Strategies for Reaffirming Safe Classroom Communities After the 2020 Election
How we can utilize self-reflection, respectful communication norms, and supportive outside resources
For many American households, the 2020 election elicited feelings of either relief and jubilation or shock and bitterness. For me, I was grateful that the results were announced on a Saturday and that our family had the weekend to privately process our reactions to the historic results. Even so, as I was finalizing my lesson plans on Sunday night, I found myself staring into space, still preoccupied with all of it. I thought about how much time I had needed over the weekend to process everything, even though I was more mentally prepared after the similarly divisive 2016 election.
With that said, I knew that I was still going to feel a little emotional when I returned to the classroom on Monday, and I anticipated that some of my students would as well. I remembered how much I had appreciated it when my own teachers had given us time to discuss events like the Challenger explosion or the start of the Gulf War. While these events were not as divisively partisan, they still produced strong emotional reactions. Our classroom community was going to need some time to pause, reflect, and process the moment.
I re-saved my lesson plans for the week with next week’s dates and spent some time thinking about how I wanted to handle the week ahead.
1. “Healthy” Online Resources
I’m the first to admit that I sometimes succumb to doomscrolling on social media to stay “informed” about current events. I know it’s not good for me and it always leaves my brain feeling like I mentally ate an entire bag of particularly greasy potato chips. Ugh.
Thus, over the weekend, I made a commitment to protecting my mental health by seeking out resources that would benefit both myself and my students. I found these to be particularly helpful:
Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History and Ourselves has a page called Responding to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election that provides common-sense guidelines for educators to follow both prior to class and during the time that we are meeting with our students. As I looked through it, I took notes on the elements that I thought might work best for our class time. I’ll elaborate further on that in a bit.
Teaching Tolerance
I doubt I’m alone in feeling that every time I visit the Teaching Tolerance page, I always learn something new.
In particular, their School Climate Resources provided articles and webinars for topics that are relevant at any time of the school year: Responding to Hate and Bias at School, Speak Up At School, and Let’s Talk! Facilitating Critical Conversations With Students. I won’t waste your time by summarizing each of them, but I think you’ll agree that they’re worth a look.
This particular article, Teaching the 2020 Election: What Will You Do on Wednesday?, reaffirmed my responsibility to create a safe space for my students to process their emotions, questions, and concerns after the election. Our classroom community’s social-emotional learning needs were going to be a priority for however long necessary.
2. Self-Reflection
I also spent Sunday night reflecting on my own position in society. I am a white, middle-class, cisgender, former Catholic who has benefited from systemic racism my entire life. I am aware of my privilege and I care about righting the serious wrongs in our society. However, in spite of my private efforts to support social justice and the need for systemic change, I know that I am judged by my appearance and perceived political neutrality, particularly in a professional setting.
As I reflected, I knew that my own fear and anxiety leading up to the election were probably nothing in comparison to that of my students and their families. I needed to deliberately step back, listen, and learn from them.
3. Differentiating for Student Needs
I tried to anticipate what my students would need when they returned to school on Monday. I closed my eyes and visualized their sweet, smiling faces and realized that their reactions were going to be just as varied as their learning styles. Thus, I decided to adopt a flexible mindset for the first day or so of class.
Breakout Rooms versus Independent Work
Due to remote learning, I use the Breakout Rooms feature on Zoom quite a bit so that the students can practice their conversational Spanish in small groups. I have a system that has them practice with the same 3–4 kids for a couple of days before they’re shuffled into a new group.
On Monday, I explained to the class that they had the option of either going into the breakout rooms to share their election reactions or they could work independently on some listening practice videos that I had uploaded to EdPuzzle. I was careful to emphasize that I had uploaded EdPuzzles that would be (hopefully) interesting and that would count as extra credit.
Most of the kids opted for going into the breakout rooms, but a few of them looked relieved to have the option to work independently on the EdPuzzle activities. Within each of my classes, I only had 4–5 students who wanted to work independently so I put them in their own breakout room. I told them that they weren’t obligated to talk to each other and that I had simply clustered them together so that I could easily pop in and out to see if they were doing okay.
