Join Chalkbeat Chicago’s free each day publication to maintain up with the most recent information on Chicago Public Colleges.
It’s been 4 years since Chicago Lecturers Union President Karen Lewis died on the age of 67. Now, a brand new e-book shares her life story in her personal phrases.
Co-written by Lewis and former Chicago faculty board member and historian Elizabeth Todd-Breland, “I Didn’t Come Right here to Lie: My Life and Training” chronicles Lewis’ life from her childhood rising up in Chicago’s Hyde Park, to her twenties working a large number of jobs, to her years main the CTU.
“She was very clear-eyed about how she wished to inform the story,” Todd-Breland mentioned, including that when individuals who knew her properly learn the e-book, they’ll say, “I can hear her in it.”
After many years educating highschool chemistry at Chicago Public Colleges, Lewis joined a bunch of progressive educators to kind the Caucus of Rank and File Educators in 2008. The group pushed again on bipartisan schooling reform efforts of the time that got here with high-stakes accountability, the closure of many conventional public colleges, the firing of veteran educators, and the rise of publicly-funded, privately-run constitution colleges in Chicago.
The group took over management of the CTU in 2010 and popularized a typical good strategy to organizing and bargaining that centered social points and pushed to have academics’ voices form public schooling coverage. Lecturers unions in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Seattle, Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Dayton, Ohio, ultimately adopted the strategy.
Lewis sparred publicly with former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the size of the varsity day and yr, whether or not instructor evaluations ought to be linked to scholar check scores, and air con in lecture rooms. She led a seven-day strike in 2012 that was bruising to Emanuel and launched Lewis into the nationwide highlight.
In 2015, she was identified with a mind tumor simply as she was contemplating a problem to then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Although she recovered and remained on the helm of the CTU, a stroke within the fall of 2017 led to her resignation from the union’s prime position in 2018.
Todd-Breland started working with Lewis on her memoir in early 2017. After the stroke, she couldn’t write anymore, Todd-Breland mentioned, so she started interviewing Lewis at CTU headquarters, in her house, and ultimately, at Whitehall, an assisted dwelling facility in suburban Deerfield. Their final interview occurred in February 2020, and Lewis handed away roughly one yr later.
Todd-Breland labored with analysis assistant Sekordri Ojo, who was additionally a scholar of Lewis’s when she taught chemistry at King School Prep, to place the e-book collectively “like a puzzle” to create a cohesive narrative a couple of girl she calls “a grasp instructor, a talented communicator, a principled particular person, and a renaissance girl.”
Chalkbeat spoke to Todd-Breland in regards to the e-book.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
One factor that actually caught with me was her recollection of going to highschool for the primary time and coming house from the primary day of kindergarten and being devastated that she wasn’t taught to learn. Was that shocking to you?
That’s a very good query. I believe it wasn’t shocking to me as a result of Karen was so precocious and so curious that, in fact she would count on on the primary day of kindergarten to discover ways to learn.
However I believe a few of the different issues that she talks about are literally fascinating and communicate to the second that she went to elementary faculty. For instance, she talks about main grade academics taking part in the piano and educating music within the classroom. That was one thing that was fairly widespread throughout that time frame. Main grades included music within the classroom or had pianos.
As a aspect observe, I recall I used to be performing some work years in the past with some college students at Sumner Elementary College on the West Facet in an after faculty program. We had been engaged on a historical past undertaking about their faculty and we discovered all these outdated pianos. And I keep in mind asking, “What is that this about?” And so they had been like, “Yeah, main grades used to have pianos and train music in school.” I believe that’s type of one thing of the period.
After graduating from Dartmouth School, Lewis moved to Oklahoma, the place she held so many various jobs that weren’t educating jobs. She led this whole different life earlier than the one we learn about in Chicago. Was it troublesome for her to speak about this time in her life?
I believe it was a time of lots of progress for her. Her years in Oklahoma. In a sure manner, it virtually felt like she was fleeing Dartmouth. I believe it was very laborious to be among the many solely Black girls, only a few Black individuals, at a time when this college had simply turned coed, and I believe she was able to get out of there.
She was making an attempt to determine what she wished to do with life. She labored at a drug rehab middle. She labored at American Airways. She was doing IT work. She offered Ginsu knives. She did telemarketing, which she mentioned was truly certainly one of her favourite issues, earlier than she discovered educating. I believe she actually was simply type of looking for her manner, which is what lots of people do.
