For veteran science teacher Lesley Shapiro, the atmosphere in her classrooms this week reminded her of November 2016 when many of her students were upset by the election of President Donald Trump.
“The day after Election Day in 2016, my Providence students were traumatized, and no learning occurred in my building for two days,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro teaches biology at Classical High School in Providence. This week, she worked with her students via video chat, as distance learning continues amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, Shapiro gave her students their assignments, but told them to reach out to her if they wanted to talk.
“I had individual students popping in and just saying, ‘hey, I need to process. What do you think’s going to happen? Are we safe? Is this the end of America? My family fled this,” Shapiro said. “I have students from all over the world who have come from oppressive regimes. This is not something they ever expected to see here.”
During past national upheavals, Shapiro says she’s balanced classwork with the discussions her students want to have. This time, that’s harder to do because students and their peers are seeing each other virtually.
It’s an issue shared by teachers everywhere. Providence Superintendent Harrison Peters issued a statement Thursday, with resources for students and staff.
“This is very much something that we want to talk about. We want these discussions, these dialogs to be happening,” said Damon Drury, a sophomore at Classical High School. They watched the mob in shock, and was especially bothered by what he sees as a double standard in policing demonstrations; comparing the scenes of pro-Trump crowds gaining access to the U.S. Capitol with the military deployment at Black Lives Matter protests this summer.
“It’s causing a lot of questioning, you know?” Drury said. “Do I agree with the systems in place that got us here in the first place?
I think it’s a good thing to have that questioning towards authority and the people in power, because then that’s what we can hold them accountable.”
B Jewett, a fellow sophomore at Classical, said the week’s events have added to an extraordinarily challenging period for young people.
“I think that we’ve become desensitized,” Jewett said. “More people are dying of COVID, the global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the multiple police killings. And then this. This is too much.”
“I want my teachers to mention things happening in the world instead of ignoring it and going on with our school work,” said Demi Egunjobi, a freshman at Classical. “Making time to discuss our feelings and acknowledging what’s happening in the world around us is really important to me.”
Shapiro said this week has forced her to reflect on her own work as a teacher, and the need for schools to assess what students are actually getting out of classwork.
“We need to radically rethink what we teach and how we teach it,” Shapiro said, “because as a society, we need to train our students to do that collective sensemaking, to think critically, to think logically. So as to prevent people from so easily buying into lies and fiction.”
For Shapiro, that means — though her biology curriculum may be unchanged — her lessons are not always about science.
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