Wednesday was a tough day. Of course, going to school the day after a mass school shooting always is. Compounding that, our school had a student-planned mental health assembly, and the keynote speaker, unbeknownst to us, just happened to be the mother of a Sandy Hook victim. As I sat there listening to her presentation about compassion and love, the tragic irony of the situation was not lost on me that this event had been planned for months and then occurred on the heals of a horrific shooting, eerily similar to that of Sandy Hook.
Due to the assembly, we had half-length periods for the day, which I used to discuss with students the challenges facing schools at a local and national level. The shooting was the big news story, but accompanying it was a story about swastikas drawn in the bathrooms of a local middle school, which, along with general vandalism, our own school’s bathrooms had experienced. A few days prior to that, a story on NPR examined the unprecedented levels of behavioral challenges in high schools across the state, including bathroom vandalisms, violence, and bullying. Our school has experienced all of it, with the fighting especially frequent this year.
Talking to six periods of high school students about school shootings after listening to the mother of a Sandy Hook victim left me utterly drained emotionally. I even had a dream about a school shooting that night, and I’m not one that typically loses sleep over that since I know it’s so incredibly rare.1 Yet in the middle of all of that, it occurred to me that this is ultimately why I am a teacher: I am in the position to do something about this. I can teach respect, compassion, and love. I can teach students to be civic citizens. I can teach students to be judicious consumers of digital information. I can teach students to engage in respectful political discourse with fact and evidence-based arguments. And I do believe that’s what will make a difference in the future.
I teach because two mass shootings committed by 18-year-old boys in a 10-day span is tragic, and I know that commonly proposed “solutions” would serve as mere temporary band-aids. The specific gun control proposals advocated in the wake of many of these shootings often wouldn’t have prevented the shooting, and armed guards can be overcome (see Buffalo shooting). This is not to say that a combination of these factors couldn’t mitigate the crisis, and we definitely should be considering all options, but none of these proposals would’ve changed the desire of two 18-year-olds to commit mass murder. During our presentation from the mother of the Sandy Hook victim, she said that there are only two types of people: good people and good people in pain. Most violence is committed by people in pain who lack meaningful relationships.2 We as teachers can change that long-term. We can instill a sense of community. We can educate a generation of young people to be respectful and tolerant. And we can ensure that all students have a caring adult connection in their lives.
I teach because the political discourse in this country is toxic, and often based on misinformation, fear, hyperbole, and distortion, resulting in insult and vitriol rather than mutual understanding. Social media echo chambers enable people to be surrounded only by information they agree with, further closing their minds to the legitimacy of opposing ideas and eroding the ability to compose their own thoughts.
Case in point, I recently had a discussion with someone on Facebook who attributed increasing corporate housing market investments and other economic ills to Joe Biden and “Liberals screwing up the economy.” I responded with a lengthy, well-researched argument which combined the application of universally accepted economic principles with information from quality sources such as Forbes, NPR, the Census, and economic statistic websites. His reply was to ridicule and insult my arguments, say that my news sources are lying, and call me a “liberal” (which I’m not) without offering any type of counter-argument of his own. Upon examining his timeline, he had numerous posts labeled “misinformation” by Facebook, to which he replied with more laughter, insinuating that the fact-checkers are wrong. It is important to note that this is not solely limited to adherents of one side of the political spectrum or the other. I have been personally insulted for my historical and economic arguments by people from all sides, with one person telling me that I “don’t give a f*** about minorities” because I voted for a third party candidate. I’m thankful for these people because it provides the antithesis of what I want my students to become. I teach because I want political discourse in the country to improve, and I can help students develop the skills to compose a well-researched, fact-based argument using reliable sources of information while fostering respect and understanding. Furthermore, I can teach students to think objectively by examining arguments from competing perspectives, something I frequently do in my Economics courses. Collectively, these skills will allow our society to work together to solve problems and reverse the trend of increasing divisiveness.
I teach because January 6th, 2021 was a devastating day for our nation and not only do I never want it to happen again, but the next generation needs to see it for what it was: an insurrection and an attempt to undermine our Democracy sparked by the repeated lies of a sitting president. It is critical for our students to understand history as a discipline of reconstructing and interpreting the past based on evidence instead of memorization of facts and dates. From a historical perspective, it is correct to state as a fact that the election was not stolen, since that’s what the overwhelming body of historical evidence concludes. Furthermore, I am in a position teach my students how to evaluate the credibility and reliability of information online, which I feel is arguably the most important thing they can learn in this day and age.3
I understand that as a Social Studies teacher, I am in a unique position to teach some of these more specific, civic skills. However, regardless of what subject or age group you teach, you have the power to make a difference on the individual level and for society as a whole. All teachers, whether you have your students the whole day, half of the day, or for 45 minutes per day, can implement social emotional learning, foster a connected community, and teach compassion and respect. I believe those connections are more important than ever on the heals of the pandemic. Sometimes it only takes one trusted adult to change a student’s future.
I know this has been a long, exhausting few years. I had a mentor of mine (a veteran teacher) reach out and tell me that the teachers in his school feel like they’re limping into the end of the year. I feel the same way. We as teachers have the weight of the future on our shoulders, and have to deal with multitudes of external pressures, such as general distrust from society and lawmakers; laws that restrict what we can teach or force us to teach things when we already lack the time necessary to get through our curriculum; and the ever-present sense of burden of our students’ success.
So if you feel utterly exhausted, know that you are not alone. If you feel alienated by the air of distrust towards educators in society, you are not alone. If you have noticed the increase in student behavioral challenges, you are not alone. If you are concerned about the future of young people, you are not alone. But we are in the unique position to make long-lasting, meaningful change. We can shape the future we want for our students and for society as a whole. When times are rough, think about why you teach and let that be the driving force that gets you through hardship. I teach because I love my students and want a better future them. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?4
If you enjoyed this post, read some of the others:
- Buffalo shooter’s beliefs echo Nazi ideology
- The Importance of Teaching and Applying Historical Thinking Skills
- 1619 Project vs. 1776 Commission: The Battle for the Classroom
Footnotes:
- By my rough calculations, the chance of being killed in a school shooting since Columbine is 1 in 1.35 million.
- This is in alignment with the late psychologist William Glasser’s “Choice Theory,” which is centered on helping people improve their lives by mending broken relationships.
- Stanford History Education Group’s Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum is a phenomenal resource chock full of lesson plans about evaluating online information. These types of lessons can be used in any classroom and are appropriate for almost any age of students.
- This last statement is one often-repeated in book titles, but my inspiration comes directly from the title of retired Army Colonel Jack Jacobs’s memoir of the same name. Jacobs received the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.
History in Focus 