Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Author: Tracy Rosen

Someone has to say it.

I became a teacher because I wanted to make sure as many children as possible could learn to read. And Elise Gravel’s books helped me in that mission. I relied on her books to support the learning in my French classroom. And whenever anyone asked me about what materials to use for French language learning in Quebec, I’d shout her name from the rooftops. But I can’t trust her stories anymore.

I wasn’t alone in trusting my child’s and my students’ learning to Elise Gravel’s storytelling. Parents and teachers around Quebec, and likely around the world, did the same. Children love her characters and the way she tells her stories. And that is what makes this blog post all the more important for me to write. Because the stories she is telling have changed.

I’ve been thinking about this post since sometime in October. I didn’t write it then because I was still reeling and in shock about some of the things people I admired were saying, and not saying, about the events of October 7 and everything that has been happening over the past 88 days since.

This post has been written in spurts, mostly dictated, over the past few weeks in an attempt to get the words out yet keep them straight as I do so. My brain is recovering from a concussion after a fall on December 7 (since when is 7 a lucky number? That has been forever changed.) My mind is filled with words that need to get out.

For the past 70 (now 88) days, I have heard people repeat information that has been designed specifically to turn others against Jews. You know we’ve seen this before. It’s nothing new but it’s new for us because it always existed in history. Kind of. I say kind of because in my lifetime I’ve been called a dirty Jew when someone didn’t like that I wasn’t playing with them when I was a child. I’ve been referred to as a Jew when it has to do with money. I’ve been in conversations where people use the term Jew as a, well, not as a compliment (I will always remember the look on my boss’ face when he realized what he said and that I was at the table.) But as I grew up, those kinds of things were somewhat rare. Not as bad as when my parents were growing up, and certainly not as bad as when their parents and all of our ancestors in a long line across millennia were.

But now it’s become the norm. It’s like it’s okay. It’s just okay to say things against Jews against Israelis against Zionism (in quotes) because we’re now being painted as the bad guys and it’s hilarious almost, if it weren’t so horribly sad and scary. Hilarious because we’ve seen this happen before and those who are doing it now, don’t realize that they aren’t doing anything new.

So. What’s going on with Elise Gravel? I used to love everything she did, everything she wrote. My son and I would read as many of her books as we could together. That’s how he learned how to read in French, through her books. But now I am seeing a new kind of storytelling that she is doing about an area of the world to which she has no connection (as far as I know,) to which she has no blood memory. She seems to be using this area of the world as a place around which to organize her thoughts, her very specific and hateful thoughts that are laced with antisemitic imagery. And before you start saying oh those Jews anytime you criticize them they start to cry antisemitism…

“2300 Dead children (and counting.) Do you feel safer now, Israel?” (Elise Gravel on Instagram, October 2023)

If she were only criticizing decisions of the Israeli government and not also invoking blood libel imagery then there would be no need to use the word antisemitism.

If she were only criticising the Israeli government and not also invoking images of manipulation and power and money, then there would be no need to use the word antisemitism. (This is in reference to a comic she wrote that portrays Israel justifying itself as a big bully and when Palestine kicks it in the shins, it cries for help and the US and EU come running with weapons and money. You can see it here in English and here in French. And you can visit her Instagram and Facebook accounts for more examples of what I describe here.)

If she were to take into account the publicized videos of Hamas saying that their goal is to recreate October 7, over and over again until the Jews are gone, then there would be no need to use the word antisemitism. (In fact, she refers to what happened on October 7 as a kick in the shins in the comic I linked to above… )

But she isn’t commenting on any of that. She is solely focused on amplifying the idea that Israel is bad, that Israel is a bully, and that anyone who doesn’t believe so is responsible for the deaths of children. She is manipulating people’s emotions around the safety of children and because she is such an influential storyteller, she is manipulating people against Israel (in fact, she’s collecting stories about how and why people turned against Israel) and we have seen what that kind of manipulation does when it happens in the media. Even here in Montreal, Jewish schools and community organizations have been targets of hate crimes. People targeted Jewish institutions and their menorahs on Chanukah. People were told oh you can’t wish others a happy Hanukkah because that’s too political. People have been targeted, maimed, and killed around the world, outside of the war zone – Jews and Palestinians alike (you can find those references on your own, there are so many). The victims of those crimes don’t care if they were being done in the name of antisemitism or antizionism. The result is the same. Don’t insult us with trying to explain there is a difference.

