Author: Melanie W. Morton

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Take a Side

A single act can have a tremendous effect. (Photo: Krasimiranevenova | Dreamstime.com)

I grew up in Memphis in a Jewish neighborhood. I’m embarrassed to say that it wasn’t until I was in high school when I realized that other cities in the South did not have as sizable a Jewish population as Memphis. Matzo ball soup and fresh challah bread were staples in my home. My grandparents lived in a well-established Jewish neighborhood of East Memphis. My grandfather would turn the lights off for his Rabbi neighbor on the Sabbath. Some of his neighbors were Holocaust survivors. I remember seeing the numbers tattooed on their arms when I was a child. At Christmas every year, dear family friends who were Jewish, the Segals, would make the entire Christmas dinner for my extended family so that we could spend more time with each other and not worry about cooking. It was an incredible act of kindness and generosity. This was just the wonderful community in which we lived.

Each day I see the rising anti-Semitism in the U.S., and I am horrified. Recently, Kanye West has spoken publicly praising Hitler, supporting neo-Nazi white supremacists, and speaking negatively about Jews. In November, Dave Chappelle hosted Saturday Night Live and opened with a monologue giving Kanye advice on how to buy himself some more time by just saying that he denounces anti-Semitism. Then there is Whoopi Goldberg’s constant denial that the Holocaust had anything to do with race, for which she was suspended from her television show, The View, back in February of 2022, yet still went on to make the same comments in December.

In 2018, we saw an even greater level of hate with the mass shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue where 11 lives were taken. This is not the only mass shooting targeting Jewish people in the United States. It doesn’t help to have elected officials such as Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which supported the story that the Rothschild family used “Jewish space lasers” to purposefully ignite the wildfires in California to make way for a high-speed rail system. This is as ridiculous as it sounds. It seems that people have no fear of speaking negatively about Jewish people, no matter how outrageous or ignorant it may be. They sadly have some constituency or fan base that is listening. This sort of hatred is sickening and should worry us all.

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and well-known author of Night, won the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1986. In his acceptance speech he said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.”

We have a tendency not to care about things until they personally affect us, but this is not how it should be. It is easy to think that as an individual, we cannot make a difference with regards to anti-Semitism. We may not be able to change the whole world, but we can make a difference to our Jewish neighbors and friends. In the sacred Jewish teachings of the Talmud it says, “He who saves one life, saves the world entire.” This is a reminder that a single act can have a tremendous effect.

Memphis is the chosen home of a healthy Jewish population. Speak out against anti-Semitism. Stand up for your Jewish neighbor.

Here are some simple tips to show solidarity with your Jewish friends, coworkers, and neighbors:

• Support local Jewish-owned businesses.

• Don’t plan important events, meetings, rehearsals, classes on Yom Kippur.

• Don’t know when Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur are? That’s okay. Look them up and add them to your calendar.

• Having a party? Make sure you have acceptable foods for those who keep Kosher.

• Don’t support politicians, celebrities, restaurants, or other businesses that are anti-Semitic.

• Educate yourself about Judaism and anti-Semitism. If you need somewhere to start, Memphis has an incredible resource in the Bornblum Judaic Studies Department at the University of Memphis. A great resource that covers what is going on worldwide is The Tel Aviv Institute (check them out on Instagram or visit their website at tlvi.org), and check your local library for books by Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Simon Wiesenthal, and other Holocaust survivors.

Melanie W. Morton is a high school Spanish teacher originally from Memphis.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Care (and Act) Before It Impacts You

Max Kleinen | Unsplash

I have taught high school Spanish for 20 years. At the beginning of each school year during in-service, I endure active shooter training, which in and of itself is traumatic.

My colleagues and I “joke” that we need counseling after the training. What else do you do when you are horrified but have to act like it’s completely normal to practice this? Despite laughing it off, it is not funny in any way and we are all keenly aware of that. We are just trying to cope with the reality that this could happen on any day at any given moment.

At the high school where I teach, police officers train us on how to best prepare for an active shooter in our school. They go through multiple scenarios. They teach us to purposefully arrange the desks and furniture in our classrooms in order to have minimum deaths if the shooter were to begin shooting through the window of the door.

The police officers remind us how quickly someone can bleed out. We learn how to apply a tourniquet, even if we don’t have a proper one. I can use a belt, a shoelace, and even the cord to the electric pencil sharpener. Sucking chest wound? No problem. I have been trained to apply a chest seal.

I know to keep a pair of scissors near the door so that if a shooter is able to enter the classroom, the person closest (which hopefully is me and not a student) can attempt to stab the shooter. This will hopefully stop him, but it will at least stall him before he starts mowing us down.

The most upsetting but also the most helpful part of this training is when the officers simulate an attack with a rapid-fire Nerf gun. We see how quickly, once we hear commotion and shooting, that we can lock and barricade the door and turn out lights and hide. We pray our classroom is not the first in a surprise attack. Unless the door is already locked, there is little you can do to stop the attack.

