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Depending on where you live, you might think we've reached a point where society has truly embraced people of all gender and sexual identities, making the topic of LGBTQ rights kind of a non-issue. The truth is, for many LGBTQ students, discrimination and harassment are still a daily reality, and school is one of the main places where they experience these things.

A 2015 national school climate study conducted by GLSEN, an organization focused on ensuring safe and affirming schools for LGBTQ students, found that over 85 percent of these students have experienced verbal harassment and 66 percent have been discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. As a result of feeling more isolated and unsafe, many of these students miss school, avoid bathrooms, and stay away from locker rooms. Students who experience more victimization are also more likely to have lower GPAs and to report feeling depressed.

And it's not just other students who create this hostile climate for their LGBTQ peers. Over half of the more than 10,000 students surveyed reported hearing biased remarks from school staff, and school staff often fail to intervene when they hear these remarks at school.

The good news? Overall, the number of students who report being harassed or discriminated against is declining. The climate is improving across the board, but for many students, it's not happening fast enough.

What Teachers Can Do

As educators, we set the tone for how our students treat each other. No, we can't control everything, but we can do a lot to influence the climate in our schools and make sure our classrooms are places where all students feel welcome.

The best place to learn more about the specific things you can do is on GLSEN's website, and I've posted two of their best resources for teachers below, but to get you started, I've pulled some of the most important steps teachers can take. I also interviewed Becca Mui, GLSEN's Education Manager, to contribute her insights to the podcast.

These tips, pulled from resources created by GLSEN and my interview with Mui, will give you a good start toward making your school safer and more welcoming for LGBTQ students.

1. Educate Yourself

If you do not personally identify as LGBTQ or spend time in that community, you'll be a much more effective ally if you commit to listening and learning about the issues. "A huge portion of support is staying educated," Mui says, "so things like listening to podcasts or just reading some blogs about LGBTQ people and continually learning about that can help you become an ally and an advocate in your school."

Making an effort to use whatever terminology is currently embraced by the LGBTQ community is another important way to show respect.

"It's always helpful to have a shared language when you're talking about identity," Mui explains. "One of the things that is tricky about LGBTQ and trans identities when people are not part of those communities is that that language is changing, specifically the language we're using to talk about gender."

This is a challenge even for people within the LGBTQ community. "It is literally my job to be connected, to be supportive, to know what's going on," Mui says, "and I'm constantly finding out that something's been updated, something's been changed." She recommends viewing language as an always evolving process. "Having the attitude that we use the language we have and we are open to learning that something's been updated can be really useful."

With that in mind, let's start here by looking at the acronym LGBTQ:
L = Lesbian G = Gay
B = Bisexual
a person who is attracted to two genders, or people with your gender and other genders Q = Queer
also an umbrella term to describe sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression that doesn't conform to heteronormativity a male-identified person who's emotionally or physically attracted to other males
a person who is female-identified who is emotionally or physically attracted to other females
In some spaces, the term "gay" is used as a general term to describe the LGBTQ population as a whole, but GLSEN is trying to move toward language that's more inclusive, rather than placing gay men at the center.

T = Transgender (or "trans")
an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn't match the sex they were assigned at birth

The opposite of transgender is cisgender (abbreviated as "cis"), someone whose gender identity is aligned with the one they were assigned at birth.

"Historically, (this term) was used as a slur," Mui says, "but there is a power in re-claimed words, and we find that across different types of marginalized identities, the power to take a word that has been used negatively and say, 'This is mine' that a lot of young LGBTQ people are feeling."

Another term that comes up frequently in discussions of LGBTQ issues is heteronormativity, which is defined by the Queer Dictionary as the belief or assumption that all people are heterosexual, or that heterosexuality is the default or "normal" state of human being. In our schools and our society at large, we often come from a heteronormative place, speaking of the LGBTQ population as the "other," which communicates to our LGBTQ students that they are deviant or unnatural. We'll talk more about that a little bit later.

To learn more about terminology and other important issues, download GLSEN's Safe Space Kit below.

GLSEN Safe Space Kit
A Guide to Supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
and Transgender Students in Your School

2. Check Your Biases

As with any kind of advocacy, it's crucial to understand your own background and biases. "All of us, LGBT and non-LGBT, have learned messages about LGBT people," reads a passage from the Safe Space Kit. "What were the earliest messages you received about LGBT people and where did they come from? Were they positive, negative or neutral? Understanding the messages we receive can help us identify our own beliefs and biases that we can then challenge, helping to make us stronger allies."

The GLSEN Safe Space Kit provides a "Check Yourself" exercise that will help you take a close look at your own underlying beliefs.

