Donald Trump and his new administration have handed Bay Area teachers from all sides of the political spectrum an unexpected gift: a bounty of topics and a crop of students suddenly clamoring to talk about government and politics.
“I should thank the president because my kids are interested,” said Gerson Castro, who teaches advanced placement U.S. history and geography at San Jose Unified’s Gunderson High. “I owe Donald Trump a lot because more than any other year, kids want to be informed.”
The challenge for high school teachers now is how to harness students’ opinions and outrage into learning, self-reflection and deep thinking — and how to rein in their own political passions as well as their students’.
Teachers noticed a sea change right after Election Day.
“You would have thought there was a national tragedy, not an election,” said Lauren Mattingly, referring to the subdued atmosphere at Fremont’s Irvington High, where she teaches government and history. The campus was somber, and immigrant students were scared, she recalled.
“It shocked them. They were feeling like, ‘Wait, how did this happen again?’” she said. “It was a great opportunity for a lesson on the Electoral College, that’s for sure.”
“Kids came back just gobsmacked,” said Jack Bungarden, AP U.S. history teacher at Palo Alto High. He told them, “There’s a lot of people who don’t think like you do, and the extent that you can understand that will help.”
Unlike in past elections, students’ intense interest hasn’t waned. “I love that students walk through my door every day and want to know if I’ve heard about this or that,” said Meg Honey, who teaches AP U.S. history at Walnut Creek’s Northgate High.
Teachers span the spectrum from completely shunning politics to assiduously cleansing lessons of their own biases to being forthright with students about their political leanings.
“It’s been difficult to not share my opinions because this has been such an emotional campaign,” Mattingly said. She strongly shields her political views from her students to be fair to them. “I don’t want a student to feel they don’t have a voice because I feel one way.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Mountain View High social studies teacher Frank Navarro believes that, short of profanity or vulgarity, he should be able to discuss anything pertaining to his world history and U.S. history classes.
Many students love Navarro’s style.
“He makes you want to come to class,” said freshman Jaelen Daniel-Dalton, 15. Navarro’s world history class “is not like any ordinary class.”
“I feel strongly I have to make the work we’re doing relevant,” said Navarro, because history helps inform society’s present course. “I don’t see myself as an advocate. I see myself as telling the truth.”
Navarro’s passion for his subject and interest in students have won him a loyal following. “He has totally motivated my son, giving him a different level of confidence,” said SaMaria Ashford, about Navarro’s impact on her son Jereme, 14.
Jereme said Navarro “makes history fun.”
But administrators worry about how well teachers ensure the expression of a diversity of perspectives in class. In November, the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District briefly placed Navarro on leave after a parent complained that he pointed out in class “remarkable fascist characteristics” that he said Donald Trump had in common with Adolf Hitler. Navarro was reinstated after a day.
District Superintendent Jeff Harding said confidentiality rules prevented him from saying why Navarro was escorted off campus, but that the Trump-Hitler comparison wasn’t the reason.
Navarro challenged Harding to clarify whether teachers have freedom of speech on campus. Harding hasn’t publicly replied.
English and journalism teacher Michael Moul at Los Altos High believes it’s students, not teachers, who have freedom of speech in class.
“Sharing your opinions sometimes can promote other students to share theirs, but sometimes it can shut them down,” he said. “It’s important for me to think about my students’ critical thinking and freedom of speech, and not my own.”
But, he acknowledged, “This election has really tested all of that.”
Besides fear of inhibiting wide-ranging discussion, there are other reasons many teachers have opted to keep their opinions to themselves.
“The greatest sin you can make is to try to editorialize from the front of the room,” Bungarden of Palo Alto High said.
In conducting a class discussion, he said, “The most useful question is, ‘Why do you think that?’ To the extent that you can get kids to answer that question, whether they’re left-of-center or right-of-center, then we’re in a good place.”
But everyone has biases, Mountain View High English teacher Tony Espinosa said. “What I try to do is say, ‘You may know what my bias is, but that shouldn’t affect what happens when you present your point of view,’” he said. “I care about the proof they show for their arguments.” And, no, he said, a student saying she Googled the answer or saw something on a blog is not good proof.
Castro — whose classroom walls feature posters of Malcolm X, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass and Nazi resister Sophie Scholl — said, “My job is to get these kids to be good thinkers and to be good people, regardless of whether they’re liberal or conservative.”
Honey in Walnut Creek said she acknowledges her political views and her social-justice activism. “But I make sure my classroom is a safe place, including to those students with conservative leanings.” And, she said, in class discussions where everyone is expected to participate, “wherever they fall on the political spectrum, they need to back up their claims with evidence.”
With news from Washington coming at a fast pace, U.S. government teachers feel that “the kids can barely react before they get the next flood of information,” said Thomas Birbeck, a social studies instructional coach in the Fremont Unified district.
Honey said that the first weeks of the Trump administration have been scary and overwhelming. But, she said, “it’s a moment to do some important work.”
She and other teachers are encouraged by what they observe in their classes. “I’ve seen more civility in our 11th-grade classroom than among adults,” Honey said. “Young people are absolutely able to engage in civil discourse.”
