Wokeness isn’t killing kids in school.
Books aren’t killing kids in school.
Lessons about slavery & racism aren’t killing kids in school.
Learning about gay & queer people isn’t killing kids in school.
Drag Queen Story Hours aren’t killing kids in school.
Guns are!
So let me get this straight, all year they’ve been screaming about how they can’t trust teachers. We teach CRT! We are groomers! We are indoctrinators! But now they trust us enough with a gun to protect kids from the next mass shooter?
I grew up learning about all the atrocities in history wondering how so many people just sat idly by & let it all happen. Today we are watching exactly how it happened in real time because it’s happening now.
Slavery was not beneficial to enslaved people. Ever. The fact that a fellow history teacher in Florida is now expected to teach that is asking that teacher to commit educational malpractice. It is forcing teachers to teach lies to their students. It’s despicable & 1/
You know whose voices are missing from the media’s daily coverage of Covid & school reopening next week?
Teachers & school staff.
Why does no one ever want to hear our concerns?
Just jumping in here to remind everyone that as we end the year, in school districts like Dallas ISD teachers are not allowed to use the word "slavery" in class and are still awaiting to see what term that they can use to describe slavery, such as "involuntary relocation" 1/
How is it 2022 & they are stripping people of reproductive rights & voting rights, fighting to make child marriage legal, banning books & also banning teaching the truth in school? If this doesn’t motivate us to get out the vote in November, then what else will.
Kids aren’t scared about going to school & learning about systemic racism.
They ARE scared of going to school & becoming a victim of a school shooting.
We need to talk about what’s really behind this manufactured hysteria over “CRT” & teacher “groomers”: they want to dismantle public education as a part of their long struggle against school integration. This is all a part of their white supremacist goals.
Because Florida passed a law making it illegal for kids to learn about systemic racism, intersectionality & queer people in their public schools,
@CollegeBoard
is going to change their AP African American Studies course for the entire country?Y’all see where this is going, right?
Imagine being surprised that there’s a teacher shortage after watching the news headlines all year? I’ve been a teacher for 20 years & in the past year alone I’ve been told I’m lazy, “a groomer,” “racist” for “teaching CRT,” & I’ve endured every antisemitic attack/trope possible.
Watching Jim Jordan explain his whereabouts on 1/6 reminds me when you ask a kid if they cheated on a test (when they clearly did). Except in my 20 years of teaching, none of my students sounded AS guilty as him when explaining themselves. What an embarrassment to our nation.
Are we really allowing states to stop educators from teaching history that actually happened & also letting states ban books just because it makes some white people uncomfortable?
“A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
@BarackObama
“Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV”
@realDonaldTrump
Let’s just process this for a moment: The
@GOP
is taking orders from a guy who is considered too much of a threat to civil society to exist on any mainstream social media platforms.
Dear Tennessee House
@GOP
Members
Y’all just played yourselves.
You just put two brilliant men into the national spotlight.
You just energized even more young people to vote you all out.
You just broadcast your racism to the world.
#TenneseeThree
After last night, I feel even more determined to work to get
@joebiden
re-elected in November. At one point after there were some protestors in the audience shouting at the three Presidents on stage, President
@barackobama
made this point: 1/
I started teaching almost 20 years ago. Little did I know that two decades later I’d feel the need to say that people needed to stop viciously attacking teachers & that it’s ludicrous to suggest abolishing the Department of Education. Yet, here we are…
They are attacking teachers because we are in the way & see right through their culture wars. But young people are the real victims of these education bans. That’s what really keeps us educators speaking out against how the
@GOP
is trying to destroy our education system.
So you’re telling us teachers that we should be armed to stop a school shooter when armed guards couldn’t stop a shooter at the bank in Louisville, Kentucky?
In what universe is it acceptable to use a source from the 17th century who was in the business of accusing women of witchcraft (witchcraft!) to defend overturning a Supreme Court decision in 1973 that most modern Americans support?
#RoeVWade
Jewish people make up 2% of the U.S. population but account for 58% of religion-based hate crimes. This needs to be fixed & one place to start is social media companies like Twitter & Meta need to have a zero tolerance policy for antisemitic accounts & comments. Delete them now.
Why do I tweet so much about these anti-history laws/"CRT" laws?
Because as a history teacher, I know way too much about the dangerous consequences of when they start erasing the facts of our past.
As someone who often receives antisemitic attacks online, I appreciate all the allies speaking out. American Jews are merely 2% of the US population but are victims of 60% of religious hate crimes. We must stay vigilant, esp as
@gop
members are spewing Great Replacement Theory
As a history teacher, it is going to be really hard to teach future students that a President incited a riot on the Capitol Building & also lied about the outcome of a free & fair election and suffered ZERO consequences.
#ImpeachTrumpAgainNOW
#ImpeachTrumpNow
Hey
@CollegeBoard
How do you plan to respond to Florida banning your African-American Studies course? In response, you should pull all your courses from the state. DeSantis doesn’t get to pick & choose. This is a perfect opportunity to take a stand for teaching honest history.
Let’s just call it what it is. When people like
@RonDeSantisFL
say they are fighting “woke” politics what they are really saying is they fighting to keep the white supremacist order in place.
