Teaching World Events = Teaching Humanity
I don’t remember a time in my life when I felt so heartbroken about the events unfolding in the world. Like so many people I know—and so many educators—I am really trying to understand the Israel-Hamas War and our country’s role in this escalating conflict. To this end, I have been reading as much as I can, watching news I trust and talking endlessly with my husband, as we both struggle to unpack the horrific images we see and the long and complicated history that led to this moment.
Talking with friends and colleagues, some of whom are Jewish or Palestinian and/or Muslim, many of whom have direct connections to the middle east, I long to express my sympathy and give—and hold—space for their personal suffering. Their fear for the safety of friends and family living through war is palpable, as are their own feelings of vulnerability here in our politically divided nation. And, rightly so. As I walk through my own city, where protests are happening daily—most calling for peace—I also see and hear an all-too-familiar uptick in hateful antisemitic and islamophobic rhetoric.
To say this moment is fraught is an understatement. To discuss it in almost any context feels like a political minefield. And, to discuss it in a classroom, well, that just feels like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. During a time when critical curricula are being challenged all over the country and book bans and censorship are common, the very act of teaching about world events in schools is often interpreted as being overtly political. Really, why would any teacher want to risk it?
And yet here I am at my desk early on a Sunday morning, trying to figure out a way to thoughtfully and responsibly help my 12th grade ELA students begin to engage in reading and thinking about a brutal, complicated war happening halfway around the world. I ask myself all the important questions: Does this work align with our state standards? Does it align with my own pedagogy? Will it help accomplish my central goal of helping my students to become more engaged with the world?
And then there are the really important questions: Are there students in my classes whose identity makes them particularly vulnerable in a discussion about this topic? Do I understand the nuances of the situation enough to introduce it in a sensitive and thoughtful manner? How can I employ best practices and credible sources that will engage my students and inspire them to read and think critically. And, probably the most challenging question of all: How do I help them understand this complicated situation without oversimplifying it?
Lucky for me, there are people much smarter than me, including some of my colleagues, who have curated materials and have gone to great lengths to make thoughtful suggestions for how to do the hard thing I am about to do. The best advice, though, came recently from a former student of mine, a Muslim young man who is now a college freshman, who has been posting about Gaza on social media and with whom I have been exchanging messages here and there over the past few weeks. He is sad and outraged, and also wise beyond his years. In our recent exchanges, he reminded me of the conversations our class had last spring while reading Elie Wiesel’s Night and how he can’t but help to make comparisons between this situation and the holocaust. The difference, he wrote, is that this time, we have the ability to see all these images and videos in real time and still we are powerless to do anything.
At the risk of asking for too much, I asked him if he had any advice about how to help my current students understand this complex situation. Start with the humanity, he suggested, and with that little piece of advice, he made it simple.
The humanity. Human beings, in their endless variety, acting collectively to do the right thing for other human beings. I suddenly began to think about all the other times that I created lessons about difficult and complicated world events in my high school English classroom and really how, in each instance, the goal was simply for me to help my students begin to put themselves in other people’s shoes. In doing this, they began to feel empathy for other human beings, even if they didn’t understand them fully or didn’t understand the cause of their suffering.
So that’s where I started—with a vague, but profound notion that in teaching about this conflict, I could help my students cultivate their own humanity. Fast forward to today, Wednesday, where my 12th grade English students are on day three of reading about and discussing the Israel-Hamas war. I began the week by explaining the ELA learning standards that we will be addressing and why reading and writing about real world events is not only part of our school’s curriculum but also a central goal of my own pedagogy. I then shared a timeline of the war, a short explanation (albeit rudimentary) of the long and complicated history of Israel and Palestine and two thoughtful New York Times articles that were written specifically for high school students. We have also been looking at maps, researching questions (that I have rarely had the answers to) and speculating about motivation, reactions and the credibility of the information we are consuming. At each juncture, my students became a little more knowledgeable, a little more confident—and a little more curious.
Today, I asked them to sit with small groups and research what has happened in the last 24 hours. As we came back together as a class, I asked each group to explain what they learned. Their answers were thoughtful and sensitive. They expressed sadness and disbelief at the suffering they were seeing in Gaza, but agreed that it is also important to remember the suffering of the Israeli people, especially the families of those who were killed and of the hostages. I listened as my students began to understand what it is to hold two seemingly contradictory truths in their hearts at the same time. I assured them that they didn’t have to take a side, that they could empathize with the people of Israel and the people of Palestine. That they could be strongly in favor of a cease fire and condemn the attack by Hamas. This seemed like a revelation to many students, as so often in school—and in life—we think in binaries and false dichotomies—true or false, right or wrong—and ask students to choose a side. Today, I saw their uncertainty and their questions—and yes, their humanity.
Tomorrow and Friday, my students will write, and although, I can’t say that every one of them will write eloquently about the Israel-Hamas War, I can say. with some certainty. that most have a pretty good understanding of what is going on. More importantly, though, they feel something about it—something happening far away—to people they don’t even know. One of my students stopped by my desk at the end of class and said simply that she couldn’t believe she didn’t know anything about this until a few days ago. It’s so important, she said, why didn’t I know about it?
