The American presidential election is on many students’ minds right now—and those of us trying to create learning environments for those students are likely preoccupied, too. Since nobody can set all of their concerns aside when they enter the classroom, there may be tension and distraction that create barriers to learning. We encourage you to consider making space to address that tension. As you’ll see in our resource on teaching around the election, there’s a wide range of approaches available, from simply acknowledging the situation to making the situation an object of study.
Please do check out our resource on teaching around the election. But we know that there’s plenty more wisdom throughout our community, and we’re hoping to pool some of that wisdom here, to collect as much support for teaching and learning as possible. So: comment below with other tips and resources that have worked for you and your students. This is a great time to lean on one another.
2 responses to “Teaching Around the Election”
I started my first post-election classes by having a structured conversation around the following questions: 1) How am I doing? 2) What do I need? 3) Where do we go from here? Since I teach in Women’s and Gender Studies these questions and the election were an extension of a lot of the questions that we’ve been tackling all semester. In my 2.5 hour seminar, this took the first 45 minutes of class; in my 1h 15 class, I folded it into our scheduled discussion about reproductive rights. WGST students are fairly self-selective, though, so your mileage may vary if your class is more ideologically diverse.
Mostly, I stressed building community in the face of change and drew connections to historical social movements where people had rallied and organized in the face of suppression. Best to be prepared for all contingencies and no need to reinvent the wheel.
I tried two different approaches to discussing the election in my American Studies courses. I facilitated these discussions the day AFTER the 2024 election results. Perhaps these approaches will give others ideas for navigating discussions with their students:
1) In one of my courses we’ve been focused on studying American culture in the early-19th century. I put up three big themes that have animated our course discussions — Manifest Destiny and anxieties of what would become of the West, religious liberty narratives that resulted in religious intolerance, and birth of new media like print news and photography. Working in small groups, I had students think about how these three themes are playing out in the early-21st century, undergirding the 2024 election. It was great! For me, I got a window into what they were digesting in our course material. More importantly, it allowed students to move away from just focusing on their feelings about the election results. They focused on discussing similarities and differences in the ways culture and communication move over time. After small groups we debriefed in a large group. Lots of folks wanted to participate. Everyone used respectful language.
2) In another course with seniors, I took a different approach. I distributed index cards and asked that each student write one thoughtful discussion question about the election on the card. The only criterion was that the question had to be one that anyone, regardless of how they voted, could actively engage and discuss. I didn’t want it to become too partisan. Once they wrote a question, I collected the cards and then read each of the discussion questions. That was fascinating. There wasn’t any real need to even discuss, as the questions themselves said a lot about what was on their minds and the broader undercurrents and dynamics at play. Questions had to do with the role of age, gender, race, class, media, forms of government, the way stories spread, assessing truth, methods for engaging ‘the other,’ and connections to historical situations. After reading all of the q’s, I chose a few for the class to discuss. The discussions varied. Some dissolved into expressions of feelings and frankly, got too partisan for my comfort in the classroom. As the facilitator, I was able to let this go a bit (knowing that they needed a place to just vent), while also redirecting to another question. Some discussions were robust and allowed students to pull in knowledge and examples from different parts of their studies and experiences. I would do this exercise again as I think it gave them a chance to engage on the election topic in a controlled environment.
Hope this is helpful. Thanks to Daniela Brancaforte for encouraging me to post.
Erika Seamon
Teaching Professor / Former Director
American Studies Program
Georgetown University
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Georgetown