#documenting hate

Pi Day was over the weekend, but our culinary students celebrated it today by making apple and pecan pies. Obviously, I grabbed a slice (apple) so that I, too, could celebrate. But I accidentally left it on my desk at the end of the day, went home, changed out of my teacher clothes, etc, etc... and then realized what I’d done. And if you’re thinking that I threw my coat on over my pajamas and drove back to school just to grab that pie, you’re absolutely right.

The Principal was standing out front when I got there, too, but he didn’t ask any questions. 

Heh.

I think my brain was a bit fried at the end of the day, and that’s why I forgot the pie. The subject matter I was teaching is really difficult. We’re getting into civil rights in APUSGOV, and before I teach about the Civil Rights Movement itself I like to teach some broader history. I actually start at the present and with the modern white supremacist movement, then bounce all the way back to the 1840s and work my way forward again. So today I showed an excerpt from PBS’ Documenting Hate, which is about the Charlottesville riots, and a piece from Vox connecting Charlottesville to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. It’s graphic, it’s dark, and it can be quite shocking. 

I thought students might have more questions afterwards, but most of them were pretty quiet. That’s okay, though; it’s not easy to talk about this stuff, and some people prefer to process silently. So I ended class by asking them some questions to see how familiar they were with some of the history I’m about to teach. I also did a callback to a World lesson about the conditions that promote extremism and armed violence, and pointed out that they’ve been present in the US- to a lesser extent than in failed states, certainly, but still present- throughout these years that there’s been an uptick in white supremacist violence.

Seniors are allowed to leave at advisory time, and mine nearly always do, which either gives me an extra half hour of prep time or an extra half hour to help my ninth graders (if the seniors were still in the room, the ninth graders wouldn’t be able to come in because there’s no crossing cohorts).  Today, the student I’d had a meeting about yesterday came up to work on a writing assignment he owed me. He just needed a few tips and some help getting started. Then he finished the whole thing in twenty minutes, which boosted his grade and his confidence. So that’s awesome. 

I’m privileged to have grown up in St. Louis, a place where my grandparents wanted me to stay because it felt “safe” to them — a place they’d made their way to with the help of documents that we know weren’t entirely accurate or complete, and they became citizens anyway. So when a news link about my family’s Jewish cemetery popped up in the group chat for a reporting project on hate crimes that I’m involved in at ProPublica, I wasn’t prepared. Nor was I prepared when I called home and my mom told me that she was going to exchange cash for gold in case “things get worse” and that my dad — who has never considered shooting anything in his life — had wondered out loud about getting a gun.

I wanted to say, “You’re overreacting.” But I can’t, really, in part because it’s so hard to gauge the threat. Data on hate crimes — against Jews and everyone else — is miserably incomplete and poorly tracked. My job is about presenting facts to contextualize the news of the day, horrible as it may be. This time, I had to tell my family that I didn’t have them.

We don’t know if the vandalism at Chesed Shel Emeth was technically a hate crime. The motives behind it may well be uncovered. What we do know is that there is a long tradition of desecrating Jewish cemeteries, from Nazi Germany to present-day France and New York. And whatever the particulars, the news hit at a time when the Jewish community has been put on edge by threats to Jewish community centers where kids go to preschool and their retired grandparents take Kabbalah-infused yoga classes.

I taught two extremely dark, serious, and consequential lessons today.

The lesson in APUSGOV was one of the ones I always do before teaching about the Civil Rights Movement. I started by showing an excerpt from PBS Frontline’s Documenting Hate, which begins with the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville and does not let up in intensity. Afterwards, I opened the floor for discussion with what is a standard line for me: “What do you want to know? What do you want to say?” Students asked questions, shared their thoughts, expressed their outrage, asked more questions... Once they’d gotten it all out there, I established the fact that there is a historical thread between the white supremacist movements we see today and those of the past, and bounced back in history all the way to Reconstruction. I had students read an article with some basics about the Black Codes, Jim Crow, the KKK, and the mainstreaming of Lost Cause mythology and white supremacist ideology. Tomorrow, Tom White from the Cohen Center at Keene State is going to videoconference with us and flesh out the details, so the lesson isn’t actually over.

My World one isn’t either. I showed the first half of Shake Hands With the Devil, which is a film about the Rwandan Genocide, based on the memoir written by the UN force commander, General Romeo Dallaire. It’s R-rated, so I have to get parental permission to show it, but it’s really well done and worth showing. Every year, without fail, it elicits strong reactions from the kids, and this year was no exception. They had a bunch of questions and comments- and this is my quietest class!- and it’s obvious they’re emotionally invested in what they’re watching. We’ll finish the film tomorrow, and then I’ll ask them, “What do you want to know? What do you want to say?”

I’m sure it will be a lot.

It can be hard teaching really heavy subjects like that all day, and it’s important to take a breather afterwards, but it’s so worth it. I was reminded of that every time one of my ninth graders spoke up- and, even more so, after GOV, when two of the girls stayed behind to tell me that they'd learned a ton from the lesson, and that it should be required of everyone, and they’re so glad they’re in class because, even though this stuff is ugly, it’s important to understand. 

That's exactly it right there.