3. Teach Inclusively

The things we teach and how we teach them can send important messages to our students about whether or not they are valued as they are. "So much of our language is gendered in ways that we're not really thoughtful of," Mui explains. "Just saying, 'Boys and girls,' and not really thinking about who we're saying that to, or addressing the compliments that we're giving to students, really thinking about how are we using language, how are we making space in our language for students to identify and be whoever and however they want is a really important step."

Here are some things you can do to make sure you're nurturing your LGBTQ students in your instruction:

Include a variety of gender representations.
When students are presented with a narrow picture of gender roles-and they don't see themselves in any of them-they develop a sense early on that something is wrong with them. GLSEN's Ready, Set, Respect! toolkit for elementary teachers (link below) encourages teachers to make sure that classroom books and materials include diverse families and people whose careers and other life roles don't conform to gender stereotypes.

Group neutrally.
Out of habit, teachers will often divide students into "boy" and "girl" groups. This can make students who don't conform to gender-based stereotypes feel uncomfortable and isolated. The Ready, Set, Respect! toolkit recommends that instead, we divide students more neutrally by birthday month or by numbering them as 1s and 2s.

Evaluate your speech and materials for heteronormative and gender-normative bias.
In casual conversation, in the examples we use while teaching, and in our materials, we often communicate assumptions about gender and sexuality: Boys are attracted to and will grow up to marry girls (and vice-versa), girls will naturally prefer activities like shopping while boys will naturally be interested in athletics, and so on. All of these send the message that there is only one way to be "normal" and that students who don't fit these descriptions are abnormal. As you talk, teach, and look at your materials, ask yourself whether you're communicating these messages, and find ways to replace them with more inclusive examples.

Include positive representations of LGBTQ people in your curriculum.
"Whatever curriculum that is," Mui says, "there are usually people involved in that, whether that's the people you're listing in a math problem or the histories that you're teaching in a history class, there are ways to bring about diversity. Integrating that into your learning helps all of your students to learn more about the world and it helps LGBTQ students see themselves in their learning." GLSEN has resources on LGBTQ history that can help with this. As with all resources, teachers should preview these material before offering them to students. GLSEN serves K-12 students, and you will know best which activities and lessons will meet your students' needs. When sharing facts about LGBTQ history, it's important for educators to balance a positive influence and celebration of icons and leaders while not hiding the truth behind historically important events.

Ready, Set, Respect!
GLSEN's Elementary School Toolkit

4. Be Visible

Let your LGBTQ students know that you are an ally by displaying some visible sign of your support. Hanging a rainbow flag or a Safe Space Poster or Sticker in your classroom can accomplish this. GLSEN's Safe Space Kit points out that this kind of visibility affects students more than we might even realize. "Even if students don't come to you directly, the kit says, "research shows that just knowing that there is a supportive educator at school can help LGBT students feel better about being in school."

5. Respond to Anti-LGBTQ Behavior

When students experience harassment in your presence, take action. Simply saying something like "That language is unacceptable," is enough to acknowledge the act and stop it. The Safe Space Kit includes more detailed information on turning incidents like these into teachable moments and how to respond in more specific situations, like when a student says "That's so gay." But the most important thing to remember is to not ignore it. "Remember," says the Safe Space Kit, "no action is an action - if an incident is overlooked or not addressed it can imply acceptance and approval."

6. Support Students Who Come Out

As you make yourself more visible as an ally, students may be more likely to come out to you about their sexual orientation or gender identity. This important and sensitive conversation needs to be handled carefully, and the Safe Space Kit offers detailed advice for teachers.

Their most important advice is to listen. Instead of assuming that you know what the student needs or that their situation will be similar to that of other LGBTQ people you have known, treat each student as an individual and just let them talk. Ask them what they need and how you can help. You can give GLSEN's new Coming Out Resource to students who are thinking of sharing this part of their identity. It may be useful to let students know about hotlines they can call to get out-of-school support. The LGBT National Help Center at glbthotline.org has a collection of numbers that can help.

Remember that this student is trusting you with confidential information that you should not share until they are ready. To be on the safe side, talk to your administrator and guidance counselor about what your school policy says about confidentiality. If it doesn't go far enough to protect the rights of students, work to change that. Policies regarding confidentiality should also take gender identity into account. GLSEN provides guidelines for these considerations in its Transgender Model District Policy: "It is critical that parental/guardian approval is never a prerequisite for respecting a student's chosen name, appropriate gender, and pronouns... Staff should take guidance from and work collaboratively with the student to ensure that the student remains safe, both at school and at home."

