{"id":3660,"date":"2023-12-19T12:33:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T17:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=3660"},"modified":"2023-12-10T20:00:33","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T01:00:33","slug":"a-holiday-tip-for-schoolteachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2023\/12\/a-holiday-tip-for-schoolteachers\/","title":{"rendered":"A Holiday Tip for Gentile Schoolteachers with Jewish Students&#x1f385;&#x1f3ff;&#x1f54e;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This is always a fraught time of year for grade-school music teachers: they wanna sing Xmas songs, most of the kids wanna sing Xmas songs. But they know that the constant wintertime Othering grinds away at the Jewish kids. (It&#8217;s even worse when teachers try to \u201cinclude\u201d you be singing the \u201cDreidel Song\u201d; that song is crap, and we know it. The Xmas songs are <em>way<\/em> better.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back during the pandemic I eavesdropped on the most brilliant piece of classroom third-rail navigation I\u2019ve ever seen in my life, and I wanna share it here again, for any that need help (esp. in what&#8217;s become an extremely fraught year for Jewish kids in America).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was early in the pandemic, when our community was pretty locked down (my kids didn&#8217;t have in-person school for 400+ days). My daughter was then a third grader, and I was sitting nearby during her Zoom music class (we\u2019ll leave for another day any discussion of the crime against humanity that was \u201cgrade-school Zoom music class\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few slides into the lesson, the teacher show a picture of an unremarkable middle-aged White dude, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mitchell_Parish\">Mitchell Parish<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who the heck is Mitchell Parish? Well, he was born in Lithuania, and brought here by his parents, who were Jews (my daughter immediately perked up; <em>Jews! Like us!<\/em>) looking for a better life. Mitchell Parish was a popular songwriter in New York in the \u201820s, \u201830s, and \u201840s\u2014and he wrote the lyrics to \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>*advance to next slide*&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026<em><strong> \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sleigh_Ride\">Sleigh Ride<\/a>\u201d! \u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Ronettes - Sleigh Ride (Official Audio)\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XZTzai1H9DM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>*kids sing \u201cSleigh Ride\u201d*&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em><strong>*EVERYONE IS A WINNER!*<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My daughter felt seen, gentiles got their Christmas carol, and no one had to sing the goddamned \u201cDreidel Song.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there\u2019s the trick to getting to sing Christmas carols in public school in what has been the worst year for Jews since 1945:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-large-font-size\"><strong><em>Start out with a brief bio of the Jews who wrote your Xmas song <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You could do a whole Winter Concert\u2014featuring \u201cRudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,\u201d \u201cA Holly Jolly Christmas,\u201d \u201cRockin\u2019 Around the Christmas Tree,\u201d and \u201cRun, Run Rudolph\u201d\u2014on just a single bio slide: All four of those classics were written by the same Jew (the inimitable <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Johnny_Marks\">Johnny Marks<\/a>, whose Jewish brother-in-law was the guy who created Rudolph to begin with).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Chuck Berry - Run Rudolph Run (Official Video)\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YiadNVhaGwk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>(<\/em><strong><em>SPOILER ALERT<\/em> &#x1f6a8;:<\/strong><em> <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com\/jewish-writers-of-christmas-songs\/\"><em>A<\/em><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com\/jewish-writers-of-christmas-songs\/\"><em>ll your favorite Xmas songs were written by Jews<\/em><\/a><em>; you\u2019re welcome).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is always a fraught time of year for grade-school music teachers: they wanna sing Xmas songs, most of the kids wanna sing Xmas songs. But they know that the constant wintertime Othering grinds away at the Jewish kids. (It&#8217;s even worse when teachers try to \u201cinclude\u201d you be singing the \u201cDreidel Song\u201d; that song &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2023\/12\/a-holiday-tip-for-schoolteachers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Holiday Tip for Gentile Schoolteachers with Jewish Students&#x1f385;&#x1f3ff;&#x1f54e;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[19,11,3],"tags":[239,357,83,856,20,572,238],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/a2mi.social\/@dave0\/111608279753942258","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3660"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3667,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3660\/revisions\/3667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}