Allyship & Audience: Jewish Inclusion and Combating Antisemitism in Elementary Teacher Education

• In Event: Beyond Binary Thinking: Jews, Antisemitism, and Navigating Difference

Abstract

Purpose
Many teacher education programs have commitments to social justice, anti-racism, and inclusive practices yet Jewish inclusion and combating antisemitism is oftentimes absent from these conversations (Vernikoff, Morvay, & Kolman, 2022). In this paper, the authors share their experiences as non-Jews trying to intentionally embed Jewish inclusion in their elementary education program. As female faculty members of color, the authors agree with Love (2019) that one must approach education with the imagination and urgency of abolitionists, with particular emphasis on the role of co-conspirators as allyship. With this knowledge, the authors designed a plan to include the history and culture of Jewish people in their elementary program area.

Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework for this paper is rooted in HebCrit (Rubin, 2020), which is a theory established to make meaning of the issues facing Jewish people in the U.S.. While HebCrit gives language to the seriousness and the potential cost of Jewish exclusion, Critical Game Theory (CGT) (Author 3 & Colleague, 2021) is founded on the belief that hegemonic power is moving in, on, and through the players in this game called life.

Methods
Critical Post Intentional Phenomenology (Crit-PiP) (Author 3, Author 4, & Colleagues, 2023) was used to examine how the phenomena of Jewish inclusion and antisemitism rhetoric manifest in our elementary education program area. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (2003) captures glimpses of the phenomena at the textual level, discursive level, and social level. The tenets of HebCrit and CGT were also used to see how the phenomena were produced and shaped within hegemonic systems that give, limit, or deny access, agency, and autonomy to marginalized groups and DEI-related efforts.

Data Sources
Data collection occurred over two years of curricular and pedagogical investigation into how the phenomena of Jewish inclusion and antisemitism rhetoric manifested in our elementary education program area. The first data set includes a syllabi audit of four program areas: Elementary Education, Social Studies, Culture & Teaching, and Literacy. Other data sets include a Jewish Children's Literature Evaluation Tool and a framework for implementation at the community, department, and program levels.

Conclusions
Preliminary results revealed two ways in which the phenomena of Jewish inclusion and antisemitism rhetoric manifested in the elementary program area.
1) Any institution that invests time and money in faculty members' professional development stands to value their expertise and learn from their expertise.
2) At least two faculty members can partner together around a similar vision and have the potential to make incremental changes of allyship in a program area.

Scholarly Significance
There is a need to open DEI-related efforts to include the intersectionality of identities of Jewish people in educational settings. Many colleges of education boast about their commitment to social justice; being equity-oriented should include acknowledging Jewish people and the role that antisemitism plays in their lives. Jewish people need the support of the community to help them fight antisemitism and make them feel safe, welcome, and that they belong on campus and in U.S. society.

Authors

• Keitha-Gail Martin-Kerr, University of Minnesota

• Jana Lo Bello Miller, University of Minnesota