Today, educators will face a whole range of feelings in their classrooms. While some students, teachers, and parents will feel empowered and triumphant, others will experience disappointment, fear, and despair.

The implications of a Trump administration for education are significant and concerning. Trump has threatened to cut school funding to states, such as California, that protect transgender students and promote diversity, equity and inclusion programs in its schools. He also has pledged to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, which would impact millions of California families and their children.

In this moment of division and polarization, we cannot dismiss our responsibility as educators to create safe and inclusive spaces for children to work through their post-election feelings while we continue to promote belonging and justice in our schools.

As you are creating space to process and validate your own feelings, my hope is that you are centering your students and asking the question:

What do my students need at this time? 

In moments of overwhelm and anxiety about the future, recentering your attention to young people can help you strengthen the commitment to excellence, humanity and equity for all children.

Here are a few ideas to support you and your classroom in navigating post-election feelings:

1. Create a space to reflect on your own emotions and experiences during this time. By practicing your own HEART skills (free download here) you will be better able to facilitate conversations about this topic with your students. What are you feeling? What else are you feeling? How have you been impacted by this election? What are your choices moving forward?

2. Create a space for constructive dialogue in your classroom. Dialogue is more than conversation and is also different from debate, where the goal is to win. Dialogue means that we are building collective learning and that we listen to understand. Prepare your students and yourself to have a productive conversation in your classroom:

• Start with reflection. Ask students to reflect on their thoughts and feelings about the election, and how these relate to their family or personal values.
• Co-create shared agreements with your students about how the class wants to engage with each other in this conversation.
• Be specific about the HEART skills you would like students to use and practice: taking a deep breath if they are feeling triggered, listening for understanding, assuming best intentions, etc.
• During the structured conversation, start with prompts to help build trust in the group, and then move to questions that may generate disagreement. If there are opposing views in your classroom, help students to build understanding of the different perspectives, while upholding the group’s shared agreements.
• Debrief the conversation. This is an important part of the process, where you ask students what worked and what didn’t during the activity. It will give you important information for future conversations.

3. Move students to action. Help students to identify 1 or 2 actions they can take, individually or as a classroom, to move the conversation forward and act on some of the challenges they discussed in class.

Let’s center our efforts on bringing people together and “getting in good trouble” for justice and a better future for all children. As you practice your own HEART skills and hold space for students to engage their emotional intelligence, you are creating a space where difficult emotions can be processed and challenging conversations can take place.

Additional Resources

Post-Election Advice for the Classroom From a Teacher by Larry Ferlazzo

Processing US Election Results by Facing History and Ourselves

Image by Element 5