“Any social movement starts with young people’s participation. They’re the basis, the foundation.”
— Kimberly Felder, Urban Assembly Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice

World and national affairs in July and August disrupted our time of rest and renewal. Violence and controversy intruded. Turkey. Baton Rouge. Dallas. Nice. And, of course, there’s the contentious presidential campaign. We’ve had one hot summer.

We can’t avoid these difficult issues as we return to our schools this September. The UFT built its legacy on fierce activism in partnership with the civil, women’s and human rights movements. Throughout our union’s history, the fight for fair wages and working conditions has been interwoven with the fights for educational equity, economic justice and civil rights.

We can’t ignore the passions inflamed or the anxiety triggered for our students by this summer’s events. While young people in cities across the nation protested for social and economic justice, heart-wrenching images of grieving families and unrelenting vitriol saturated social media and broadcast news.

As high school educators, we can provide a safe space for our students to explore these incidents in the context of constitutional issues such as freedom of speech and assembly and unreasonable search and seizure and to consider their responsibilities as law-abiding citizens. We also have the opportunity to explore emerging social and political movements in real time with our teenage students.

It isn’t easy. Where do we begin? Creativity and a commitment to challenge our own comfort zone should guide our work. In an essay on teacher practice from “Unfinished Business,” edited by Pedro Noguera and Jean Yonemura Wing, northern California high school teacher turned researcher Pharmicia Mosely recounts the reasons Berkeley HS students were invited to participate in a professional development session. The PD sought to unpack teachers’ assumptions and frame of reference relating to students of color and academic achievement as part of a larger initiative to develop strategies to close the achievement gap. She describes the abiding impact of the honest engagement between teachers and students during that session. “So unusual was this opportunity for students and teachers to talk about these problems face-to-face, and so poignant and critical were the student voices that, four years later, teachers were still referring to this as one of the best staff development days ever held at Berkeley High.”

The entry points for discussing sensitive topics and eliciting frank student dialogue will differ from school to school. There’s no single approach or template that works in all cases. We need to be sensitive to our school’s individual culture and determine what best fits. Summoning up our courage to listen and learn is a good starting point.

At the Urban Assembly Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, veteran history teacher Kimberly Felder, who is entering her second year as chapter leader, serves as the partnership coordinator responsible for forging bonds between the school and the broader community. Felder and her colleagues offer in-class and extracurricular opportunities for students in grades 6–12 through collaborations with partners in the law, government and social justice sectors.

For instance, they introduced a 16-week “know your rights” program in partnership with the Bronx Defenders and New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. A new social justice class deepened the students’ knowledge about police stop-and-frisk tactics and the differences between New York and North Carolina state laws governing when teens charged with crimes can be tried as adults. And the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board decoded its operations for the school’s 10th- and 11th-grade students, enlightening them about how the process works and the steps they should take in the event of a negative interaction with police officers. Felder noted that when the representatives from the review board asked the students about their own experiences with the police, a large majority, especially male students, said they had had negative interactions, many on their way home from school while in their school uniforms.

As high school educators, we are called upon to play a role at a moment like this one. Both in school and out, our students may feel righteous indignation at events reported in the news and they don’t always possess the tools to analyze these events or channel these emotions. We accept the charge to encourage, guide, support, correct and launch these young men and women in our classrooms into becoming the citizens of tomorrow.

As Felder says, “We’re doing our students a disservice if we don’t help engage them by giving them the tools, the information and the exposure.”

What strategies and activities have you employed to engage students in an analysis of current events? Please share your ideas via email at teamhighschool@uft.org.

Welcome back to school, high school educators. Let’s get to work!