7. Support a Student GSA

GLSEN's research has shown that the existence of a student GSA, or Gender Sexuality Alliance, can go a long way toward improving a school's climate for LGBTQ students. "Those need to be started by students," Mui explains, "but asking students if that's something they want support around" can be a good place to start. A GSA will also need a faculty advisor, so offering your services in that way can make a GSA a reality in your school.

8. Revisit Your School Policies

Making sure that your school's anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies include language specific to sexual orientation and gender identity can also improve your school's climate, and GLSEN's research has found these types of policies to have significant impact on quality of life for LGBTQ students. Part of your work as an advocate is looking into these policies and working toward real change. Use GLSEN's Model Policies as a reference: www.glsen.org/modelpolicies.

9. Educate Your Colleagues

Apart from being more vocal and open with your own support for LGBTQ students, you can also conduct your own workshops for colleagues. The Safe Space Kit includes a sample 20-minute presentation teachers can give to school staff. GLSEN also offers in-person professional development. "We are a national organization, but we also have 40 local chapters which are amazingly volunteer-run by humans who are really dedicated and fantastic in this work," Mui says. "They're doing this work on the ground, and so we support them here from the national office with resources." Click here to view a map of local GLSEN chapters.

All of these actions will send a message of love and acceptance to your LGBTQ students-those you know about, and especially those you don't. Committing yourself to taking even a few of these steps can make such an incredible difference, impacting students' mental health, their safety, their academic success, and their overall quality of life. It just takes one person to start tipping the scales, to start moving a school culture in a more inclusive direction; I very much hope, for the sake of the students who need you, that you'll be that person. ♥

ONE MORE RESOURCE: LGBTQ+ youth face more than double the risk of experiencing homelessness compared to their nonqueer-identifying peers. In the last decade, many organizations have formed to help these young adults and children, providing support and resources so they can have somewhere safe and stable to live. To address this issue, Architectural Digest Reviews created this guide to housing assistance for LGBTQ+ youth.

There's more where this came from.
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Making School a Safe Place for LGBTQ Students

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Discrimination and harassment are still a daily reality for many LGBTQ students. Here are some things teachers can do to change that.

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Leslie Feinberg writes, in Transgender Warriors, "I couldn't find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed."

History education is a multifaceted exploration. It is an exploration of past causes and effects. It is an exploration of other peoples' lives and cultures and interconnections. It is an exploration of triumphs and failures. It is an exploration of self, as Feinberg reminds us.

And when you search within a historical space-when you reach out for recognition-and find no one like you, it is unmooring. It creates an incomplete foundation from which others can label you as aberrational and ahistorical-a person without precedent. And just as people have been cast out of history, a person without precedent can be cast out of the present.

We've seen this play out again and again. Lessons about ancient civilizations create a cross-curricular myth that good government and genius are the provinces of white Europeans, erasing the contributions of communities of color and justifying white supremacist systems. A failure to uplift the long history of Asian American life and contributions leads to a "perpetual outsider" myth that helped motivate past and present-day racism and violence. An erasure of postcolonial Indigenous nations becomes an excuse to relegate Indigenous people to the past and simplify their complex cultures into mascots and stadium chants- with harmful consequences.

Within these histories-and within every culture's history-queer people lived. People who loved people of the same sex. People whose gender identity fell outside the male-female binary prescribed by colonial powers or their sex assigned at birth. Throughout recorded and oral histories around the world, their stories surface.

Yet too often, those stories are invisible in our schools and in our history education. And in the rare instance that LGBTQ figures are taught in schools, they usually belong to recent history, as if queer people suddenly crossed a rainbow bridge into the earthly realm in the 1960s, born with bricks in their hands and standing at Stonewall's door, having never existed or resisted before.

Of course, this misrepresentation has consequences. As we speak, trans and intersex kids face the brunt of proposed legislation across the country that would treat them as anomalies unworthy of public space and sports participation.

And of course, such perceptions aren't true. It's important for educators to understand why history is often taught this way. And it's important for students to understand the truth: that queer people are ever-present, throughout time and place. Because precedent is power.

How We Teach Queer History Today

Unfortunately, too many educators erase queer people entirely. According to the most recent national GLSEN survey, only 1 in 5 queer students "were taught positive representations of LGBTQ people, history, or events in their schools." More than half of those students couldn't even find such information in their libraries.

But in recent years, certain figures in queer history have finally earned some long-deserved recognition. Figures like Bayard Rustin, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera have made their way into more curricula. This is great. Many more queer figures throughout history deserve recognition of their full selves and contributions. Undoing that systemic silencing is key.