Posted on Instagram by @yiddishfeminist on December 13, 2023

Elise Gravel isn’t fighting for Palestinian rights in the way she may think she is. Instead, she is repeating very classic tropes about evil, manipulative, powerful Jews (today’s keywords are evil Israel, evil Zionist, evil colonizer) that have been constructed throughout history as a way to blame us for the world’s problems. But…”When everything is a construct, nothing is a fact.” (Eve Barlow, December 17, 2023) so Elise Gravel isn’t shedding light on any new facts, she isn’t doing anything special besides falling into one of the world’s oldest hatreds. Bravo.

BUT when it comes down to it, It is seriously messed up to tell these limiting, very small piece of the puzzle kinds of stories to children. And as a children’s author, you can guarantee they are listening to you tell these stories about a war in an area of the world to which you have no connection. You are manipulating them into believing along the lines of your own limiting beliefs, rife with antisemitism, and that is terrifying for me as a mother and as a teacher.

And I will say once again and forever – yes, it is antisemitism when you call upon centuries old tropes like blaming Jews for the deaths of children and painting Israel, and Jews by association (close to half of the world’s 15 or so million Jews live there,) as having more power than they do. It’s classic antisemitism – The same tropes were used by the Romans, they were used in Spain during the inquisition, and they were used by that man with the miniscule mustache. And more recently they are being used again by so many, including Elise Gravel.

Postscript.

And we are now starting to see some consequences of spreading this kind of hatred. It really isn’t cool. I learned about this lawsuit last night:

“The victory underscores that there will be legal repercussions for those who defame Jewish people, under the guise of ‘Palestinian advocacy,’” said Brooke Goldstein, founder and Executive Director of The Lawfare Project. “We are proud to have facilitated the legal representation of Shai DeLuca, who bravely stood up against bigotry and hatred, and who won a significant victory in court against Jew-hatred. The defendant in this case spread an intentional and vicious blood libel against the Jewish state, and against Mr. DeLuca because he is Jewish. With our legal victory we have set an important precedent in Canada that such falsities have no place in our democracy, and anyone who likewise disseminates Jew-hatred will be held accountable.”
The Lawfare Project Announces Significant Victory In Defamation Lawsuit Before Ontario Superior Court Of Justice

If you want some guidance in how to navigate this mess of a situation without falling into age old Jew hatred or Islamophobia, here are some resources you can look at.

Israel-Palestine: Sharing Mindfully by @tzipporahmusic on Instagram, December 23, 2023. These are part of a longer post that I encourage you to read.

Instagram post by @mizrashki.jewess from January 2, 2024

This guide was created by the Tel Aviv Institute, available on Instagram.

If you’d like to explore this mess without falling into a sports match kind of binary, Unapologetic: the Third Narrative is an excellent place to start.

And finally –> The truth about stories is that’s all we are (Thomas King.) What kinds of stories do you share during difficult times?

January 3, 2024
A note on recent events.

I’ve been numb this week. I’ve been angry. I’ve felt rage and sadness and alone.

A few of you know this. You reached out, sent me words of love. That means more than I hope you will ever know.

I’ve muted, snoozed, and blocked many contacts this week, too. When I posted about how more Jews were killed last Saturday than on Kristallnacht, than on any other day since the Holocaust, I was asked – but what about the Palestinians? I was told – but what do you expect? Israel deserves this. I was called a “horrible racist genocidal asshole.” I was told to “fuck off you white supremacist piece of shit colonizer.” These messages were all from onlookers, from non-Jews, non-Israelis, non-Palestinians, once friends.

