The students are behind grade level peers, partly because the district has limited resources to provide students with the tools they need to be successful. For example, students in Lawrence are not provided with textbooks for classes, because it is too expensive for the district. Compared to all of the textbooks that I had to lug around in high school, that is definitely not equitable. So these students need passionate and dedicated educators to give them the attention, energy, and resources they need in order to reach their potential. Because they can! Students want to learn. They are smart, and they are capable. But they need support, from all angles.

In order to be the best teacher and support I could be, I learned how to reach English learners, how to develop engaging activities to sustain attention and reactive strategies for when attention is lost, how to implement logical consequences, how to construct effective lessons, and how to manage lots of student data.

Here’s a sample schedule for a Friday:

5:30AM wakeup
6:00 AM breakfast
6:40 buses leave UMASS lowell
7:10 buses arrive

Any time we weren’t in class, we had professional development, an activity called group of six (one person teaches while the rest are students, some of whom are having “off days).

I was a second block teacher. That meant that my students were coming to me after 2 hours of sitting and trying to learn Math in their second language, and were expected to stay focused in another hot, sticky room for two more hours trying to learn English. The students in my classroom this summer are all newcomers to the United States — that means they immigrated to the United States within the past two years. They had varied levels of English speaking, writing, listening, and reading ability. Most were level 2–3 on the WIDA (World Class Design and Instruction) scale. For more information on what level 2–3 English learners can do, see here.

And here is a picture of my wonderful, brilliant, motivated, and energetic students!!

Our unit for the summer was… IMMIGRATION. Therefore, every lesson over the summer was related to immigration. The ultimate goal was to write up their own immigration story, including challenges they face as an immigrant, reasons for immigrating (push factors that led them out of their country and pull factors that led them to the United States), the sequence of their immigration, and their feelings as an immigrant in the united states. In order to do that, I was provided with a “scope and sequence” for how to break down the necessary components to get the students to the ultimate goal.

My role was to take each of the Content Objectives outlined in this calendar, and formulate a lesson plan. At the end of the lesson, students are assessed on the content objective through an exit ticket. The lesson plan goes like this:

Do Now
Launch & Explore (aka Frame lesson)
Guided Practice
Independent Practice
Exit Ticket

Here’s an exemplar do now:

Here is an example of a blank exit ticket:

and here is an example of a completed exit ticket:

I sometimes felt like I wasn’t doing the students justice, because I created the exit tickets and did not always recognize when my prompts used language that was too complicated, did not always get to the key points of the unit, and struggled to best meet students where they were at.

However, at the end of the summer students presented their immigration stories in front of the class, and they were phenomenal. Unfortunately, I was not able to video their presentations. At the end of the summer, students wrote letters to their future teachers, using this template:

One student chose to write in Spanish, and acknowledged her difficulty learning math. She described, ‘I try to learn the equations but sometimes I forget them and that’s a little frustrating for me… I can be a bit disrespectful sometimes but it’s caused by the stress of that day’.

At the end of the summer, one student from each class wrote a letter to their teacher. Here’s what Alejandro wrote me:

I am thrilled to be returning to Lawrence High School in a few weeks. Although I am not working with the same Newcomer students, I am excited to meet new faces, create new relationships, and continue to work towards educational equity!

Summer Recap was originally published in Teacher Jackie on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the Book of Leviticus, God commands the Jewish people, “v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha,” “love your neighbor as yourself.” Based on this teaching, I stand by the idea that, if an individual comes seeking refuge from his or her home country because he or she is prosecuted or marginalized for his or her identity, they should be admitted into our country. At the Passover Seder every year, we read that “We were slaves in the land of Egypt”, and “we know suffering.” Many refugees find themselves in a similar situation and see the United States as a land of prosperity, parallel to the way our ancestors saw Canaan as their land of milk and honey.

Due to the complications of our immigration and refugee policies, many people are hindered from achieving their goals uniquely based on their refugee status. At Hamilton College, I work for a nonprofit college access organization called On Point for College, based in Utica, NY, which supports low income, refugee and other youth to break down barriers preventing them from access to higher education. Utica, NY is well known for its large refugee population, mainly refugees from the Karen ethnic group in Burma, who spent years in a camp on the border to Thailand. On Point for College provides college tours, assistance with financial aid, childcare support and transportation to students to enable them to reach their full potential. Working at this organization, I have had the incredible opportunity to listen to personal stories from students about how they have been able to complete their education and find successful occupations. For example, this past year I helped two refugees create résumés to give to a prospective employer to become bank tellers, both of whom ultimately found employment.

