
the board. I asked if anyone could read it. Even the best readers in the class could say it
out loud, but they read it incorrectly (pronouncing it like pre-jude-ic). I then pronounced it
correctly for them and asked if anyone knew what “prejudice” means. A few students
guessed, but were totally off base. Instead, I defined it for them (I had carefully planned
in advance how I would define the words that come up throughout this lesson). I told
them that when someone is prejudice against a certain group of people that means that
they decide that they won’t like someone before they get to know them just based on
one characteristic that they know about that person, which might be their religion, or their
skin tone, or their sexual orientation. I explained that people who are prejudice are
ignorant. I explained that being ignorant means that you are not well educated, because
if you are prejudice, you weren’t educated well enough to know that you need to get to
know someone before you make a determination about that person. The kids seemed
really engaged at this point; they could recognize the idea of being judged unfairly based
on a characteristic. At this point we had written the words “prejudice” and “ignorant” on
the board.
Then my classroom mentor added the word “racism” to the board. She explained
that racism is a particular kind of prejudice when people decide they don’t like somebody
just because of their skin color. I then told the kids that we wanted to explain what
prejudice was to them because when we go to the Jewish Museum next week, we are
going to learn about a really sad history that I am sorry to inform them about. I told them
that for many, many years, people have been prejudice against Jews, meaning that they
haven’t liked Jewish people simply because of the fact that they are Jewish. I told kids
that when people are prejudice against Jews there is a particular word for that kind of
prejudice and it is called “anti-Semitism,” which my classroom mentor added to the
board. I told the kids that there was a particular period in history where many people
were incredibly anti-Semitic, so much so that it led to the death of millions of Jews. I told
the kids that that systematic killing was called the Holocaust. The kids reacted in a way
where it seemed like they had heard “the Holocaust” before. My classroom mentor and I
then played a video for them from Brain Pop that we had watched previously. It
explained the basics of the Holocaust in a kid-friendly way. We paused the video
multiple times to stop to explain things to the students, including genocide, who Hitler
was, what the Nazi party was, what the Jewish star indicated when Jews were forced to
wear them, etc.
After this point, the kids had a ton of questions. We still had a book to read aloud
to them (that I found the week before), but I know that my classroom mentor was
anxious to just finish up the session on preparing for the museum because the kids had
to do a lot of testing this week and she wanted to resume next week back on her regular
schedule and not have to prepare for any sort of unusual sessions. I asked her if we
could change our plans and just spend time on the kids’ questions. I told her that if I only
had to choose one thing, I would have rather spent the period after lunch (the second
period we’d spend on this that day) going over their questions rather than doing the read
aloud. She agreed to let that happen. We answered their questions, most of which my
classroom mentor deferred to me. The kids asked fabulous questions that showed that
they were deeply thinking about the issue. They asked about why Jews were treated this
way, what it was like at concentration camps, and how Hitler came to be in power. Also,
they were making connections between Jews and other groups of people who were
oppressed. The Brain Pop video mentioned the fact that there were quotas on how many
Jews were admitted into higher education, and a student in my classroom said that
reminded her of the fact that black people used to be not allowed to go to the same
school as white people. I was totally thrilled with these connections that they were
making.
I also think that I did a really good job at bringing the students focus to the things
that really mattered. For example, one student--when we were talking about prejudice
(and how people are prejudice against others for all sorts of reasons)--raised her hand
and said that her mom had a friend who was gay. I could sense that being gay wasn’t
something that was particularly normalized for these students. So I took the opportunity
to explain to her that half of the people I know are gay, and that it is great to be proud of
who you are, but mentioning that someone you know is gay is a kind of weird way to
distinguish someone. I explained that what it is important is that people love whoever it is
they want to love, and it is their right to do that. So saying that I know someone who is
gay is a weird way to identify someone. Later in the conversation, I asked the kids if they
had heard the expression “You do you.” They all had and I explained that what that
really means is that everyone has the right to be exactly who they are and being who
you are is the most beautiful thing you can be. But it is other people’s jobs to respect
who you are, even if that is different from how they are. The kids absolutely loved that
and seemed to really be engaged and to grasp on to that. They kept repeating “you do
you” the rest of the day.
My classroom mentor and I also addressed the fact that students in the class
would call someone “racist” anytime anything related to race came up. We told students
that wasn’t ok. Talking about race is totally ok. In fact, people should be proud of their
race. Just because race is being talked about doesn’t mean someone is being racist, but
everyone should be careful if they are talking about race to do it in a way that is sensitive
to other people’s feelings and experiences.
The kids still had so many questions by the time we had to end class. My
classroom mentor seemed really happy with how it went, and by the end of the day
agreed that it was worth spending so much extra time on. She said that she thought we
should even do the read aloud on Monday and continue talking about it since the kids
seem so engaged. Also, since I shared some of my own experiences of being Jewish
with the kids, they kept coming up to me the rest of the day and asking me really
fabulous (albeit personal) questions, such as “Were any of your family members in
concentration camps?” It was really exciting to me how the students were taking an
interest in this material and making connections to how it may have also affected me (i.e.
likely one of the only Jews they know).
My classroom mentor and I knew beforehand that the material we were
discussing with them was really high level. But I felt so excited about the lesson because
the kids absolutely rose to it. They handled it with extreme maturity and respect, and I
told them afterwards that I was exceptionally proud of them. Also, it felt a little bit to me
like some of the reason why the kids were respectful was not just because they found
the content interesting, but out of respect for me. I couched a lot of the lesson in my own
personal experience and spoke often about my own Jewish identity, and it felt like part of
why the kids were interested and listening eagerly was because I feel like they respect
me because they know how sincerely I respect them.
The 2 periods we spent talking about this was collectively the best hour I’ve ever
spent in a classroom, and it is my proudest accomplishment this year to date. It also
helps me think about how I want to discuss my own identity as well as my students’
identities in my own classroom one day. I think that this lesson was really valuable
because it allowed room to think about different types of discrimination (and how those
are each unique with their own history), but also the way in which people who are
discriminated against all have something in common and have a kind of solidarity
because of it. I think there was something distinctly beautiful about that. I will not forget
today for a long time (Ehrenberg-2, 2017).