Jago Times "English Edition" Best Online Newspaper
Related Articles
Teacher Bri Thomas was in the middle of a history lesson about Thomas Jefferson’s writings and the way a president’s words shape public discourse when her phone started vibrating with news alerts.
The world history and African-American studies teacher at Bryan Adams High School — along with her students — was shocked to learn of the pro-Trump mob assembling outside the U.S. Capitol.
Thomas, a Black woman, had attended a Black Lives Matter protest this summer where protesters knelt and prayed as armed police watched. Yet as Thomas and her class turned to the news to watch a mostly white mob storm the Capitol, police presence was limited.
“It hurt for myself. It hurt for some of my kids,” Thomas said. “I had kids recognize that for them, they recognize that is privilege. Those are their own words. Those aren’t things that I gave them.”
Teachers and students across Texas confronted history in real time Wednesday as the mob that descended on Washington, D.C., was at once a lesson on democracy and the Constitution, on racism and on the danger of conspiracy theories.
The Capitol was still being cleared and lawmakers were sheltering in place when many Texas schools were ending their day. Grateful for the time to formulate their own thoughts, educators began planning how to address the events with students.
On Thursday morning, U.S. history teacher Stephen Patterson opened class by feeling out what his students had witnessed.
“I wanted to find out what they knew to be fact, what they had heard, in terms of opinions, and just try to separate those things and then go into how they were feeling about what they saw,” Patterson said.
Students had plenty of questions. They asked about the 25th Amendment, bias in the news media, the National Guard and whether President Donald Trump would run for election in 2024.
Calls for change
In recent weeks, Thomas’ class had been discussing social position and the privilege that each person brings to or lacks in a situation. On Thursday, several of her students drew comparisons to the great armed response that Black Lives Matter protests received.
Some students asked what they could do to change what was happening in the country. Thomas reflected the question back to her students, asking them to share their thoughts in a written response. She hasn’t read through all of them yet, but she, like her students, is eager to see what comes next.
Some social studies teachers are turning to Facebook groups to crowdsource ideas for how to respond to the historic events playing out. One teacher in Grand Prairie says he’s going to show his students the front pages of newspapers from around the world so they can see what this American crisis looks like from the outside.
Other teachers are hesitant to incorporate the final days of the Trump presidency into their lessons for fear they will be accused of bias.
But it’s imperative for educators to confront and discuss this week’s events, said Amanda Vickery, a professor of social studies and race in education at the University of North Texas.
“All those people who descended on the Capitol — they were once students sitting in someone’s social studies classroom,” she said. “As educators, we have a moral obligation to teach this.”
In Fort Worth, third grade teacher Meghan Gowin expected Wednesday to be chaotic already because it was the first day back for students after her charter school’s winter break. Many kids were returning to class in person for the first time since March.
Because she was so consumed with welcoming her students, she didn’t learn about the siege until dismissal.
She knew she would have to address what happened with her class of mostly Black and brown 9-year-olds. But first, she needed some time. Gowin asked for a mental health day on Thursday to prepare.
“On my campus, people see me as the social justice person. I lead the training. I develop the social justice curriculum,” said Gowin, who is Black. “But I woke up this morning feeling like a mom who is overwhelmed with the state of the world right now, who is raising two little Black boys in a world that is harsh and not inviting for them.”
She’s spent the day processing the news with her sons, ages 8 and 10, and roughing out a lesson plan for Friday.
Gowin will ask her third graders to reflect on a picture of men scaling the walls of the Capitol, as Trump flags wave around them, and on a short video made by an account called Woke Kindergarten that asks students to “spot the difference” between photos taken at Black Lives Matter protests and those taken during Wednesday’s mob.
But, more importantly, she wants to check in on the emotional state of her students.
Conversations sparked
The stark contrast between the force used on Wednesday’s insurrection and this summer’s George Floyd protests was also a hot topic of discussion at Wilmer-Hutchins High School.
Alejandro Lopez Vasquez, a 15-year-old sophomore at the school’s collegiate academy, said he was taken aback how easily the rioters made it into the Capitol, and how — later in the day — the mob was still on the streets during a supposed curfew, with little to no repercussions.
That was much different from what the school’s students, nearly 99% Black or Hispanic, saw or experienced this summer during Dallas’ Black Lives Matter protests.
“You could see the inequality there,” he said.
The day’s events had many teachers reinforcing the need for civic engagement.
At Dallas’ Madison High School, government teacher Tyrone Gordon was keeping an eye on Georgia’s U.S. Senate races while working with students on the text of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” late Wednesday afternoon.
As Gordon pulled up live news coverage when the rioting broke out, nearly every image — such as one member of the mob carrying a Confederate flag into the Capitol — sparked another conversation.
Gordon used the moment to circle back to a few of his class’s cornerstones: the importance of expressing their voice through voting, and the struggle some have fought to get that right. Each year he takes seniors across the street to an early voting location, where students receive a standing ovation after they cast their ballots.
“I’d been telling them that we, as a country, have peaceful transitions of power, and [mob rule] is not how we function as a government,” Gordon said. “But for them to see that, they were just flabbergasted.”
Moving forward
Many college classes haven’t started the new semester yet, but students were already responding to Wednesday’s protests.
Lamisa Mustafa, a senior at Southern Methodist University, is administrative director of the Human Rights Council on campus that spent much of Thursday providing virtual spaces for students to discuss and process the event.
“It’s just kind of a harsh reminder of the fact that these issues that surround yesterday’s events — issues of racism, white supremacy, government accountability, public health and public safety — these are nonpartisan in nature,” Mustafa said. “They affect all of us and just gravely concern anyone who cares about human rights regardless of their party affiliation.”
Edward Sesay, president of the Student Government Association at the Dallas College Richland campus, is fearful of what will happen next and of what kind of message this sends about the United States’ national security.
Sesay, who is from Gambia in West Africa, became a U.S. citizen in 2018.
“Something you see like this happens in Africa because there are Third World countries,” he said. “People would march and protest the government capitol and destroy properties, and nothing would happen to them. But this is the United States of America. To destroy public and government property — the people’s house — that is not a way to make your voice heard.”
The Capitol riot had some young conservative leaders condemning the mob mentality and focused on planning thoughtful events moving forward.
Jordan Clements, a junior at the University of Texas at Austin and chairman of the school’s Young Conservatives of Texas chapter, had just returned from Atlanta — where he had been helping with the Senate races — when he found out about the rioting.
After talking with other members of his group, Clements is worried that any future events might be misconstrued as Trump rallies, adding that some do not want to be associated with the president.
“Storming the Capitol is not conservative,” Clements said. “Storming the Capitol is not prudent. And storming the Capitol was awful and will do more harm to the movement than a loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.”