Among other examples, I have encountered in my work refugees whose parents force them out of school to take part in arranged marriage, and undocumented students who do not speak English. Throughout the year, I have helped to support these students and others in obtaining a college degree and guide them through the process. The language barrier serves as an enormous obstacle that students must face when trying to advance their education. On Point has multilingual staff on hand including an employee who speaks Karen, the language of the majority of refugees that enter the office.

Refugees need to be given equal opportunities to education and to employment, and we as a Reform Jewish community have a responsibility to support them. As is said in Leviticus, “If your brother, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, let him live by your side” (Leviticus 25:35).

In June, we observed World Refugee Day. In an Op-Ed in the Forward, Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, Director of the RAC, reflected on the inspiring response from the Jewish community to welcome refugees. But, there is more to be done and we must continue to urge our elected officials to resettle refugees from across the world and welcome refugees in our local communities.

Jackie Bussgang is a rising sophomore at Hamilton College, and interned this summer at the National Partnership for Women and Families. She has a passion for social justice and exploring the different ways to practice it wherever she goes.

Yesterday, (6/27), I had the fortunate opportunity to watch the decision to reverse the Texas House Bill 2 law released by the Supreme Court. A year ago, as a graduating high school senior, I never could have imagined sitting in the Supreme Court, let alone for an issue regarding abortion.

As I have continued my education, I have found a deep passion for education and learning in-depth about as many issues as possible. Over the course of the past two years, I have found myself gravitating towards women’s rights organizations, despite my previously proclaimed lack of interest for such issues. During the spring of my senior year of high school, I worked at a domestic violence agency, The Second Step, which supports survivors in recreating sustainable lifestyles for themselves and their children. This summer, I applied for Machon Kaplan, a social justice and policy fellowship program through the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. Over the past three weeks, I have worked as a reproductive policy intern at a major women’s rights and advocacy group in Washington, DC called the National Partnership for Women & Families.

As I was coordinating the RAC internship logistics, the supervisor called my cell phone and asked whether I would be willing to work for this organization, even though I had not listed women’s rights as one of my primary choices. I am so grateful I said I would give it a try. I have learned an so much information in just the past three weeks with more to come, and have anxiously awaited ’s decision day since I first walked through the office doors.

Studying women’s reproductive rights around the US, I have come to realize exactly how many limitations are placed on my personal rights and responsibilities, just because I was born a cisgender woman. While a man is traditionally praised for his sexuality, a woman is often looked down upon as “fast” or, in more extreme cases, as a whore. Why should men run away from their mistakes and fulfill the stereotype of increased single mothers raising children out of wedlock, when women are encouraged to continue their unwanted pregnancies against their own will?

I learned this summer that 30% of US women will have an abortion by age 45.[1] That’s one in three. So why is talking about it so taboo? The stigma placed around abortion is unacceptable, and needs to be addressed immediately. Last week, I attended a summer intern series event sponsored by Advocates for Youth, called “Breaking the Silence: Destigmatizing Abortion.” The seminar highlighted the astounding statistics of abortion rates in the United States, and made it clear that every individual has a different story; every individual should not be forced to justify their personal choice. After the seminar, I looked on the campaign website (http://www.1in3campaign.org/) at each of the different abortion stories brave women have shared. Whether the continuation of the pregnancy is unsafe, or the woman decides it is not the right time to procreate, or the pregnancy was the result of a rape or sexual assault, who cares? Why should we let politicians ascribe rights and regulations to our own bodies?

That’s the main reason why I stayed outside the court all night and waited to get a permanent seat inside. I care about women’s rights and I want to see us attain full equality to men during our lifetime. Almost a century after the 19th amendment legalizing our right to vote, women are still viewed as subordinate to men. It’s time.

Along with 20 other undergraduate college interns from my fellowship program, we camped out on the concrete from 2 AM to 10:00 when the decision was released, waiting 8 hours for 30 minutes that changed the course of history.

The Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt case challenged the Texas HB2 law passed in 2013, which required abortion clinics to both serve as ambulatory surgical centers and require hospital admitting privileges, under the presumption that such restrictions pose as beneficial to women’s health. Upholding abortion clinics to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers requires, that ‘there is adequate legal support that this creates an undue burden before the enactment of the position, because it requires that a clinic meet standards that are not at all necessary and will not provide women with better care’ as Justice Breyer concluded in his opinion of the court statement. He noted, “Abortion, as regulated by the State before the enactment of House Bill 2, has been shown to be much safer, in terms of minor and serious complications, than many common medical procedures not subject to such intense regulation and scrutiny.”[2] The court declared that there is no health benefit to women in Texas nor anywhere else to require abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges, because ‘As stated in the oral arguments for this case, Texas knew of no single instance in which this new law has helped or would have helped a woman.’

This case was particularly momentous because after the death of Justice Scalia earlier this year, only eight judges made the court evenly split between liberals and conservatives. Due to the even court, pro-choice advocates needed a swing vote from one of the justices to win this fight.

The Supreme Court responded to Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, regarding provisions to abortions on the basis of fetal viability. Justice Kennedy voted as a swing vote to uphold fetal viability as a way to measure abortion legality, rather than a trimester opinion, with the aim to make a woman’s decision “more thoughtful and informed.”[3] In the past, Justice Kennedy has expressed conflicting views on abortion, upholding restrictions in the initial Roe v. Wade in 1972 that legalized abortion, and then changing his mind after some consideration during Planned Parenthood v. Casey, so the public widely kept their fingers crossed for his swing vote.

In the court, almost 25 years after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Kennedy swung his vote again. Justice Breyer read the majority opinion, while Alito commented on the dissenting. As soon as Justice Breyer announced that “We conclude that neither of these provisions offers medical benefits sufficient to justify the burdens upon access that each imposes. Each places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a pre-viability abortion, each constitutes an undue burden on abortion access, Casey, supra, at 878 (plurality opinion), and each violates the Federal Constitution. Amdt. 14, §1.”[4], a huge smile spread across my face.

The strict guards had mandated utter silence during the whole trial, and because Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt was second in line for the Court, we still had to listen to the final case. After what seemed like an eternity, my group and I ran outside to the mass of protesters and picked up signs, singing and dancing and rejoicing in our victory, while the small group of anti-choice advocates stood still with their arms folded and “pro-life” taped in red across their mouths. The whole experience felt surreal. In a meeting later, one of my colleagues noted that this day in history will become a “Where were you when…” experience and I have the privilege to say I sat inside the very Court itself.

For me, the excitement did not end when I walked into work. Because of the nature of our organization, the whole office celebrated this victory.

The clinics that were shut down in Texas back in 2013 will need amplified funding and employment in order to reopen, and TRAP (Targeted Regulations to Abortion Providers) Laws in Mississippi and Alabama regarding hospital admitting privileges are still pending to the Court. The “undue burden” clause of prior cases has been defined, and further abortion regulations may be later deemed as unconstitutional. Until then, we keep fighting the same war and keep rejoicing at success, but as I have learned his summer, success is just another step in the process; we are never truly finished.

Women’s rights are still not equal; we need to continue fighting for reproductive justice and economic justice in the both in the exam room and in the work place.

[1] “United States Abortion.” Guttmacher. Guttmacher Institute, June 2016. Web. 28 June 2016.

[2] SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. “WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. JOHN HELLERSTEDT, COMMISSIONER, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES, ET AL.” Journal (American Water Works Association) 29.5 (1937): 699–713.Supremecourt.gov. 27 June 2016. Web. 28 June 2016.

[3] Morris, Danielle Keat. “Fordham International Law Journal Planned Parenthood v. Casey: From U.S. “Rights Talk” to Western European “Responsibility Talk””. Accessed from Wikipedia.org

[4] SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. “WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. JOHN HELLERSTEDT, COMMISSIONER, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES, ET AL.” Journal (American Water Works Association) 29.5 (1937): 699–713.Supremecourt.gov. 27 June 2016. Web. 28 June 2016.