Know your students. Even the ones in MAGA hats.
Recently, I asked teachers in a workshop to discuss hypothetical scenarios related to this fall’s electoral season. One of those scenarios imagined a student proudly brandishing MAGA gear in celebration of a Trump victory, a possibility that left many in attendance feeling anxious. The ensuing discussion revealed a disconnect between left-leaning teachers and the sometimes more conservative families whose children they educate. “To see a child celebrate a Trump victory,” summarized one teacher, “would make me wonder whether I ever really knew these families at all.”
Early in my career a wise mentor conveyed a simple trick to keep me in the good graces of even the scariest of parents: know their children. Connection lies at the heart of our mission as educators, and the most impactful teachers know that job number one is to teach the child, not the subject. Beyond the instinctive moves that guide an effective teacher’s daily interactions with students, we must sometimes do some homework. Many of us, for example, are digging into anti-racist literature as one step down the path of better serving children of color. Getting to know our students is a joyful, instinctive process, but it’s not just a matter of friendly banter. It takes work, and that work extends to the realm of ideological or political divisions.
We have so much on our plates. For some of us, a win these days is simply keeping our masks from slipping and our glasses from fogging. The pandemic is exhausting, and the election is daunting. We certainly don’t need any more work, but, if we’re facing the truth, we have it. We simply cannot in good conscience allow this election to slip past by keeping our heads down and avoiding the drama. (Nor, by the way, should we fool ourselves into thinking our national divisiveness and discomfort will wane one bit in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. We can be sure that no matter who occupies the Oval Office in the coming years, the divisions that plague the country will not heal themselves. Consequently, the mandate to educate our children in a way that empowers them to mend—or at least navigate—those divisions will remain.)
So where does this leave us? If we’re speaking frankly, it leaves many schools in my neck of the woods with a preponderance of left-leaning teachers who serve a more politically mixed clientele of families. This is a source of friction, and it’s the dynamic that fueled the question as to whether a teacher “ever really knew these families.” If the challenge is an ideologically divided country—and possibly an ideologically divided school—the opportunity is, as it always is, to better know our students. This includes the ones who might show up at school in a MAGA hat the day after a Trump victory.
This work need not overwhelm us. We simply need to start by assuming best intentions. If we can chip away at our mistrust of the “other” and assume that a divergent political stance is the product of a sincerely-held belief that we may not yet understand, we can tiptoe in the direction of common ground. When I lead workshops, I suggest that people start with their news feed. Allsides provides a range of news sources for every major story of the day, while the Flip Side focuses on a single event and packages news snippets from across the political spectrum. For a handy mobile app, try Read Across the Aisle, which provides access to the full spectrum of news sources and then helps you monitor where your news choices fall on that continuum. If those steps wet your whistle, wade a bit deeper into the work by engaging in conversation with people who hold contradictory views. Living Room Conversations facilitates such opportunities, and Braver Angels conducts online debates and conversations on contentious topics. This work is not easy—I found it quite taxing to listen to the arguments of fervent NRA members during an online discussion of the Second Amendment—but it is worthwhile. We simply can’t strengthen these muscles without doing some lifting.
Trying out these tools for a few weeks will not magically fill in the gulf that divides us. Doing so might, however, make someone just a bit more openminded, and that mental disposition is a prerequisite for better understanding children who come from families with political viewpoints that contradict our own.
