Teaching Future Voters Today
Celia Kim walks into the classroom and sets her bag on her desk. Students settle in as she writes the day’s class objective on the chalkboard.
It is the day after the second presidential debate and there is the same question on many of her students’ minds: why is Trump still in the race?
Kim, a social studies teacher at P.S. 191 Museum Magnet School in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, often finds the students in her class discussing the election. As this will be the first presidential election in her teaching career, she discovers students are quick to bring up the topic that has been the center of newspaper headlines for months.
These middle school students, aged approximately eleven to thirteen, will be able to vote two election cycles from now and the knowledge they learn in this cycle may influence the type of voters they become.
Kim’s goal is to guide them, not based on her personal views, but on principles she believes, as a teacher and a role-model, is important for her students to understand. “As a teacher, it makes me even more anxious about making sure my kids know how to one, differentiate between fact and opinion; two, analyze how facts are used to support claims; three, become critical thinkers in order to be open-minded, culturally sensitive [and] life-long learners,” she says.
Teaching social studies facilitates much of the election conversation. Kim relates the prevalent issues found in the election by drawing thematic connections to their current unit of study.
However, there is a fine line between Celia Kim, the individual, and Ms. Kim, the middle school teacher. She struggles to balance her personal views with objectivity. “It is very difficult to be unbiased,” says Kim. “I recognize some of Trump’s strong qualities and have spoken about the various scandals around Clinton. But I think spending more time in school talking about how close-minded people negatively impacts your personal growth makes it clear who I’ll be voting for.”
As an individual, Kim acknowledges there is a certain appeal to the two polarizing candidates. “It’s intriguing…it really goes to show how divided our country is,” she says. “It’s interesting to walk through communities that claim to be democratic [and] be strong supporters of a certain candidate.”
Kim speaks of the outspoken, Republican candidate, Donald Trump. When I ask who she will be voting for, she says, “Clinton,” without hesitation. (She quietly admits she had wanted Sanders to be president.)
With a fervent opposition to Trump, she wonders how his supporters were taught as children.
“It makes me more determined to ensure that my kids have access to a curriculum that fosters multicultural sensitivity rather than multicultural tolerance.”
Promoting multicultural sensitivity has been the forefront of Kim’s principles. Being a child of South Korean immigrants, she disapproves of Trump’s views on immigration and the wall on the Mexican border. Her students, many who have a Hispanic/ Latino background, worry about a Trump presidency. “[My students and their families] are people of color and have grown sensitive and very aware of how the world treats people of color in the larger sense, like police brutality,” she says.
Although social studies and politics often come hand-in-hand, Kim has not always been interested in politics. It was only after she started her graduate class to become a teacher did she become interested. “As teachers, we are supposed to instill in our kids a passion for our government, and the desire to participate as knowledgeable citizens… I never really got to learn how to participate as a ‘knowledgeable citizen’ as a student before,” says Kim.
Her former teachers, she recognizes, were also active participants, having encouraged her to vote when she and her classmates became eligible.
Because New York is a predominantly Democratic, or “blue,” state, Kim’s students have uniform feelings on Trump. They question why people are voting for Trump, wish death upon him, and attribute to him many colorful names.
In non-blue states, teachers face a different set of challenges with their students than Kim.
The New York Times published a feature article on Wisconsin-resident, Brent Wathke, another middle school social studies teacher. Living in a swing state, one of Wathke’s greatest concerns is keeping class discussion civil. “The campaign is ruining a lot of classes,” he said. “You have kids saying, ‘We need to have a wall to keep Mexicans out.’ Well, what do you do if you have kids who are Mexican in the class?”
Wathke worries about the effect of the election on his students—a sentiment many teachers across the country hold.
Kim believes there is one thing the mindsets of teachers, regardless of who they will choose to vote for this election, have in common: “The need to educate our students to be critical thinkers, to think for themselves, is always going to be at the forefront of our minds.”