The classroom has always been more than just a room; it’s a sanctuary, a laboratory, and a launching pad for change. As educators, we possess a unique power to shape the minds and hearts of young people, guiding them to become critical thinkers and active participants in society. This guide explores how to navigate challenging times by embracing teaching as a tool for activism, justice, and care.
This pandemic has exposed deep-seated injustices and inequalities. It has also provided an opportunity to confront these issues head-on and empower students to become agents of change. This is a dive into democracy teacher’s guide for critical times.
Where do we begin when we are faced with current events? How do we allow our children to ask questions about the current climate, health care, or leadership? How do we create space for students to share their feelings?
Teaching with Exposure and Action
Instead of shying away from difficult realities, we must “press into it”. Teach with an emphasis on both exposure and action. Balance teaching the history of oppression with celebrating joy. This balance is critical, especially for students of color who are disproportionately affected.
We can teach about the “hard stuff” by teaching the ways that marginalized groups have always worked to honor their dignity and humanity.
When creating lessons, seek out the gaps and the voices that are silenced in the curriculum. Use current events to create lessons that lead to critical thinking and action. Where can we pair stories within the stories? We can transform teaching by re-imagining stories and acknowledging the “essential” workers.
Suggestions for Activism and Care
For teachers who are ready to dive a bit more deeply into activism and caring now, consider these strategies:
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Provide journal prompts to help students reflect on their feelings. Allow space for processing difficult emotions.
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Check in with families and students whose lives may be particularly challenging. Ask what they need.
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Create and send care packages to families and students.
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Choose texts that can spark conversations about current events.
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Provide space and time for mindful moments.
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Create project-based assignments that allow students to use social media to bring light to injustice.
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Develop writing assignments where students write to public officials to raise awareness about their communities.
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Teach about elections and the importance of elections.
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Have students write letters soliciting donations for families or other children who may be in need.
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Allow students to guide what their learning might look like now. Carve out time to listen in to students’ thoughts, feelings, fears and frustrations, as well as their sources of joy.
Transforming Teaching
For older students, this may look like incorporating current events into reading assignments. Teachers can allow students to apply critical lenses, such as critical race theory and Marxist theory, to the reading of news articles to allow students to think more deeply about who is being most affected and why. Students could consider the types of stories that are being published. What voices and communities are being represented? Which communities and voices are not?
Students in science courses can study viruses, yes, if this is not traumatic for them, but students could also begin to understand the links between public health and racism by looking at the rates of death and infection in marginalized communities.
Science teachers could dive into allowing students to understand the importance of mental health, disparities in mental health, or how students and families can find ways to cope during this time.
We can transform our teaching by reimagining stories like The Little Engine That Could by likening its plot to the struggles of oppressed groups who have long been resisting and pressing on in this country. We can expand our definition of a crisis by considering how our current and momentary inconveniences are the daily lived realities of people in other countries.
We can ask our children to think of and to be grateful for those who must continue to work and, in many ways, daily sacrifice their health and well-being for the good of humanity. We can acknowledge that the people who are often deemed “unsuccessful,” those often forgotten in society, are now the “essential” workers. We can use this time to redefine and reconsider who we revere as heroes.
A Call to Action
This isn’t about adding more to teachers’ already full plates. Instead, it’s a moment to respond to the broken aspects of humanity exposed by the pandemic. It’s time to move away from a “normalcy” rooted in oppression and reimagine teaching as a tool for action and care.
Teachers can have hard conversations and teach hard lessons while caring for themselves and their students, especially if students are among the marginalized.
Embrace this opportunity to lead to new and long-lasting forms of resistance and healing. This a dive into democracy teacher’s guide is not a burden, but a powerful tool for social justice.