It is sad that instead of spending more time preparing meaningful lesson plans, decorating our classrooms, and preparing for the upcoming school year teachers have to spend this time learning and practicing how to best keep our students and ourselves alive if we were to be attacked. It is necessary, and as a mother of children in both elementary and high school, I am grateful that their teachers are trained.

However, it blows my mind that mass shooting after mass shooting, there is no change. Jonesboro and Columbine should have been enough. I was in college when both the Jonesboro and Columbine shootings occurred. I remember them both vividly. I was horrified. It was awful, sickening, and unfathomable. Yet, over the next two decades we have seen more and more school and mass shootings take place.

I remember the biggest shift in our teacher preparation and training for such an event was after Sandy Hook. It was almost as if school administration realized this was much more serious than we thought. I thought surely something would change. We can come together from both sides of the political arena to reach a consensus for the safety and well-being of our country’s children, right? No.

Since first writing this a few weeks ago, we have had another mass shooting. A joyful Independence Day parade turned into a violent ambush leaving a 2-year-old orphaned, beloved grandfathers gone, friends, husbands, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters never to see their loved ones again, all while enjoying a celebratory, community event.

When will it be enough for you to push for positive change in gun laws? When it is your loved one that is killed? But it will be too late at that point.

We all should be as distraught and outraged as the friends and family members of those who have lost their lives. Until we are, this will continue to happen. You have to care enough to push for change. Yes, you can pray about it, but do something! Remember, faith without works is dead.

So, as teachers get ready to go back to school in August and start preparing to have your children in class each day, to provide an education, to nurture their naturally inquisitive minds, to offer a safe space to express themselves and ask questions, think about what you can do to make a difference and give your child the best chance of survival if — God forbid — this were to happen at their school. I guarantee you we are not in it for the money.

Melanie W. Morton is a high school Spanish teacher originally from Memphis.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Importance of Seeing Yourself on Screen

Man, high school can be hard. Unless you are in that environment, you might forget about it or look back on it with a distorted sense of nostalgia. As a high school teacher of 20 years — and now a mother of a high schooler — I know this firsthand. My school distributed yearbooks last week, and the senior quote of a student with whom I am very close was, “I was supposed to be having the time of my life,” by Sylvia Plath. That really sums it up for some kids. Unless you were super popular, you likely have a story of feeling lonely or misunderstood when you were in high school.

I saw a trailer for a new Netflix show a couple of weeks ago that was so incredibly refreshing. Heartstopper, based on the graphic novels by Alice Oseman, takes you into a world of 10th and 11th graders at both an all-boys and all-girls school in England. Openly gay Charlie Spring is seated next to popular rugby player Nicholas Nelson in form, the English equivalent of homeroom. A new, unlikely friendship blossoms between them as the story begins. It accurately portrays the fears, uncertainties, and self-discoveries that high school students routinely experience. Ultimately, we experience the fear, excitement, confusion, sadness, and happiness that is high school. This is the most relevant show for a high school teacher that I have ever seen. Let me explain why.

We can have all the diversity and inclusion training, and training on how to properly handle bullying that exists, but learning about it and seeing it put into action are two completely different things. In Heartstopper, the art teacher, Mr. Ajayi, expertly portrayed by British actor Fisayo Akinade, offers his classroom as a safe space for Charlie to come at lunchtime. They discuss how he was bullied so badly the previous year when Charlie was publicly outed. Mr. Ajayi, a gay man himself, discusses how terrible school was for him, saying at one point he just had to “suffer.”

Writer and LGBTQ+ activist Alexander Leon said, “Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts we’ve created to protect us.” Navigating high school is hard enough. Pretending to be someone you are not out of fear of bullying, not being accepted, or even being kicked out of school in the cases of some religious or private schools, solely based on who you are, is a tremendous weight that many LGBTQ+ students carry.

I have had several students talk to me about the impact Heartstopper has had on them. One former student of mine (they/them) discussed how it made them feel seen and validated to have a positive bisexual character in a show. They said that they never felt more understood. Positive representation of all marginalized groups in film and television is extremely important for this very reason.

Self-identity is a tricky beast, even when sexuality is not involved. I watch kids try to figure out who they are on a daily basis. I remember having those feelings as a teen, wondering where I fit in. Knowing that someone out there understands and accepts you, and having a safe place to go, can make all the difference in the world, especially in the time of book bans and so-called “Don’t Say Gay” and “bathroom” bills restricting the way gay, queer, and trans identities can be expressed in school, the exact place where young people are learning who they are and how to show that true self to the world.

Heartstopper is a stunningly beautiful representation of what it is like for kids in high school these days. I am thrilled that a show like this exists for queer kids to see themselves represented in such a beautiful and positive light. As a teacher, it has pushed me to go a step further in being there for those kids who may be viewed as outcasts or feel like they don’t belong. It has pushed me to educate others about what many of our students face each day. Take the time to watch the show. It is positive, uplifting, and unlike any series I have ever seen. You will laugh, cry, and remember how you felt when you first fell in love. Most importantly, you might reevaluate how you handle situations with students in your classroom.

Melanie W. Morton is a high school Spanish teacher originally from Memphis.