How teachers are talking about Jan. 6 in their classrooms

Educators faced a daunting challenge this week.

View this email online January 9, 2022 This week, we looked at how teachers approached the Jan. 6 anniversary, how schools are dealing with omicron and student mental health.  Keith Lance/Getty Images Happy Sunday, Cory here! Long week? Me too. Deep breath.  Unless you’re living inside the basement bunker from the movie Parasite, you know that this week marked the first anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.  At the beginning of the week, our team got to wondering: What are teachers’ plans to talk about Jan. 6 with their students? Such a tough subject at a time when teachers in many places are already under a microscope. So, I called up a dozen educators and civics experts to find out. I spoke to teachers of history, civics and English – across K-12 – and many told me that at the heart of the Jan. 6 story is a crisis of truth, that too many students (not to mention adults) simply don’t know how to tell the difference between a fact and an opinion or outright propaganda. And several said that’s how they would teach Jan. 6 – by guiding students through an inquiry of the facts, vetting sources and developing news literacy skills that will make them better citizens.  "A true patriot is someone that questions and investigates," says one high school history teacher in North Carolina. One more interesting thing I heard: To put the event in a historical context, some teachers also planned to ask students to focus on the words used to describe the insurrection (or, depending on your perspective, the terrorist attack, riot or mere protest) and how those words compare to other famous events in history, think Shays’ Rebellion or John Brown’s Raid. Or the Boston Tea Party. This one little bit of noun-parsing quickly lays bare how we embrace or reject revolt.    You can see the full list of tips here and follow me on Twitter at @NPRCoryTurner! I was also on the Planet Money podcast this week talking about public service loan forgiveness if you need something to listen to (you know you do). Have a great week and thanks for reading.  Read More Here Newsletter continues after sponsor message Now, let’s get into some news …  Officials are determined to keep schools open, despite omicron. As the coronavirus pandemic slides into a fifth school semester, there is less appetite than ever among U.S. leaders for schools to go remote, even though cases — and with them, pediatric hospitalizations — are rising. According to Burbio, an organization that tracks individual school and district websites, the vast majority of U.S. schools stayed open for in-person learning this week. Read the full story here. — Anya Kamenetz, Correspondent, NPR Ed Kids are back in school — and struggling with mental health issues. Schools across the country are overwhelmed with K-12 students struggling with mental health problems, according to school staff, pediatricians and mental health care workers. Not only has this surge made the return to classrooms more challenging to educators, it's also taxing an already strained health-care system. Read more here.  — Rhitu Chatterjee, Correspondent, NPR Health Chicago public school classes are canceled after teachers union backs remote learning. 73% of the 25,000-plus members of the Chicago Teachers Union voted to refuse orders to work in-person, opting for remote work only. But the school district doesn't want to allow teachers to work remotely during the current COVID-19 surge so it canceled all classes in the district in response. Read more here. — Nell Clark, Editorial Assistant, Morning Edition  $17 trillion: That's how much the pandemic could take away from today's kids. In a new report, UNESCO, the educational arm of the U.N., along with UNICEF and the World Bank estimate what these months of disruption could ultimately mean. Shuttered schools combined with frozen economies not only means lost learning, it means students driven into the workforce, some for good. With less schooling, children learn fewer skills. That takes them out of the running for higher-wage jobs. Read about the pandemic’s global impact on kids here. — Anya Kamenetz, Correspondent, NPR Ed And before you go, have you heard?  NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge is back! We opened submissions for middle and high schools on New Year's Day. Submissions close on March 15th, and you can see the full contest details on our Student Podcast Challenge website. See you next week. Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from Vermont Public Radio (edit station). What do you think of today's email? 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