Because a Jew posting about Jewish trauma must mean that they don’t care about the trauma of others. And you who have told me off this week, somehow feel compelled to try to repair what you assume to be my errant ways.

I’ve seen many of you post what you feel are very important statistics about this side and that side. Including many, so many, antisemitic tropes. Including many, so many, Islamophobic tropes. Including horrible images of death. Including images of celebration.

Because some of you celebrated when more Jews were killed in one day than since the Holocaust. Some of you rejoiced while your Jewish friends were in mourning. The world’s Jews were in collective aninut (the period directly following a death, before a funeral, a time of all consuming grief) and people we thought were friends were telling us we deserved it. One (non-Palestinian) person told me that they believed in Palestinian resistance by any means necessary, that they would not judge how people resist.

The cycle of anger and numbness started around then. I can’t think of another time when there was such public exuberance following/during the massacre of so many. This wasn’t indifference – indifference we see a lot of – this was rejoicing.

And so I understand even more today how deeply entrenched antisemitism is. When once the world said never again, some are now saying but maybe now, it’s ok. Because, you know, Israel.

And I am anticipating you who are reading this and how you won’t be able to help yourself from trying to point out how Israel deserves it – look at the statistics, watch this reel, listen to this podcast! Who won’t be able to help yourself from talking about how it is so much worse for others. Who will try to explain to me, no, Tracy, it’s not the Jews, it’s the Zionists! For you (but mostly for me) I am turning off the comments to this post. Because, you see, I have heard all of your justifications my whole life. So have my parents, so have my ancestors.

On Thursday, my son began his Bar Mitzvah learning. The night before, those of us in the program received an email about security protocols at the building. Jewish communities around the world have increased police presence, increased vigilance. Increased trauma.

It breaks my heart, what is happening in Israel, in Gaza. I am purposefully refraining from assigning blame for the deaths and suffering in this post. I am working hard at that. Because one thing I learned this week is that during times of all encompassing grief, when we try to appoint blame, we lose our compassion.

October 14, 2023
Supporting Student-Teachers

I have been a Field Supervisor for student-teachers at McGill since 2021. I love it, it keeps me connected to the classroom now that I am away from it. I also love that I get to see the classroom as a new teacher again – in all of its complexities and messiness and beauty.

Also in 2021, McGill aligned their assessment and evaluation forms with the province’s new Reference framework for professional competencies for teachers.

I had worked with the previous competencies (there were only 8 then, now there are 13) a lot as a RECIT consultant for the English sector. I had never heard of them before starting in Adult Education in 2012 – and I started teaching in 1996! In 2012, they were starting to talk about requiring teacher certification for Adult Ed teachers, this may be why they were more interested in the competencies than other sectors. Maybe.

In any case, these new competencies are quite different from their predecessors and – at 112 pages – the MEQ document isn’t light reading. It’s in typical MEQ education-speak. And very theoretical. But I tackled it. McGill has a summary of the competencies with evaluation criteria, yet I found them too stripped down for me. I needed something in between and in order to wrap my head around it, I created a booklet. I decided to add a few concrete examples to help make the competencies make more sense for me, too. I got most of the examples from my student-teachers.

When I started working with student-teachers and their classroom cooperating teachers, I realized that this was all brand new for the cooperating teachers as well. The student teachers were learning about the competencies at McGill but the cooperating teachers needed to sift through the MEQ document in order to properly assess and evaluate their student-teachers. And classroom teachers don’t need that kind of extra work! :) So I share my documents with everyone, hopefully they help in the evaluation and assessment process and leave more time for creating relationship with students and student-teachers!

If you are interested, you can consult the working documents here. They are working documents because I add to them every time I work with new teachers – and if you have great examples of the competencies in action, I’d love to add those, too.

Because the competencies are so closely tied to evaluation, they get a lot of focus. I like to remember that the competencies are being developed by a human being – the student-teacher – within a complex context – a school community!

