After the surprising election results, many of us were able to take the time to step back and reflect on what had just happened. Even if we were at work, our minds really weren’t on work. By contrast, our nation’s teachers had only a few hours between the election results and a room full of students early the next morning.
What many of our teachers did in the classroom the next day represents education at its best. I first saw teachers’ stories appearing on my own news feeds, and, inspired, I began reading many more stories outside my own circle of colleagues. Although teachers all approached their specific students in unique ways, I found clear through lines that emerged across many of our nation’s classrooms.
Try to remain unbiased. One third grade teacher was very aware that many of her students had different political views. She wrote, “Being a teacher today was one of the most difficult things. Please understand that we have to put aside all our beliefs and make sure we have a completely politically unbiased discourse with our students.” We know it’s impossible to be entirely unbiased in the classroom—we all bring with us our backgrounds and values. However, it is our job as teachers to be as unbiased as we possibly can since we need to create space for all of our students to express their views, ideas, and hopes for the future, not to offer our own.
Expression. In keeping with this idea many teachers (and schools) found numerous ways for students to express themselves. At MIT, students were greeted as they entered the campus with two large sheets of paper with the words “Share your hopes” and “Share your fears.” Tamar Paull, a middle school teacher at The Gordon School in Rhode Island, asked her students to find ways they connect to each other writing “If you . . . I will” statements that are inclusive and accepting. The example she offered is, “If you are alone at recess, I will ask you to join in my game or conversation.” Other teachers more directly addressed the election of the President-elect, but still in an open-ended way. A middle school teacher in Detroit, Michigan asked her students to write letters to Donald Trump expressing their feelings about him becoming our next president. One of her students poignantly wrote,
“I am Mexican, but before you get mad, how would you feel if you were sent to a place you don’t know? My family and I came here for a better life here but you are making that hard not just for us but for all immigrants. Please accept us in America. We are all human and deserve the same respect not to be judged by our race, heritage, or skin color.”
Reflection. Teachers also allowed space for silence. In a university art classroom the students processed the election results by immersing themselves in their studio projects. The professor was surprised, “I’ve never seen them this subdued.” Other teachers took their students outside the school. After taking with her students about the election, a middle school teacher offered, “We gathered our final harvest from the school gardens and put the gardens to bed for the winter.”
Poems, Songs, and Stories. Many teachers also brought powerful texts into the classroom. Meaningful texts provide opportunities to think critically about our society as well as inspire future action. Many teachers had found poems that were about race and inclusivity in the United States, like Langston Hughes’ poem “I, Too”
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Another teacher explained why she brought a poem by Maya Angelou to her class:
“Many of my students are the children of immigrants, some are immigrants themselves, some are Muslim, some are Hindi, some are gay, and all are teenagers at that crossroad of life. I posted Maya Angelou's ‘Still I Rise’ on the wall in my classroom today to remind them that they have great futures ahead, and wrote on the board next to it: You belong here. You are one of us and we always take care of our own.”
Belonging. This sense of belonging and caring was the most important message that carried through many of the stories. In a school in Washington, D.C., a teacher wrote on her classroom board, “You are safe and loved here.” A middle school teacher explained, “teaching the heart as well as the mind, is one of the most important things I can be teaching right now.” The school I mentioned earlier, The Gordon School, has chosen as a school-wide theme this year “A Place to Belong.”
Perhaps this election will cause us to find what is essential in all of us—to reconnect with what actually matters. The way teachers approached their students the next morning was not just a reaction to one specific event. We find in their responses what classrooms and schools should be for all of our students, every day—places where students feel safe and loved, where they feel a strong sense of community, where social, historical, and political ideas are discussed and analyzed critically, and where there is quiet time for reflecting. These are many of the elements missing from our schools today. At this time when our nation is extremely polarized, we might learn much from our teachers and our young people as they find ways to build remarkable classroom communities where all feel they belong.