Jersey Jazzman: Marilyn Zuniga and the Plight of Teachers of Color

Jersey Jazzman: Marilyn Zuniga and the Plight of Teachers of Color:

Marilyn Zuniga and the Plight of Teachers of Color

As we approach the beginning of the new school year, I think it's important to go back and recount the story of Marilyn Zuniga.

You'll recall that Zuniga was a third grade teacher in Orange, NJ, a district that is almost entirely comprised of black and Hispanic students, 81 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Zuniga had exactly the sort of training any district would look for in a novice teacher, including degrees from Montclair State and Columbia (!), and was hired last year to teach at a school where she had already worked as a substitute.

Zuniga self-identifies as a Peruvian-American. I don't have precise data to say how many Ivy League-educated candidates send their resumes to districts like Orange, but my guess is it isn't many. I've not met Zuniga, but on paper, she is the ideal candidate for a career in urban education. And the fact that she's a first-generation immigrant from a Spanish-speaking country makes her even more desirable as a potential staff member.

By all accounts, Zuniga was a fine first-year teacher; certainly, there were no accusations about her work prior to the incident in question. Zuniga was apparently committed to social justice education, and gave assignments to her students that were designed to get them to think about issues of racial and other forms of equality.

For one of those assignments, she used a quote from Mumia Abu-Jamal as a writing prompt: "So long as one just person is silenced, there is no justice." Let me add here that I have no better than a layman's understanding of the Abu-Jamal case. I was a high school student living in the Philadelphia suburbs at the time of Daniel Faulkner's death, but even my politically naive mind could tell that the trial and subsequent appeals were about far more than the particulars of the case. Abu-Jamal's story, like the stories of the MOVE bombings or Rodney King or OJ Simpson or Trayvon Martin, created spaces where America conducted its stilted discussions of race in the post-Martin/post-Malcolm world.

According to Zuniga, her students came to her sometime last spring with the news that Abu-Jamal was ill. In fact, just this month, Abu-Jamal filed a lawsuit alleging that he has

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