Teaching is very much about relationship and it is no different with supervising a student-teacher and collaborating with cooperating teachers. Our relationship is based on competency development, so I felt it important to really understand what and how student-teachers can develop into the great teachers they will be.

August 22, 2023
Best PD ever?

Visiting each others classrooms.

(Really, it’s that simple.)

Quote from: Building Better Teachers by Sara Mosle, The Atlantic, 2014.

I’ve written about this a few times, so some of what I have written in the past will show up again here. It’s not a new concept and it is still as true!

PD (Professional Development) can invoke strong reactions. How often have you been made to ‘do PD’ that is of no relevance to you? And all the while you are thinking about what it is you could be doing with that time (marking, planning, meeting colleagues or with a student, calling a parent, reorganizing desks, reading that new program I am expected to teach…) I remember being forced to sit in a workshop on how to start a twitter account and who to follow and why it was so awesome. This was about 5+ years AFTER I had started using twitter on a regular basis. While it may have been a great workshop for someone wanting to start a new twitter account… It was a waste of time for me.

Sometimes we’re lucky and we attend a workshop that really hits home. It makes us feel good about teaching and sometimes may even impact what happens in our classrooms. Unfortunately, the majority of the PD we are expected to do doesn’t have this impact.

That’s likely because we aren’t usually involved in determining the content of our PD. Someone, somewhere, has guessed at what would be best for all of us at the same time.

To counterbalance this, we can all try to get as much of the best PD ever – visiting each others classrooms.

I remember many years ago, our school district had a big push for differentiation in the classroom. Teachers participated in PD sessions where they were told why to differentiate their lessons and how they might differentiate a lesson (with examples from elementary classrooms in the United States. Not very helpful for the teachers who taught high school… )

One day, a group of teachers at a PD session (at 4pm, after their school day) rebelled a bit. They were tired and frustrated and finally one of the teachers said, listen, I can listen to this theory forever and I still won’t grasp what this can look like in my classroom.

So I found a classroom they could visit to see it in action. About 5 of us travelled to Burlington, Vermont and spent the day in a grade 8 classroom with a teacher who differentiated her lessons. At one point, I looked over at the teachers I brought on the field trip and I tried to figure out what they were thinking. Were they thinking about how far they just travelled? How much work they had to do to prep for the substitute teacher? Were they thinking this was a waste of time?

As the children went out for their first break of the day, one of the teachers turned to me and breathed out, “I feel like I learned more this morning than I ever did at McGill,” (McGill University is where most English speaking teachers in the Montreal area do their education degree.)

When we are in someone else’s classroom, we aren’t only observing what they do but we also reflect on how we would do it. We look at the walls, the classroom setup, how the teacher manages the class, how they introduce a topic and wrap it up at the end. It’s a bit of a gift, to be able to reflect on teaching in a classroom that is not yours, where you aren’t on call every moment. In this case, the teachers were looking to learn about something specific – differentiation in action. But I remember that one of the biggest takeaways that we spoke about on the way home was how one student had two desks. The teacher had explained it was a student who needed to move and used to wander around the classroom, sometimes disrupting others, sometimes missing information they needed. So she got him a second desk and when he needed to move, he could just switch desks. It worked for them.

You don’t need to travel to Burlington to experience this kind of PD. You can travel down the hall. It’s PD that is tailor made for each person who does it because we can reflect on whatever we see and connect it to our own teaching.

It’s really the best PD ever.

I wrote this article for the First Nations Adult Education School Council. It is cross-posted here.

November 22, 2022
Bridging the online / offline / simultaneous teaching gap

In Quebec, all students are expected to be in school under normal ratios, that means the same teacher:student ratio in effect at a given school as before Covid-19. (I still find it mind-boggling that the exact same directive goes for schools in Montreal with over 29 000 cases of the virus as schools in the Lower Saint Lawrence, with 75 cases (as of the time of publication.) But that is the case.)

Actually, that directive doesn’t apply to all students, some secondary schools can opt to create secondary 4 & 5 (Grades 10 & 11) groups that work online so as to facilitate regrouping of students for different course options though 50% of a student’s time must be at school.