She does comment on how, significantly coming from Chicago, it felt just like the civil rights motion was a number of years behind in Oklahoma. She actually felt like of us there have been, in some ways, nonetheless traumatized, significantly in Tulsa, by the Tulsa race bloodbath that had occurred earlier within the twentieth century. In Tulsa, they knew what occurred, they skilled very viscerally the damaging penalties of combating white supremacy, and so she felt like there wasn’t as a lot of a want to aggressively confront racial inequality there in the identical manner she had skilled in Chicago, and even what she skilled as a scholar activist in her school years.
She talks about her first husband, Glenn, who she married whereas in Tulsa. The 2 cut up and he died at 41 when Lewis was 35, however she mentioned Glenn taught her that “individuals you’re employed with aren’t essentially your mates. He taught me learn how to learn between the traces. He gave me all the road smarts that I believe I’ve now.” A long time later, Chicago Journal wrote a profile of her characterizing her as a road fighter. Did getting this glimpse into her life in Oklahoma assist you to higher perceive that aspect of her?
I believe that there are elements as she narrates her youth that you could nonetheless see in her later life. On the one hand, she was a singular, extraordinary particular person. However, she was a human and I believe one of many issues that the memoir does is in telling her private story of progress over time, of studying and looking for and making an attempt issues and shifting, it additionally humanizes her in a manner that I believe hopefully additionally permits individuals to see that not that anybody can do extraordinary issues, essentially, however that all of us have the capability inside us to attempt to do laborious issues.
Within the e-book, Lewis references civil rights lawyer Lani Guinier a couple of instances. She outlines three questions she utilized in her D’vah Torah that she credit to Guinier: “Who made the principles to the sport? Who’re the winners, and who’re the losers? What are the tales the winners inform the losers to maintain them taking part in the sport?” How do you assume this is applicable to public schooling at this time?
I believe as we glance significantly on the nationwide political panorama proper now, these questions stay actually vital. And Lani Grieuner was “she-ro” of Karen’s. She was additionally a Black Jewish girl. She was a civil rights lawyer. She confronted her personal pushback for pushing the envelope, and in the end wasn’t in a position to be nominated for the place [of U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights under Bill Clinton], or go ahead in her nomination.
I believe these questions are mainly: What’s widespread sense? I believe if we have a look at the interval between the early 2000s and now, the schooling justice motion that Karen was a distinguished chief in shifted that widespread sense regionally about issues like the necessity for totally funded schooling, the values of getting an artwork instructor, a music instructor, and bodily schooling and wraparound providers. These aren’t issues in our widespread sense at this time that we query. Whereas if we predict again to the late ’90s and the early 2000s, it was a back-to-basics second. It was a kill-and-drill second, it was double-block English, double-block math and every little thing else goes to the wayside.
If you happen to assume again to the early 2000s, there was actually bipartisan consensus round privatization, excessive stakes testing, excessive stakes accountability. The polarities at the moment are fairly completely different. On the one hand, you’ve gotten leaders on the best who need to privatize every little thing, voucher out the schooling system, defund public schooling. However the different to that isn’t “Let’s do some type of pseudo-privatized schooling,” or “laborious a” accountability. The choice to that’s: totally funded colleges, wraparound providers, culturally related and responsive schooling. On this second, the pressure of narrative that these three questions level to stays related.
What do you assume she would take into consideration former instructor and CTU organizer Brandon Johnson getting elected Chicago mayor and now being on the rulemaking aspect and the profitable aspect?
If you happen to assume again to the political undertaking that she was engaged in, she very clearly noticed a path into electoral politics for herself, doubtlessly being mayor, but in addition pushing completely different candidates to essentially change the taking part in discipline. I believe she could be pleased with now-Mayor Brandon Johnson for moving into that area.
I additionally assume she was clear eyed in regards to the difficulties of governance that everybody encounters. Significantly within the second we’re in proper now, taking over political roles at a second when, specifically, funding is falling out from beneath all of us, is a extremely daunting and troublesome process.
I don’t need to put phrases into Karen’s mouth, however what I can say primarily based on the conversations that we did have, and what she writes about, is that she did assume it was vital to maneuver into electoral politics, no matter how fraught that house may be.
Was there something lower from the e-book, or did you’ve gotten a tough time distilling it down?
I had a ton of fabric. Once I began, the primary draft had like 110,000 phrases. It was wildly giant. However a part of that’s as a result of there’s repetition.
I do assume that there have been — there’s not key issues that I used to be like, “Wow, I want I might put that in.” However there have been issues that, if she had been nonetheless dwelling, I might have liked to press extra on. Like, inform me extra tales in regards to the classroom, as a result of her tales in regards to the classroom had been superb. Lighting issues on fireplace on the primary day of college in chemistry class to get college students engaged and about her use of the Socratic technique that she discovered truly at Sullivan in her very first fulltime educating job and the way she used that and it resonated together with her personal liberal arts schooling at Mount Holyoke and Dartmouth.
