Remembering Karen Lewis
I met Karen Lewis when I was a high school English teacher in CPS and part of a small CTU team bargaining over a new teacher evaluation policy with the district (now REACH). What struck me during our first few weeks of meetings was that despite her emerging profile, Karen was set on building personal relationships with everyone she encountered. Before I knew it, she was asking about my childhood, my approach to teaching, and my thoughts on Freire. She talked about the development of CORE, her love for her husband, John, and her conversion to Judaism. She was brilliant, funny, and deeply caring.
Sitting with Karen at the bargaining table was like playing for a great conductor. She was in complete control. When things would get heated, she would diffuse the tension with a well-timed joke. When things got off-track, she would remind us of the gravity of our work. No argument was too nuanced or technical. She knew when to push, when to give, and when to walk away. I was a thirty-year-old teacher with no experience or expertise in district policy, but next to Karen, I could look across the table at the district leaders and tell them why they were wrong.
For Karen, being a teacher was the highest calling. She knew it meant to be a great teacher, the preparation, the relationships with students, the grading. She also knew how to command attention, tell stories, and navigate complicated group dynamics. She would often remark that she was most proud of her National Board Certification.
At times, this deep commitment to teachers meant that Karen could also be assertive. I remember in one preparation meeting for a session, I made a snarky comment about teachers — I don’t remember what it was or why I said it, but it struck her the wrong way. She stopped the meeting, raised her voice, and warned me that comments like that had no place in the union and that my comment was rooted in an implicit bias against teachers of color. I immediately knew that she was right, and that I had a lot of work to do.
She was able to push in moments like that because at other moments she would connect at intensely personal levels. When I met Karen, I was feeling disconnected from my Jewish upbringing and I told her that I hadn’t been to synagogue in over a decade. For the next several months, she slowly convinced me to join her on a cold Saturday morning at her Hyde Park temple. Praying next to her, tallits around both of our shoulders, I reconnected with a spiritual, inclusive side of Judaism I hadn’t known before.
The last time I saw Karen, she was recovering from one of her first bouts with cancer. My wife and I had just had our son, Isaac, and after I sent her a picture or two, she insisted I bring him over. When I walked into her house, she was frailer than I had expected, but still Karen. Her smile, her humor, her hug, none of it had changed. I carefully handed her Isaac and she fed him a bottle while we caught up, laughing, remembering, and just being together.
Karen was a powerful education leader in Chicago who impacted teachers, schools, and students across the city, but behind the scenes, when people weren’t watching, she was also a great friend who pushed me and many others to be kind, reflective, and human.
May her memory be a blessing.