Communication Norms Reminder
My students know that there are very clear boundaries for what they are permitted to say in class. Due to the subject matter, they are often in breakout rooms, practicing their Spanish conversations, and it’s not possible for me to hear everything at every moment. Thus, in August we all agreed on the following Communication Norms for our classes:
- Be considerate of one another.
- If you don’t know someone or you forgot their name, please politely ask. There’s nothing more awkward than talking to someone whose name you don’t know.
- If you accidentally use profanity, please acknowledge your mistake, apologize, and move on. Everyone slips up.
- The same goes for the n-word, even if it is meant in jest or affectionately. Acknowledge, apologize, and move on.
- If something happens and you need Dr. Mann (me) to handle it, please push the Help button or send me a private message on the Zoom chat.
Two Before Me
For the students who opted to chat in their breakout rooms, I spent a few minutes explaining the Two Before Me style of conversation. It goes like this:
- Student #1 begins by sharing their reaction to the election.
- Student #2 responds
- Student #3 shares their response as well
- It is only at this point that Student #1 can respond to Student #2’s comments. This is because Student #1 needs to let two other people speak before contributing again to the conversation.
- I also pointed out that, ideally, Students #4 or #5 should be able to share their opinions before Students #1–3 say anything further. However, I told the students I would leave that to their discretion.
This was my bottom line:
“After you speak, make sure that you wait until two other people have shared a complete thought of their own before you speak again. This means that two other people need to speak before you speak again. It sounds easy, but you might be surprised at how challenging it is to wait and listen.”
4. Faculty Resources for Support
I am extraordinarily lucky to work in a district that strives to actively address the needs of the Whole Child. This is not just some fluff that we put in our annual School Improvement Plan. For the majority of the faculty, I would say that we consider social-emotional learning and trauma-informed professional development to be just as important as our curriculum and instruction PD.
Thus, the week before the election, I wasn’t surprised when one of our administrators sent out an email acknowledging the potential need for emotional support for both the students and faculty. As part of her email, she included this survey.
I’ve omitted the portions regarding personal information.
Is the survey perfect? Of course not, and I’m sure that careful readers will see the typos and Likert Scale error. However, I found it to be enormously reassuring nonetheless. Our administration was acknowledging that the election results could cause strong emotional reactions and they were prepared to offer support as needed.
How Did It Go?
On the first day back after the election, it was clear that many of the students needed the time to process and share their reactions. I popped in and out of the breakout rooms and it seemed like things were going pretty well with them chatting and implementing Two Before Me with one another. I also fully acknowledge here that the majority — maybe all? — of them discussing the election were relieved that Biden had won. It’s possible that those who decided to work on their own did not share that sentiment.
Due to our current remote learning schedule, the class periods are only 35 minutes long. On Tuesday, I checked in with the students and asked if they wanted more time to talk about the election, but the majority of them said that they were ready to get back to learning Spanish. I did a twenty-minute lesson with them and offered the last ten minutes as an opportunity to talk with one another about anything else on their mind. Again, most of them shrugged and one student said, “No, I think we’re good. It’s kind of nice to be back to normal again. Let’s just keep going with our regular stuff, Dr. Miss.”
And that’s how we’re proceeding this week. I’m still checking in with them at the start and end of class, but it’s more open-ended now. I’ve been saying, “How’s everyone doing? Anything on your mind that you want to discuss before we get into the lesson?” Or “Anything we need to talk about before we end for the day?” So far, they’ve just shrugged and smiled from their screens and assured me, “No, we’re good!”
Initially, I was proud of their reactions, but then I realized that this was just another reminder that kids are often more resilient than adults. I’m the one who is *still* having strange election dreams this week, but these kids are smiling and telling me, “Let’s keep going with the learning, okay?” It is reassuring to know that these kids are my community’s future. It gives me hope that our country will be able to find its way.
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