She taught for thus lengthy, over 20 years, in one of many largest excessive colleges in Chicago, Lane Tech School Prep, in addition to King School Prep and Sullivan Excessive College. Her college students are in every single place. They arrive out of the woodworks to share tales about their experiences with Karen, how transformative she was of their lives. Identical to a LinkedIn put up like, hey, the e-book’s out and I’ve former college students commenting “I keep in mind once I was in school and you recognize, she mentioned this and that modified my life,” and I believe it does communicate to the transformative energy of educators. Within the each day, it will possibly usually really feel futile and irritating, however academics are shaping and molding and impacting individuals’s lives in a manner that travels with them for the remainder of their life. And I believe Karen was a type of educators.
Lewis talks about former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with whom she had an adversarial relationship at instances, and the way she learn the e-book “Brothers Emanuel,” with the intention to know her enemy as a type of opposition analysis. What had been her reflections on that relationship?
I believe her critiques of Rahm Emanuel had been very pointed. I believe her critiques of the connection that he thought he might set up together with her and her placing a verify on how she would and wouldn’t be spoken to, she was very clear on that.
There’s the type of interpersonal elements of her relationship with Rahm Emanuel, however for her it wasn’t strictly interpersonal. For her, after we speak in regards to the winners and the losers within the sport, she represented generations of educators and college students who had been on the shedding finish of issues for thus a few years. And so when she was in these forwards and backwards conversations with him, she wasn’t there by herself. She was there on behalf of many, many individuals who had for a few years not been or not had alternatives within the metropolis. It felt like one thing extra than simply an interpersonal assault to her. While you cuss at me or while you put me down, on this manner, you’re additionally placing down all of the people who I characterize right here.
Within the e-book, she additionally talks pointedly about occasion politics and cash, saying, “Now we have a one occasion system in America, and it’s the occasion of cash. There are simply two main branches, Democrats and Republicans. And in the event you don’t imagine it, have a look at who the donors are. These donors will subsidize each branches. What we actually have is one occasion, the occasion of inexperienced. And I don’t imply the environmentalist inexperienced. I imply the occasion of cash inexperienced. That is my idea of the state of affairs. After all, I may very well be unsuitable as all get out.” Do you assume she was unsuitable?
I don’t assume she was unsuitable. I believe there are such a lot of issues on this memoir and her classes for us that talk to precisely the place we’re at this time, combating towards billionaires, utilizing the phrase oligarchy profusely in the USA of America, and having it precisely replicate the facility construction of our nation. I believe she was very eager to that difficulty.
She talked about how she didn’t see that a lot of a distinction between former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, and Emanuel, a Democrat, or these different billionaires that had been pulling the strings backstage, and that the reply to that, for her, was individuals energy. That the facility of the individuals, the facility of mass mobilization, the facility of solidarity, was the one factor that might push again and struggle towards that, and that’s the place we’re at this time.
Her religion was an enormous a part of the entire e-book. She talks within the very closing chapter, A Life Effectively Lived, about working into individuals who had wished her to be the mayor and telling them, “God had one thing else deliberate for me. What are you going to do?” In your final interview, clearly, you most likely didn’t understand it was your final. Do you know it was your final?
No. No, positively not.
Was it laborious so that you can determine the place to complete the story?
We weren’t in a position to talk a lot throughout that COVID yr and in direction of the very finish of her life, however Karen’s religion was so vital to her, and I believe it was one thing that sustained her via troublesome and joyful moments. She would say to me commonly, “I plan to dwell for one more 100 years.” She had a special imaginative and prescient for herself. I believe she was somebody who additionally had a really forward-looking imaginative and prescient and that that sustained her in a sure manner, and that her religion was a central a part of that.
It truly was very troublesome making an attempt to determine learn how to finish the e-book, as a result of after we had been engaged on the e-book, she was alive. So making an attempt to determine learn how to finish it was troublesome. Each time I learn it, it was laborious once I’d get to the tip, as a result of it felt like, oh, our time collectively is over.
On the one hand, she had a lot extra in her, and alternatively, she did a lot. One factor I’ll say is, given the assaults on DEI, given the assaults on public schooling, given the defunding or deconstruction of the U.S. Division of Training, Karen’s phrases and concepts are as related at this time as they had been within the 2000s and 2010s. I hope that individuals can take power from her story — to snicker and to study and to consider how we struggle for a greater world and for the world that our college students deserve and our communities deserve.
Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.