Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., was stormed Wednesday afternoon by a mob supporting President Donald Trump, aiming to disrupt the House and Senate certification process of President-elect Joe Biden's win in the 2020 presidential election. The events present educators with yet another difficult topic to navigate in classroom discussion.
• In addition to creating potentially loaded debate in the classroom, the events — which NPR reports left four dead and resulted in dozens of police injuries and arrests — also require educators to be prepared to provide supports for students whose anxiety and uncertainty is spiked by footage and photos of the events in the news and on social media.
• A number of education organizations have resources available that offer blueprints for talking to students about protests, unsettling information and violent events — including Facing History and Ourselves, Common Sense Media, the National Association of School Psychologists and the National Education Association.

Dive Insight:

In the wake of the storming of the Capitol building, education leaders, including current U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her expected successor, Miguel A. Cardona, issued statements via social media condemning the events. 

The events of Wednesday afternoon add to a long list of difficult-to-navigate topics in the classroom. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests presented challenges for lesson planning over the past year, last year's impeachment hearings served as fuel for potentially tense classroom discussions, and recent years have seen mass shootings occur on a consistent enough basis to provoke fear and anxiety among students. 

However, demonstrations in particular — regardless of their tone — offer a window through which to engage students in lessons on civics, the limits of the First Amendment's protection of speech, and consequences that may exist under the law. Following a year where Black Lives Matter protests led to a consideration of implicit biases within society, comparing and contrasting the events can also add layers to those discussions.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned last year that "civic education has fallen by the wayside," and a report from Stanford researchers published last year in the American Educational Research Journal stated the nation's students are ready for complex, nuanced civics instruction.

"As educators, we take seriously our responsibility to prepare young people for civic life and to be models of peaceful participants in a democratic society that serves all people. What we witnessed at the Capitol today was the antithesis of that ideal," Council of Chief State School Officers CEO Carissa Moffat Miller said in a statement.

And in a statement from AASA, The School Superintendents Association, Executive Director Daniel Domenech said, "The herculean efforts being done by school district administrators, building leaders, teachers and parents to educate our young learners regarding what’s right and what’s wrong was indirectly challenged following the senseless act of vandalism at the Capitol building."

Social-emotional supports are also key in these discussions, which require compassion and empathy on the part of students and educators alike. Keeping discourse civil and respectful on highly polarized topics can be a challenge in particular, though learning to do so is a skill that will serve students well into their adult lives as they shape what the world looks like in the future.