I taught a doozy of a lesson in APUSGOV this morning. I started by recapping the discussion we’d had before vacation about the failure of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the rise of the KKK, etc... Then I showed an excerpt from PBS/Frontline’s Documenting Hate, which starts with the Charlottesville riots and expands its examination of the white supremacist movement from there. It’s heavy stuff, and sometimes here in (very white) northern New England kids think of racism as something that happened a long time ago in the south, so it can be really jarring for them. I fielded questions and comments for the remainder of class, and probably could have gone on doing so for several more minutes if there’d been time. At the bell, I overheard two students saying that a third- I didn’t catch who it was- hadn’t known that Charlottesville had happened. 

I’ve gone back and forth all day about whether or not that’s surprising. 

Anyways... Now students have had a glimpse at two points in the history of race relations in America, the Jim Crow era and the present day, and I’m going to teach my way through the key things that happened in between in future classes. That’s the World Wars, the 1948 election, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, etc, etc... That will be fun and frequently inspiring- though it’s tragic, at points, too, and there’s so much work remaining- but today was just tough.

I physically shook off the weight of the lesson as my ninth graders came in for World- rolled my shoulders out, took deep breaths, got some water- and taught about Syria and Iraq after the defeat of ISIS. I had them get in groups and read a couple articles about the struggles to rebuild, the concerns about the US troop withdrawals, and the renewed tensions between Iran and Iraq. For each article, I had them put down important points on sticky notes; if multiple people int he same group had a similar point, they stacked those sticky notes. Then I had them converse with another group, and stack their sticky notes again. I hadn’t done a lesson that way before- it’s a thing I learned from a PD session on our last teacher workshop day- but I really liked it. It was a neat way for them to share what had stood out to them in their reading, and to think about organizing ideas, and it went well. 

After lunch, I shared king cake with the rest of The Cacophony because it’s Mardi Gras, and then Mrs. T and I went to the local bookstore to pick up some new books for our next unit. She was picking up books for the rest of the English department, too, so she brought me along to help carry boxes. And, of course, we made a coffee run while we were out. I shelved our books as soon as we got back, then spent the rest of my prep time grading. 

Hey, teacher fam, we all survived April Fools’ Day!

I was actually teaching very serious things, so there were no shenanigans. I kind of wish I’d thought of a good prank or something, but... Nah. I had to teach about extremism. 

In APUSGOV, I gave a lecture about civil rights policy-making that occurred after what’s traditionally marked as the “Civil Rights Movement” (AKA after 1968), and then turned my students’ attention to the backlash against said policy-making (because that continued after 1968, too, of course). I focused particularly on the recent uptick in hate crimes in the US and around the world. I showed an excerpt of Frontline/ProPublica’s Documenting Hate, which was eye-opening, sobering, and heavy... I knew it would be, so left about twenty-five minutes of time afterwards for conversation. I discussed online radicalization in a fair amount of detail because my students had questions about how white supremacist groups (and other groups, too, because extremism always looks the same) were recruiting members. That it happens in spaces they frequent- like social media sites- is understandably chilling. 

In World, my students and I discussed Pakistan. Last class, I’d ended with the point that the war in Afghanistan is Pakistan’s war, too, but before I got into that today I went over their homework, which was to research anything about Pakistani culture. I wanted them to know something about it separate from the war, so that they’d see its vibrancy and understand what was being threatened by extremism. We talked about family traditions, food, holidays, weddings, sports, agriculture... Then I showed some pictures from my various Pakistani teacher friends (I have several because I assisted in a summer institute for teachers from Pakistan while I was in grad school), all of whom live in very different regions of the country. From that, my students were able to see a real contrast between the tribal areas and the more developed regions in the east. In both my classes, students guessed that extremist groups settled in the tribal areas and began their recruiting there, spreading eastward.

I showed a quick video on exactly that, and the Pakistani army’s effort’s to fight back. It showed the extremists’ recruitment of young boys- poor orphans, mainly- and their training, which- like the film I showed in APUSGOV- is eye-opening, sobering, and heavy... Students had lots to say about that, especially knowing what they did about Pakistani culture- knowing what these boys were being deprived of, as one girl put it. I was thrilled someone made that connection in our discussion.

One of the other things that the video mentioned repeatedly was that, prior to the War On Terror, the tribal region had been pretty autonomous and the army’s presence had been minimal. Again, in both classes, students asked why the army was concentrated in the east rather than the west, which gave me the perfect lead-in to their homework: a reading on the history of India and Pakistan. I love when I can end a lesson in a “To be continued...” kind of a fashion. It makes it clear that the homework isn’t busy work. It’s the next piece of the puzzle, and knowing that makes it engaging for students. So, not surprisingly, most of them finished it before class ended. 

Awesome thing? During Block 2, as I was taking attendance, I heard Mr. F saying something about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to his algebra class. He said he couldn’t remember what the bombs were called, so- without missing a beat- I opened the door between our rooms, told him their names, and went back to taking attendance. BOOM. I AM A WIZARD!

Other awesome thing? I was observed during my Block 4 class. That’s my most thoughtful, insightful, full of questions class. And they were on fire. BOOM AGAIN!