But such undoing also follows a pattern we have seen in the recovery of marginalized histories.

The pattern often begins with highlighting heroes. Heroes serve as role models for students who need representation and as anchor points from which educators can tie known context to unknown contributors. Someone like Rustin, for example, can be tied to the well-known work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

However, highlighting heroes also gives birth to mythology. It's how the radical work of Dr. King gets whitewashed; it's how the lifetime activism of Rosa Parks gets diminished to a singular act.

Without follow-up steps, then, the recovery is incomplete.

The next step in recovering marginalized histories, of course, is to uplift nuances and hidden histories. To go beyond famous figures and lift up collective movements, everyday lived experiences and cultural contributions across time. It's the ethos that informs a project like our Teaching Hard History framework, which centers the voices and lived experiences of enslaved African, African American and Indigenous peoples. It's the method that makes recovering local history and uplifting cultures' histories of resilient joy so valuable and relevant to students. It's the difference between a hero who seems untouchable and a precedent that lives within each individual.

Despite the fact that queer history intersects with all of these histories, the gaps and silences in textbooks and classrooms remain huge-and harmful. And it's important for educators to understand how to speak to those gaps, even where resources are scarce.

Teaching the Gaps and Silences

As Jey Ehrenhalt and I wrote in Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students, "It is no accident that so few historical records preserve the lives of queer individuals. History does not remember what it does not value."

People with power determine whose stories belong to the dominant narrative. They can effectively erase what has been recorded, and they can hoard opportunities to publish or spread stories.

There are books that can help tell some of these stories. But many periods and cultures remain woefully unrepresented, if they're represented at all.

That doesn't mean we're left with nothing. Ancestors' experiences persevere because they are stronger than the gatekeepers; a gate cannot keep a persistent truth at bay. But it does often mean we're left with fewer resources.

To teach these gaps and silences is to acknowledge that queer people existed throughout all of human history-and to acknowledge the context that informs the erasure or incomplete recounting of their stories.

First, when possible, educators should uplift the exceptions to these erasures. From cave paintings to ancient Egypt to Indigenous cultures, queer people have lived, thrived and been celebrated. This helps disrupt the myth of perpetual progress-as if queer people have only historically been subjugated and recently been liberated-and instead allows for explorations of more inclusive pasts.

As historian Susan K. Freeman said in an episode of our Queer America podcast, "This knowledge is deeply empowering to those of us on the margins. Our marginalization is not a God-given inevitability. It's not evidence of innate inferiority, and it's not the way things have always been for time immemorial. Our marginalization, rather, is a result of human or manmade power arrangements."

And it's important to note who had that power to interpret depictions of queer life; much of recorded history about "queer" Indigenous life, for example, comes through settler colonialists' descriptions. Many oral histories were lost or devalued.

Second, for any given era, educators should teach the context. Explain the laws, culture, power structures and societal values that may account for the erasure of queer people.

An imagining such as Robert Jones Jr.'s The Prophets provides us with fully realized characters in a story we already know to be true: Enslaved Black people experienced same-sex love. We also know there were enslaved people who would have lived outside of cisnormative gender structures, enslaved people who would have had no sexual desires at all and enslaved people who would have been what we call "intersex" today. But the context helps us understand why those stories have been erased and obscured-a context that includes the sexual exploitation of Black bodies for profit and forced assimilation into a rigid Western morality.

Third, educators need to be willing to think beyond the acronym. Umbrella acronyms such as LGBTQIA help us include a broad coalition, and we use the word "queer" to be as all-encompassing as possible. But these words operate in a particular time and from a particular language and thus could never capture the full range of gender and sexual identities. We cannot prescribe identities to past figures who would not have identified themselves that way, and we cannot shoehorn our words into cultures who have found their own beautiful descriptors.

Uplifting hidden histories means respecting the muxes of the Zapotec society, the nádleehí of Navajo nations and the hijras of South Asia. It means focusing less on the imposition of words and more on the precedent of lived experiences.

Why This Matters

For queer students who have been made to believe that queerness is an aberration or a 20th-century invention, evidence to the contrary is validating. It offers all students a more complete history-one that has always included the full fabric of humanity that surrounds them.

And by including a fuller story of queer history-a story that spans place and time, that covers celebration and resilience-we offer queer students a guidepost.

"That is obviously something that can inspire a lot of resilience and fortitude within [students]," Joanna Williams said in our story about teaching Stonewall. "...They're moving with the spirit of the people who came before them. It's hard to channel that energy and that spirit if you think you're the first one or the only one."

And that's the power of precedent.

