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The Opportunity Gap
Two young Jewish teachers are making a difference in Detroit.
Emily Phillips:
“Education is key
to success.”
Jackie Headapohl | Managing Editor
Rachael
Malerman: “I
am emotionally
invested.”
RACHAEL MALERMAN
Rachael Malerman, 25, began her third year as earth sci-
ence and zoology teacher at the Detroit School of Arts,
where she teaches ninth graders.
Malerman grew up in West Bloomfield but now lives in
Detroit. She earned her master’s degree in education at the
University of Michigan where she was a Woodrow Wilson
teaching fellow, committed to teaching in low-income
school districts.
“There is such an opportunity gap in our school
system,” she says. “I felt I would be the most useful in
Detroit.”
According to Malerman, although the school’s facilities
are nice, “our test scores are still very low. It’s challenging
to teach a wide range of students at varying reading levels.
There have been staffing shortages and things like that,
which makes it difficult to give attention to every student.”
Although she has witnessed a few fights, she’s never felt
unsafe. She’s working on “restorative practices,” trying to
create a community feel in the school. “I love getting to
know all of my students; I am emotionally invested,” she
says. “I can’t picture myself working anywhere else.”
Growing up at Temple Israel, she said, gave her a sense
of giving back. “I feel a strong sense of pride in the Detroit
Jewish community that influenced me to go into the city
and work.”
Challenges abound, however. She says teachers had to
take pay cuts and continue to have to buy their own class-
room supplies, such as tissues and pencils. “It’s hard to
keep people in this environment,” she said. “You see good
people leave.”
Recently engaged, Malerman says that right now, she
would not send her kids to school in Detroit. “It’s a hefty
goal for one person, but I’d like to leave having this a place
where I would send my kids,” she says. “But I don’t see
that happening.”
EMILY PHILLIPS
Emily Phillips grew up in Farmington Hills and attended
the University of Michigan for her undergraduate work
and Wayne State University, where she earned her mas-
ter’s in art and education. Phillips, single and 27, lives
in Detroit and teaches chemistry and anatomy to 11th-
graders at the University Preparatory Academy, a public
charter school in the New
Center area. This is her second
year there.
“Education is key to suc-
cess,” she says. “The resources you get in school you use
for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, students in Detroit
don’t get the same resources as those in Farmington Hills.”
More than half of the students at her school are eligible
for free lunch, and many lack supplies or the transporta-
tion to come to school. “There are some kids ready, but
many lack the background and skills they need to suc-
ceed,” she said. “I think a lot of my students will get into
college, but they will likely have a tough time keeping up.
Retention is going to be an issue.”
Phillips is a former Americorps volunteer for Repair the
World and Eden Gardens Community Garden. She said
her biggest challenge is “making sure the students get to
where they need to go by helping them to build skills —
not just spoonfeeding them information.”
Her students come from all over the city, she said. “I can
relate to them. We see each other out in the community.”
Although she considers teachers at her school to be
“well supported,” she still has to go out and purchase the
supplies for her classroom. “I’ve tried to use technology
as I can, with interactive computer programs and review
games. But the computers are outdated, and we have
trouble connecting to the internet.”
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continued from page 15
Goldstein had a racially mixed group of
students, but some parents were starting
to make an issue of the teachers’ race.
“A parent told a white teacher she was
biased and that’s why her son was failing.
They threatened to sue,” Goldstein says.
“One white teacher had such a difficult
group of students and parents that an
African American teacher traded classes
with her.”
Jewish teachers were being excluded
from some assemblies and Goldstein’s
principal told teachers they couldn’t
wear Jewish stars because the star was
a Chicago gang symbol. Jewish teachers
sent a letter to their union representative
and the principal was chastised, Goldstein
recounts. (Goldstein and another Jewish
teacher immediately bought and wore
chains with large Jewish stars.)
The American Jewish Committee (AJC)
and Jewish Community Relations Council
were brought in to mediate. Sharona
Shapiro, then AJC Michigan Area direc-
tor, says school meetings were begun with
prayers mentioning Jesus, and Jewish
teachers were feeling left out. Teacher
Education Days were sometimes held on
Jewish holidays.
Monthly meetings were held with a
group of Jewish teachers, principals and
16 October 13 • 2016
the district superintendent as they “tried
to weed out some personal issues from
anti-Semitism.”
“The schools were focusing on black
nationalism,” Shapiro says. “The teachers
were trying to do good, but didn’t have a
support system.”
Today, she says, “the system is broken
and needs everyone’s help. Young teachers
are getting re-engaged.”
Marnina Falk and Jeremy Singer are two
of those young Jewish teachers. Falk, 26, is
in her third year of teaching Spanish in a
unique Foreign Language and Immersion
Studies program at the Academy of the
Americas.
“It’s an opportunity to teach language in
an environment I love,” she says. “A lot of
good things are happening in Detroit, and
I wanted to be part of the rejuvenation.”
Falk says the language immersion school
has a predominantly African American
student body and is the only school like
this in Michigan. She says she enjoys the
“super diverse staff in a school where dif-
ferent perspectives are encouraged.” Falk
was raised in Huntington Woods, where
she currently lives.
Jeremey Singer, a New York native,
taught at Cody High School for two years
through the Teach for America program.
“It was challenging, and I learned a lot,”
he says. “The teachers I met loved the stu-
dents so much and would do anything to
help them, but concentrations of poverty
and violence are complicating factors.
The schools are struggling under massive
debt and are under-staffed and under-
resourced. People in leadership positions
come and go.”
Most students are African American,
and some were familiar with Judaism
through Holocaust studies in middle
school. Some didn’t think of Jewish people
as white — not an uncommon belief
among African Americans, he says. He
now teaches history at Denby High School
and bought a house near Detroit’s West
Village.
The Jewish presence in DPS includes
several active alumni foundations cre-
ated by former Jewish DPS students. They
provide volunteers and raise funds for
equipment and building improvements.
The Pasteur Alumni Foundation has an
integrated group of 250 members with an
active cadre of volunteers who tutor at the
school and help out on Career Day and
Earth Day. Last year, they spent $18,000
for educational programs at Pasteur.
“I wanted to heal what happened in
the 1960s,” says Marcy Feldman, Pasteur
Alumni Foundation co-founder. “There
was a hole in my heart for the black kids. I
always had black friends but had lost track
of them.”
She found Deborah Manning, an
African American friend from Pasteur, in
1996, and they began the alumni founda-
tion soon after that. Manning had trans-
ferred to Pasteur from an all-black school
in Ferndale and says she experienced
“culture shock” because she was used
to a black environment. But she found
that everyone was nice to one other. She
describes it as a wonderful experience
although the curriculum was entirely dif-
ferent and harder. Manning became the
first black president of the Hampton stu-
dent council.
When Feldman toured Pasteur during
the mid-1990s, she was “upset that noth-
ing had changed. Everything looked old
and sad. I was upset that the schools don’t
provide what we had,” Feldman says.
The Pasteur Alumni Foundation is try-
ing to change that with field trips, extra
books and even new curtains for the
auditorium. Jewish involvement contin-
ues at Pasteur, at Bagley Elementary and
elsewhere within DPS with former DPS
students and teachers helping today’s stu-
dents get the education they deserve.
*