Teaching in trying times
By Amy Moran, Ph. D. and Allison Connolly
“In just 71 days,” our state’s own Sen. Cory Booker started in his record-breaking speech last month, “the president has inflicted harm after harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the foundations of our democracy and any sense of common decency.” We could not agree more! Joining Rainbow Connection again for a second time in the “Holding Power” series is Holocaust education expert Allison Connolly.
Amy: Every time I read another headline about what the current president has done, I think, “That’s the last thing I’d want to teach my students about.” I find it impossible to think of him as a role model for our young people, given his long-standing trademark moves: pathologically lying to the public, issuing horrifying executive orders, ignoring the rule of law, extorting people and organizations into capitulation—on top of being an already twice-impeached convicted felon.
Allison: You know, I keep thinking this can’t be what our nation’s founders intended. They built in systems of checks and balances that the current president is circumventing or eroding. I try to teach my students to question authority, to really analyze the decisions made by people in positions of power—especially those denying basic human rights and rolling back decades of necessary, meaningful progress—and I can’t help but wonder what the history books will say about this moment in time, or how long it will take to mend all of the damage that is being done. I do urge all of us to teach students about the people who stood up and fought back, like Cory Booker and the 3.5 million Hands Off protestors, and to communicate that what is happening is not right.
Amy: I couldn’t agree more. We’re seeing things that are flagrantly unethical and often just false. The current federal administration’s policies and practices around trying to end diversity, equity, inclusion and access initiatives because they’re “discriminatory” is completely ridiculous and harkens Orwellian double-speak and Nazism. Trump’s demand that there are only two sexes ignores the biological fact of intersex people and ignores the fact that gender is a social construct. I’m also gravely concerned about how protections against spying on LGBTQIA+ people have been eliminated, schools for children of enlisted military personnel were forced to remove Black History Month and LGBTQIA+ affirming “Safe Space” stickers and federal websites have deleted information about LGBTQIA+ health and history. This intentional erasure is the 21st-century version of book burning.
Allison: I think that erasure also highlights something about why diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives exist in the first place. Those aforementioned founders were rich, white, Christian men who effectively designed long-standing local and national policies to create advantages for people like themselves and not for the rest of us. Our collective DEI work endeavors to undo that once-normalized marginalization. Those of us in this work understand that it’s born of a patriotism that sees our country’s greatness is in all of its people and their actualized potential. And that includes queer, trans and nonbinary students in our schools.
Amy: As you’ve said, Allison, elements of history are repeating themselves. How did Nazi Germany engage queer erasure during the Holocaust?
Allison: Before the Holocaust, Berlin was actually quite LGBTQIA+ friendly, so Hitler’s treatment of queer people was a departure from the contemporary, culturally accepted norm. His regime’s insistence on what was “normal” or “traditional” was firmly juxtaposed against what was newly categorized as “deviant.” The Trump administration is doing this too. It’s categorizing certain people as “less than,” creating an “us versus them” atmosphere and actually encouraging people to bully others who don’t suit cis-het, white, Christian-nationalism “normalcy.”
In Hitler’s Germany, those newly categorized as “deviant” were forced to wear specific badges—variations on the Jewish stars, including pink triangles for gay men and black triangle for lesbians—to point out those who weren’t the ideal straight, blond-haired, blue-eyed, politically compliant Germans. The new laws dictated that “normal” Germans treat other people as subhuman, eventually bringing them to concentration camps, often working them to death for being different from the newly imposed version of “normalcy.”
Seeing what’s going on in the U.S., I fear that we are losing our humanity. The speed with which people are losing their rights and retreating in fear or responding with apathy is horrifying to me. It makes me think of the Neimoller poem that begins, “Then they came for the trade unionists…” and I worry that people aren’t acting because it doesn’t impact them or out of self-preservation.
But have we learned nothing from history? So many people who voted for the current federal administration and didn’t think its promises of hardship would be directed at them, are now its victims: Medicare and Medicaid recipients, people with disabilities and special needs, veterans, people with 401ks and market-invested pensions and many, many more.
Amy: What do you suggest educators do at this juncture?
Allison: There are so many ways we can resist what is happening right now. Teachers have a unique opportunity to stand on the front lines of resistance. Sen. Booker showed us just how powerful our voices can be, right?
- Continue to teach our students according to our state mandates, and don’t give into this idea that diversity, equity and inclusion practices are dead.
- Have difficult conversations with our students—not shy away from them—so that they, in turn, can have them with each other, with their families, with anyone.
- Teach students how to challenge the constant onslaught of misinformation, like confronting Orwellian double-speak every time it’s used.
- Go to the Pink Triangle Legacies Project at pinktrianglelegacies.org for teaching resources.
- Be a safe harbor, one that lets our students know that we see them, hear them, support them and are fighting for them.
With this in mind, let’s continue what civil rights legend John Lewis called good trouble. Teachers nationwide are refusing to capitulate, keeping their “Everyone is Welcome” posters up, and teaching about the rise of fascism in America.
Please share how you’re responding to this moment in history at RainbowConnectionNJEA@gmail.com.
Amy Moran, Ph.D. is an out lesbian educator, leader and activist working to make education affirming and inclusive for all of her students and colleagues. Moran has taught middle school for 30 years and was a high school GSA adviser for 16 years.
Allison Connolly, a 25-year educator and local president in Ocean Township, teaches a dual enrollment course, The Holocaust and Modern Day Genocides, in conjunction with Kean University. She’s also the Monmouth County representative to the NJEA SOGI Committee and holds governor-appointed positions on the NJDOE Commission on Holocaust Education and the Advisory Commission on LGBTQ+ Youth Equity and Inclusion in Schools, serving as that commission’s chair.