Wise words from a friend, re: race / hate discussions

[sugarbear]

Thought I'd share this with everyone--

I teach both middle school and college age populations and every year, I see a few students from both groups test social boundaries and norms by playing around with Nazi slogans, symbols, and ideologies. For both age groups, asserting independence can mean trying to distinguish your own moral and political views from those of your parents, often by taking an extreme or oppositional stance to more mainstream ideas and norms, and being very vocal about these “new” affiliations to get attention and provoke / engage others. Since we, as a people, collectively recoil at anything to do with Hitler, the Nazi movement, and Nazi sympathizers, this is the very predictable “go to” button many kids choose to push. Sometimes kids have real affinity and interest in White Nationalism and Nazi history, but most of the time it is a symptom of something else.

Since this is a regular phenomenon, I have developed many classroom management strategies over time for dealing with these what usually amounts to flirtations with the most base and ugly symbols, slogans, and gestures. In reaction to recent news events and political dialog, however, I am anticipating an increase in this sort of testing and attention seeking.

I am an old dog, and I have no new or particularly insightful “tricks” for the young teachers I train on how to deal with this issue. Since many of my FB friends are fellow teachers and former interns, I urge you to be ready and have a plan in place for dealing with these sorts of incidents before they happen so you can drive and control the continued narrative to one that focuses on the barriers that bias, contempt, and provocation present in a learning environment.

The old standards work best- build close and meaningful relationships with your students, don’t allow yourself to get emotionally manipulated, do not tolerate overt disrespect between students but allow and help create “exits” for those students who go down this path so when they realize how stupid they have behaved they can save face and rebound, otherwise they will feel compelled to dig in even deeper and become a prolonged distraction. Be confidant and brave, hold students accountable and don’t be afraid to allow /encourage a very controlled class discussion on the topic (inevitably, those students bringing this "stuff' into the classroom will realize the most extreme and hate derived positions are intellectually indefensible. Remember, peer feedback and reactions will arrest things faster than anything an adult has to say).

After you have had a discussion or learning moment, be very firm about not allowing any more class time to be consumed by or devoted to the issue. (Be aware that students may try to use reviving this sort of dialog as a means to distract and divert classroom attentions from other activities that they find less interesting or challenging.)