Go ahead. Get into politics at school.

I once led a workshop with middle-school students that was to serve as a deep dive into the Constitution. In the final run-up to the workshop, I received several anxious emails asking that I avoid mentioning any particular politician. The school looked forward to me teaching the first Article of the Constitution, but there would be no need to name names. The message in being invited to teach about the presidency without naming the president—the same message I have consistently encountered in my twenty years in schools—was clear: we don’t get into politics.

I get it. Politics is messy. But it’s time for schools to stop conflating the examination of politics with partisanship. We have our own biases, and we must work hard to temper those. Agreed. We are not in the business of molding students in our ideological images. But if our collective strategy for maintaining impartiality is to shy away from teaching about government, discussing those who govern, and examining the issues that shape our collective experience, we are doing our students a grave disservice. The political landscape appears littered with landmines, but we must also see the clear opportunities before us.

First, the obvious: it’s a great time to bring civic education to life. An impeachment! A raging debate over the role of the federal government in managing a pandemic! Unprecedented protests! An election! Truly, and I say this without irony, it’s an exciting time to be teaching. At some level, I think we all know we should be seizing the moment, but the moment feels scary. We are afraid of how parents will react when they hear only part of the story about the day’s discussion, we’re skittish about revealing our own biases to students and worried about causing a scene in our classrooms. We can take steps to mitigate these worries, though.

Let’s bring parents into the loop. Let’s keep them updated on the conversations their children are having in school and invite them to share their hopes and concerns, rather than defending ourselves from attack later on. Let’s practice what we preach by working, ourselves, to honor ideological differences (see the previous post for more on that), and, above all, let us not be too afraid of making a mistake. We’re uncomfortable, because we feel ill-equipped to handle contentious or wounding speech, should it emerge in a “political” discussion. Yes, this is difficult. But this is also precisely the education our students desperately need. We simply cannot observe our national disfunction, our unwillingness to reach across lines of ideological divide, and conclude that the best course of action is to shield our students from disagreement or contentious discourse.

Schools have twisted themselves in knots, trying to tiptoe down some imaginary line that separates the merely “topical” from the “political.” Everything is political. Free speech, inequality, the locus of government power, climate change… even science itself—they are all political—and in this tricky, anxious, and exciting electoral season we should be purposefully leading our students through the work that will help them more capably navigate our nation’s political divide.

Know your students. Even the ones in MAGA hats.

Recently, I asked teachers in a workshop to discuss hypothetical scenarios related to this fall’s electoral season. One of those scenarios imagined a student proudly brandishing MAGA gear in celebration of a Trump victory, a possibility that left many in attendance feeling anxious. The ensuing discussion revealed a disconnect between left-leaning teachers and the sometimes more conservative families whose children they educate. “To see a child celebrate a Trump victory,” summarized one teacher, “would make me wonder whether I ever really knew these families at all.”

Early in my career a wise mentor conveyed a simple trick to keep me in the good graces of even the scariest of parents: know their children. Connection lies at the heart of our mission as educators, and the most impactful teachers know that job number one is to teach the child, not the subject. Beyond the instinctive moves that guide an effective teacher’s daily interactions with students, we must sometimes do some homework. Many of us, for example, are digging into anti-racist literature as one step down the path of better serving children of color. Getting to know our students is a joyful, instinctive process, but it’s not just a matter of friendly banter. It takes work, and that work extends to the realm of ideological or political divisions.

We have so much on our plates. For some of us, a win these days is simply keeping our masks from slipping and our glasses from fogging. The pandemic is exhausting, and the election is daunting. We certainly don’t need any more work, but, if we’re facing the truth, we have it. We simply cannot in good conscience allow this election to slip past by keeping our heads down and avoiding the drama. (Nor, by the way, should we fool ourselves into thinking our national divisiveness and discomfort will wane one bit in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. We can be sure that no matter who occupies the Oval Office in the coming years, the divisions that plague the country will not heal themselves. Consequently, the mandate to educate our children in a way that empowers them to mend—or at least navigate—those divisions will remain.)

So where does this leave us? If we’re speaking frankly, it leaves many schools in my neck of the woods with a preponderance of left-leaning teachers who serve a more politically mixed clientele of families. This is a source of friction, and it’s the dynamic that fueled the question as to whether a teacher “ever really knew these families.” If the challenge is an ideologically divided country—and possibly an ideologically divided school—the opportunity is, as it always is, to better know our students. This includes the ones who might show up at school in a MAGA hat the day after a Trump victory.

This work need not overwhelm us. We simply need to start by assuming best intentions. If we can chip away at our mistrust of the “other” and assume that a divergent political stance is the product of a sincerely-held belief that we may not yet understand, we can tiptoe in the direction of common ground. When I lead workshops, I suggest that people start with their news feed. Allsides provides a range of news sources for every major story of the day, while the Flip Side focuses on a single event and packages news snippets from across the political spectrum. For a handy mobile app, try Read Across the Aisle, which provides access to the full spectrum of news sources and then helps you monitor where your news choices fall on that continuum. If those steps wet your whistle, wade a bit deeper into the work by engaging in conversation with people who hold contradictory views. Living Room Conversations facilitates such opportunities, and Braver Angels conducts online debates and conversations on contentious topics. This work is not easy—I found it quite taxing to listen to the arguments of fervent NRA members during an online discussion of the Second Amendment—but it is worthwhile. We simply can’t strengthen these muscles without doing some lifting.

Trying out these tools for a few weeks will not magically fill in the gulf that divides us. Doing so might, however, make someone just a bit more openminded, and that mental disposition is a prerequisite for better understanding children who come from families with political viewpoints that contradict our own.