[1] Lewis returned to university part-time in 1929, teaching at Maroubra, and was a founding member and secretary of the Educational Workers' League, which advocated the abolition of public examinations, weekly tests, homework and corporal punishment.
A lapsed Jew, Lewis married fellow teacher Ethel Caroline Nelson Teerman on 20 December 1940 at Randwick.
In the early 1930s he had joined the Communist Party of Australia, becoming secretary of the Coogee branch, and, using the alias "Samuel Curtis", he was elected to the district committee in 1938.
Lang, now a dissident member of the federal parliament, attacked Lewis as a well-known communist following his appointment as a delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation meeting in Mexico City in 1947.
In 1955 he received a reprimand after slapping a boy on the face, although fellow teachers rallied in support since Lewis had reportedly been provoked by a racist insult.