AURORA | For the past three elections, Rangeview High School social studies teacher Stephanie Walsh has taken students to the inauguration, something she won’t get to do this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s one of the ways she tries to make politics relevant for her students, which she says is vital to helping them connect with the curriculum.
“Students want to know how it’s going to affect them,” she said.
This election season, social studies and government teachers in Aurora are incorporating the election into their lesson plan in different ways. With an election that has had even more chaos and contention than usual, teachers are trying to set a better tone in the classroom.
“Generally trying to keep it civil and respectful is one of the main goals we’ve had, since the outside world sometimes is not,” said Michael Kraft, coordinator of the social studies department at Cherry Creek High School.
Many teachers have decided to focus more on Colorado races since that’s what will have the most direct impact on students’ lives, Kraft said. Others are using the election to study the effects of campaign advertising, and trying to teach students to think critically about the messages they hear from politicians.
Grandview High School U.S. History teacher John Rios said he’ll talk about current events as they come up in relation to topics in the curriculum. During the confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett he discussed the concept of originalism with his class, and how interpretations of the constitution have changed over time.
The increasing negativity in politics is a turn-off for many young people, some teachers say.
“In some ways kids are more tuned out, they want to talk about it less because they see it as so negative,” Kraft said about the change he’s seen in students over time.
“Teenagers are really put off by negativity,” Walsh said. “They really want to know what is your policy, what do you stand for, how is this going to change.”
Walsh spoke highly of the current generation of students, saying they seem more invested in making a difference.
“We don’t give them enough credit,” she said. “This generation is the most diverse generation that America’s ever seen, they’re a little bit more driven to see that their community is better.”
One of the biggest changes over teachers’ careers has been the rise of social media and the information explosion caused by the rise of the internet. Several teachers said it’s required them to put more focus on media literacy, and the importance of making sure they are getting information from legitimate sources.
Before, “if a kid wasn’t watching the news or reading the newspaper there wasn’t much chance of them being exposed to political discussion,” Rios said. Now, they see it every day on their social media feeds.
“They’re more aware of things but I don’t believe that it’s necessarily balanced,” Gateway High School social studies teacher Jill Cullis said.
Troy Valentine, who teaches a class on social justice at Mrachek Middle School, said he’s been focusing more on the systems that are in place rather than races.
“It becomes kind of a tightrope walk when you start talking about the election,” he said.
The class is focused around units about equity, access and participation, and he does plan to talk about voting and voter suppression once the election has passed. His students’ interest in politics runs the gamut.
“Some are really politically active in a lot of ways, which surprised me,” he said. “And some do want to talk about our president and some absolutely do not want to talk about our president.”
The students are finding ways to make changes in their own communities as part of the class, including sending a formal list of demands to their administration on how to make the school more equitable.
Walsh is also helping students connect to the community through the Rangeview social justice club, where she serves as advisor. Each election cycle the students put together a voter guide about local candidates and races. They usually hold a town hall where they present it to the community, but this year published it online instead.
Connecting current political events to history helps students to understand that there are past precedents for many of the things going on right now, even if they themselves are experiencing them for the first time.
“There was negative campaigning when Abraham Lincoln was elected,” Walsh said. “That was a horrible nasty election, but you didn’t have the technology to push it out to everyone.”
“We do try to make connections with, ok things are really bad now, let me tell you what it sounded like and looked like in the newspapers during the election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,” Cullis said. “This isn’t the first time we’ve gone through this as a country.”