It is 2022 & members of the
@gop
want to make educators teach (checks notes) “both sides of Nazism”
That’s all you have to know about the Republican Party right now & what they represent.
Dear
@RickSantorum
: You have an open invite to enroll in my high school U.S. History class because you are in dire need of a refresher course. For one, I can teach you about the Iroquois Confederacy. We learn about that in the first unit.
CNN's Rick Santorum: "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture"
Least shocking news item: teacher shortages after over a year of right wingers attacking them for everything from teaching “woke math” to calling them “groomers” to banning them from teaching the truth to saying they should be armed to stop the next school shooter.
This message is for everyone “doing their research” on the vaccine:
When was the last time you wrote an academic research paper or did any scholarly research?
I am so over the “lazy teacher” trope. Remote or in-person, teachers & school staff have been working so hard this whole year.The resistance from anyone about opening school buildings is out of concern for public safety & bec of the lack of proper funding to keep everyone safe.
A con man reality tv actor wanted to win re-election so he lied about
#COVID19
, made masks & vaccines political. Meanwhile, he got Covid & only survived because of the science he publicly shunned & then also got vaccinated. He suffers zero consequences & here we are today... 1/
Teachers can lose their jobs for teaching about racism or having their students read Toni Morrison but Virginia's Amelia King can threaten to bring all her guns to school if they make her kid wear a mask and that is ok?
I can’t tell you how many times people attack me online for being a teacher. They call me an indoctrinator, a groomer & use various antisemitic tropes against me. I fear it’ll only get worse now. Republicans are instigating it with their reckless rhetoric.
They are out here banning books, censoring what can be taught in school, defending a failed domestic terrorist coup & also defending Nazi salutes at school board meetings.
It is no longer hyperbole to say we either stand up to this now or lose our country to fascism forever.
Passing a basic civics test should be required for anyone running for office.
@MarshaBlackburn
: This is stated in the Declaration of Independence, not the U.S. Constitution. You should come to my class one day. Students learned this in the beginning of the school year.
Just a reminder to stop blaming teachers & teacher unions for the impact of the global pandemic on learning. None of us got into teaching to do it remotely. That happened as a result of the failure of Trump to address Covid back in February 2020 when he knew it was deadly.
Dear Media: Please don't forget the mistakes of how y'all covered the 2016 election. Also, feel free to review that whole pre-World War II era/rise of fascism. I just saw
@abcnews
refer to Moms For Liberty as "joyful warriors" - they are an extremist group pretending to want 1/
So they are just going to keep up making up lies about teachers & what we teach in the classroom? It’s about time that more of us start speaking out against these pathetic yet dangerous attacks on public education.
What’s special about living in a democracy is that we don’t just yell at each other. We also
listen to each other and talk to each other. That resonated with me. We have the freedom to protest and the freedom of speech. 2/
I’m reading through these proposed changes to Virginia’s K-12 curriculum & it’s despicable. They are unabashedly whitewashing history & will be forcing teachers to commit educational malpractice by not allowing them to teach honest history.
we need everyone with a platform & expertise to speak out about this. This is how it starts. Study the history of memory laws in other countries. Remember a time not too long ago when the truth wasn’t taught. We can’t go back. 2/
So, does this mean students aren't even being taught about slavery in their history classes? This is despicable and shame on every single adult who is a part of this decision. You are depriving young people from a) learning the truth and b) putting them behind their peers in 2/
When I became a teacher nearly 20 years ago never did I think we’d be doing active shooter drills because someone’s right to have a military-grade weapon trumps the safety of everyone else. After Sandy Hook, I was convinced there’d finally be common sense gun control. Nope. 1/
Back in January 2022 I was barraged by antisemitic attacks when I posted a photo saying I was teaching about the January 6th insurrection & how a student said it was a fight btn expanding our multiracial democracy & those who want to maintain white supremacy. It was chilling 1/
Just a reminder that we’re still doing active shooter drills (during a global pandemic) in school & today my students and I were trying to figure out if we would just jump out the window two stories or just hope the shooter doesn’t get to our classroom. We need
#GunControlNow
Do people really think teachers have the time, interest or influence it takes to “indoctrinate” their students? Have these people ever been in a classroom?
Remember back in the spring of 2020 when everyone couldn’t stop saying that teachers were heroes?
Now some of those same people are putting bounties on our heads & demanding we get fired for teaching the truth.
Y’all realize our democracy is in perilous territory right now?
Texas: where it is legal to open carry a gun w/out a permit but it is illegal to get an abortion & teach about racism. A state where a 12 year old can get raped & then be forced to have the baby & random citizens can call a hotline about potential abortions.
I’m thankful I still live in a country with those rights.We should never all agree. Robust debate & discussion are key if we want to evolve & grow as people and a nation. However, if we just yell at each other without listening or call each other names then we will not…3/
A new North Dakota law makes it illegal "to teach that racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality."
This law makes it impossible to really teach about slavery or civil rights.
But that's the point, right?
progress. The Republican Party as it exists now has no substantial platform or plan for the American people. It’s now been fully hijacked by Trump. The Democrats under Biden are working to keep supporting & protecting the 4/
Can we fast forward to that part of the timeline when level-headed people get elected and overturn all these fascist state laws banning books and censoring teaching the truth?