NEWS CITY DESK
Teach Your Children Well
Darrow Montgomery/File
The day after insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, local teachers had to figure out how to explain the moment to their students.
Ronald Edmonds By Amanda Michelle Gomez @AmanduhGomez “It’s sad that the color of someone’s skin determines whether they are a threat or not,” says a high school student. Her classmates react with thumbs up and heart emojis. “If that was us, we would have been dead, no question about it,” another student says. “You see how when it was the [Black Lives Matter] protest, you couldn’t even get up one step, but somehow the Whites made it all the way in there through police and all.” Anacostia High School teacher Ronald Edmonds watched over Microsoft Teams as his 12th graders reflected on Jan. 6, the day hundreds of alt-right insurrectionists seized the U.S. Capitol. The history teacher of 23 years had to change his lesson plans for the following day. He called the new one “Chaos On Capitol Hill.” Edmonds had already been teaching his U.S government class, a group of six students, about the Bill of Rights. The invasion of the Capitol offered an opportunity to further explain the First Amendment. What happened Jan. 6 was not a protest, he says. Edmonds’ students could not talk about Jan. 6 without mentioning race and law enforcement.
A White mob incited by President Donald Trump, some of whom carried Confederate flags, breached the Capitol. Edmonds is Black, as are all his students. Anacostia High School is located in Ward 8, a majority-Black ward where views of the police are complicated. This is a ward that saw the most homicides in 2020. It is also the ward where a Metropolitan Police Department officer shot and killed 18-year-old Deon Kay in September. Edmonds did not tell his students that law enforcement treats Black people differently than White people. They arrived at that conclusion on their own based on lived experiences. “Where was the National Guard?” a student asks during another class of Edmonds. “If this was a peaceful protest of Black people, there would have been the National Guard lined up on the steps. This goes to show you this is White privilege. This is White supremacy.” With a virtual classroom as his background, Edmonds leans into the camera as he intently listens to the student speak. He is the only one with his web camera on. He respects whatever way students want to share. Camera off. Chatroom. In response to this student, he shares how previous classes of his had toured the Capitol, which is roughly 3 miles away from Anacostia High
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School. The Capitol, which on Jan. 6 was a place of shattered glass and ransacked offices, is also an educational space for students. Edmonds, like a lot of teachers across the District, weighed how to talk about Jan. 6 with students. They reviewed resources ahead of class. They also took time to reflect on how they felt about the insurrection in their city. Some classes started with meditation. Others dove right in and discussed the civil unrest. Students sometimes introduced the topic themselves. Challenging conversations about race and policing seemed inevitable this week. Teachers focused on listening to what the students had to say, and some corrected misinformation. At Creative Minds International Public Charter School in Ward 5, fourth graders used words like “stunned,” “scared,” “angry,” and “sad” to describe how they were feeling in the aftermath of Jan. 6. “Most of them had a strong understanding of what happened,” says their teacher, Elizabeth Coldwell. She says they learned from their parents and the news. Altogether, Coldwell taught 21 students on the Thursday after the attack. She had planned to teach them about the earth’s layers but decided it was more important to reflect on what was
happening on top of the earth, so she structured her lesson plan around Jan. 6, asking students to choose from a list of feeling words to describe how the day’s events impacted them. One student said he was stunned because he couldn’t understand how Trump supporters got into the Capitol. The most popular question that day was why hadn’t police stopped them? A few students said they were scared. They knew a woman was shot and killed inside the Capitol. One student had a neighbor who worked in the Capitol. Others had parents who were journalists that were reporting on what happened. “People they know and love were put in harm’s way because of [Wednesday’s] events,” says Coldwell. Both Coldwell and Edmonds found some light in the darkness. “Honestly, I’ve been extremely blown away with these students this year,” says Coldwell. “I’ve been passionate about teaching the truth about our country. I’ve never worked with a group of kids who are so passionate on their own.” Her students, who are between 8 and 10 years old, unpacked racism’s role in the rioting. Coldwell, who is White, teaches a diverse group of students who are White, Black, Latinx, and Asian. They all feel comfortable offering their own perspectives, Coldwell says. One Black student shared how police wouldn’t have treated rioters as nicely had they looked like him. Another White student expressed how she was embarrassed after seeing a video of a White officer taking a selfie with a White rioter. Coldwell explains that they had the language to talk about racial justice after reading Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson earlier in the year. “It felt authentic,” says Edmonds of his own students’ reflections. “These are young people who are now being aware and being exposed to the fact that this is their government too.” While it hurt to see White nationalists and conspiracy theorists successfully storm the Capitol, their attempt to subvert the election ultimately failed. Congress confirmed Joe Biden as the presidential election winner before dawn. One former student texted Edmonds afterwards to say “my vote counted.” The text brought joy to a man who spent decades trying to teach his students why democracy matters. Jan. 7 was undoubtedly a difficult day for teachers who had to work the day after an attempted coup in their city. They were simultaneously sitting with their own raw emotions about Jan. 6, and holding space for their students. “You know this happens. You are not surprised. But that does not mean it does not affect you,” says Syreetta McArthur, a third grade teacher at Lafayette Elementary School in Ward 4. McArthur was indifferent as the events of Jan. 6 unfolded in real time. “As a Black woman in America, you keep going. You keep going,” she explains. Then, when it came time to teach her students Thursday, the heaviness of it all hit her that morning. “Trying not to cry in front of your students because maybe you are an emotional person—because I am—and trying not to say this is how it is supposed to be,” she continues. “It’s hard. It’s really difficult to find the words to say.”