Ok. So what does that look like?

I don’t have all of the answers to that question. But I know of at least one high school in the Greater Montreal area that is planning for simultaneous classes for their Secondary 4 & 5 courses. One teacher describes:

I am teaching 1/2 of the group in class, while I am teaching the other 1/2 online, all at the same time. [Then the groups switch the next time she teaches that particular class]

I also need to take 5 minutes to let cleaning product soak on my desk and then clean anything and everything I might touch, then clean my hands, then set up, then go online and add kids from the “lobby” waiting room and then teach in whatever is left over in the 60 min class that we have. Oh and I need 5 min to put my things together to change classrooms at the end.

I am hopeful that when teachers need the support from the parents during contract negotiations, that we will get it.

This teacher, like many others across Quebec, teaches 8 sections of different courses at different grade levels. Four of the sections will be organized like this, the other four are entirely face to face. Each of the groups are made up of 30 – 35 students and the students all stay in their base room most of the day so the teacher needs to move from class to class.

Pause a bit and let the logistics of all of that sink in.

This is far from ideal. But what can we do? There aren’t enough teachers for the start of the year as it is. And even if there were more teachers available – the government has directed the same class ratios as normal so schools can only hire 1 teacher per whatever that ratio is for them. In high school the maximum number of students per class is supposed to be 32 but it can go higher (I have seen a class of 47 at Secondary 3…) and in certain cases the max is set lower.

To be clear. Simultaneous teaching does NOT equal smaller class sizes. The teacher is still responsible for all of the students and his or her attention is now divided between multiple spaces. Have you ever done something on your phone or computer while someone in the room is talking to you? Think about teaching that way… Regardless. We know that the teacher will make it work, that is what teachers do, right?

So how can we make this easier?

I’d likely treat the whole class as if they were all learning online. That way I wouldn’t need to create two versions of a lesson plan for my online learners and my in class learners. I’d create learning that can be accessed from anywhere and completed in a variety of ways. That way if each of my in class students didn’t have a device of some sort, they can still do the ‘online’ activities as I project it on my whiteboard (interactive white board or not). And if we all need to jump online at one point in the school year, the material will already be there.

So what would this look like?

I use Google, so I’d make a site like these ones and organize the activities and instructions so that they can be completed either at home or in the classroom. The syllabus and schedule would be available on the site but I’d likely also use Google Classroom as a communication platform so students can submit and receive feedback on their assignments.

Social Media and Me – course designed by Caroline Mueller, PhD, teacher at Place Cartier Adult Education Center, Lester B Pearson School Board.

Site for a unit on personal identity – designed by me and used in a variety of settings with students, teachers, and student-teachers.

Students could access this no matter where they happen to be located during the lesson. I’d probably also make sure that when the groups are with me, I’d divide them up into even smaller groups so I can teach them a mini-lesson, ask and answer questions, conference with them, assess them…whatever but in smaller groups (socially distanced) so I can have a handle on formative assessment and touch base with each of them regularly during this incredibly weird school year.

This might look like teaching in stations, where certain stations can only happen in the classroom. Or, if you teach students who will ALWAYS be at home, certain groups have independent work while you conference with small groups, maybe using a breakout room in Zoom or Meet or a different channel in Teams.

Accessibility & Inclusion

Another benefit of putting everything in one online place is that it creates more accessibility in general. No need to provide digital copies of something for students who need it as per their IEP (individual learning plan) … it’s there already. No need to provide students who miss a class with your presentation or notes … it’s already there. No need to create something new each time someone may need an accommodation or need to miss class for whatever reason. And, once again, if school goes online for all, my materials will already be there.

Relationship & Community

And if everyone accesses their class material via the online platform, then that can help to create a class community where everyone is included in the same way no matter where they happen to be located. This can go a long way to developing the teacher/student relationship that is so needed, especially this year, yet may seem so far away when we are behind masks, in different rooms, in different buildings.

August 31, 2020