Talking about Gaza with my non-Jewish students

As a teacher, I am responsible for shaping the next generation of students that pass through my classroom. Teachers carry a heavy weight, giving students information that due to our position of authority can often be taken as a fact – even when we are sharing our opinions on a topic.

Current high schoolers are constantly taking in an overload of information. They are fed content through their phones so frequently that, they are often ignoring the immediate world around them while observing and analyzing greater society. They understand so much more about how the world is interconnected than any generation before. They make generalisations using all of that but often without digging any deeper or using critical thinking.

While all teachers are under the spotlight, those of us who come from a minority group, have even more responsibility. Children take our every move and word as an example of what to believe and how to act. If you are a teacher who identifies as a person of color, part of the LGBTQIA+ community, or any other marginalised population, your every step becomes measured so that your students take away the right impression of who you and your people are.

As a Jewish teacher in the context of the current conflict in Gaza, I have found myself answering questions that affect my personal identity more than ever before.

I currently work in Spain, where the most generous estimates place Jews as 0.1% of the population. I am often the only Jew my students have ever met.

How do I talk about the conflict in Gaza while allowing my students to come to their conclusions? How do I speak about the Jewish people as a whole? How do I represent who I am as a Jew without making my students think that I am the only acceptable kind of Jew? How do I speak about the state of Israel?