Live Not By Lies

We must not. I cannot.

If there is one thing I post that you ever read, have it be this:

Live Not By Lies by Solzhenitsyn.

As the weeks went by and things got worse, my good friend sent me this.

I first fell in love with Solzhenitsyn in tenth grade, when I took Russian Literature. Tenth grade, the grade where the students I had now could not write five coherent sentences.

I swore I would be like Solzhenitsyn. That I wouldn’t be complicit. All through high school and college and for many years after, I never doubted that. How did the firebrand girl who wasn’t afraid to lead a sit in at the Yale President’s office in 1996 become this tired, angry woman with the light going out of her eyes, clutching a PDF of Solzhenitsyn and a bunch of stickers? How did the woman who just a few years ago published articles in support of Israel and against antisemitism, even as her neighborhood got more dangerously anti-Israel, come to be sitting at her keyboard, typing out articles in a rage but afraid to hit publish?

Lie by lie. Hope by hope, broken dreams. Again and again.

Things get worse at the end of every year. That is to be expected. But things got much worse. I won’t go into detail but events occurred that made it obvious that my physical safety was in danger. And for what? A $216 a day paycheck with no benefits, no healthcare, no disability insurance? The ability to say, “I’m a teacher,” when what that means is, “I try to keep the peace while kids run and scream?”

I could no longer put my own safety at risk. If I got hurt, I have no disability benefits and no healthcare. Who takes care of my little family if I can’t work? Not the school. There’s no one but me.

What was worse than fearing for my safety was the fear that I was losing my soul.

Love for the little ones was turning to anger. Respect to the point of reverence for leadership was turning into… confusion? Contempt? “What is it you think we are doing here?” I wanted to ask.

But I didn’t want to give up. I had made a commitment. I believed that all of these people are doing the best that they can under difficult circumstances, and I still do. But I cannot live with the lies.

Solzhenitsyn and my old college friend, as well as another from a different era of my life, to the rescue. As PTSD symptoms that had been in remission for a while returned, I resigned my long term sub post.

Frederick Douglass did not fight for the descendants of slaves to make Tik Tok videos in the classroom. Replace those Black Lives Matter posters in every classroom with Black Literacy Matters and teach the kids to read and write. Until then, I will not be a part of it.

Solzhenitsyn does not ask us to go to the gulag. He doesn’t even ask us to speak out.

“We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!”

It is not education to pass children from grade to grade when they can’t perform the basic tasks of grade level. To participate in the system is to perpetuate the lie.

Alone, it feels impossible to get out. I felt trapped. Get through the day, get through till the end of the year… but not when I might be trampled in a fight or accidentally knocked down by an out of control seventh grader in a classroom where only certified special ed teachers should be.

Live not by lies. Keep repeating it.

I am not alone. That’s what I realized. The article held my hand even though I had nightmares every night.

We Yalies of my little tribe don’t abandon our own. I was watching Ahsoka when I first started writing about Israel, and thought, if Sabine would risk the galaxy for her Ezra, the least I can do is write an article for mine.

I feel like my friends went to the other side of the galaxy to bring me home.

Sticker Lady is gone.

April Smith is back.

After months of looking down, I can see the sky again.