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Queer People Have Always Existed-Teach Like It

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Leslie Feinberg writes, in Transgender Warriors, "I couldn't find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed." History education is a multifaceted exploration. It is an exploration of past causes and effects. It is an exploration of other peoples' lives and cultures and interconnections.

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How the Stonewall uprising ignited the modern LGBTQ rights movement - National Geographic

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Patrons of the Stonewall Inn were resigned to police raids on gay bars. But on June 28, 1969, they resisted in a rebellion that changed history.

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Project-Based Learning (PBL)

When PBL is personal to students, it can provide more than just content knowledge-it can also foster important connections.

Courtesy of Teague Tubach

The author's students built a 'Tunnel of Despair' as part of their study of refugees and immigrants.

It all started because of an email. In August 2020, I received a message from a parent in my seventh-grade humanities class, explaining that her husband was a genocide survivor; he had escaped the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and then lived in a Thai refugee camp before coming to California. I was intrigued, and like any good educator, I started asking questions. What I uncovered became the catalyst for a unique project-based learning (PBL) experience.

What I discovered was that my students came from very diverse backgrounds. More than 40 percent of them had parents who came to the United States as immigrants or refugees. What's more, my students and their parents represented 23 foreign countries of origin: Australia, Austria, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chile, China, Côte d'Ivoire, England, Germany, Guatemala, Holland, India, Iran, Ireland, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and Vietnam. I kept asking questions, and my curiosity quickly turned to inspiration. Their stories needed to be told, and my students needed to be the ones to tell them. Project HOPE was born.

Understanding and implementing the histories, cultures, worldviews, and experiences of our students, can be the impetus for powerful PBL.

Infancy: Angel Island and Interviews

In its infancy, Project HOPE was going to focus on the experiences of Asian immigrants who came through Angel Island in San Francisco. In prior years, I brought students to the Immigration Station on the island, also known as the "Ellis Island of the West Coast." This year, my students would still learn about Angel Island, but with the park closed, and looking into the eyes of the children of immigrants and refugees, I realized that Project HOPE needed a dynamic adolescence.

My students researched the history of Angel Island and also interviewed their parents, extended family, and members of our community. They created illustrated journals, telling the stories that they had encountered. For some students, this was deeply personal, and for others it was a window into powerful human experiences.

All communities have unique histories that can enlighten and inspire. When we listen to understand and develop purposeful inquiry, we are rewarded with not only unique PBL ideas but also the power to make the world a better place.

Adolescence: Widening the Lens

I broadened the scope. We learned about push factors, such as poverty, by watching the documentary Living on One Dollar. We learned about war and the many struggles and triumphs of a Vietnamese family by reading Thi Bui's memoir The Best We Could Do. We learned about the lives of children in Ukraine, Syria, and South Sudan through two virtual reality experiences, "The Displaced" and " Clouds Over Sidra." We read " The New Colossus " and learned about the history of the Statue of Liberty while revisiting the history of Ellis Island. This adolescent phase gave my students a good foundation from which to spread their wings.

They took flight. My students were given access to Los Angeles Times education accounts, which they used to conduct research into ongoing immigration and refugee issues that interested them. They also chose two books, one fiction and one nonfiction, to further explore the lives of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Some of the popular choices were The Distance Between Us (Young People's Edition), Enrique's Journey (Young People's Edition), Other Words for Home, A Land of Permanent Goodbyes, and We Are Not From Here. Several also decided to branch off and watch news stories or documentaries. We found several TED Talks and a compelling docuseries on Netflix called Living Undocumented.

The resources for our projects already exist and continue to be developed. I recommend organizations such as We Need Diverse Books, Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance), and The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Maturity: Spreading HOPE

My students gained special knowledge, powerful insights, the skills and courage to tell stories, and the empathy to truly understand. Now it was time to go public. We wanted to create an interactive experience, influenced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and Tunnel of Oppression, interactive, immersive experiences made popular on university campuses that are designed to highlight social issues. We purchased three-quarter-inch PVC pipe and connectors and an 18-by-20-foot tarp to create what we called Tunnel of Despair.
Courtesy of Teague Tubach
Inside the tunnel, students created original art pieces that showed the desperation and misery that was evident in several of the stories they encountered. Outside of the tunnel, they created representations of hope as well as a large urban art wall on the tarp. As visitors walked through the tunnel, they saw images of despair and listened to a heartbreaking audio recording of family separation. Upon exiting, they were greeted by welcome signs from Disneyland's "It's a Small World"; original art pieces; clay, plaster, and cardboard sculptures; illustrated journals; and more. The juxtaposition of hope and despair resulted in a more dynamic understanding of the human condition-one that visitors, and creators, would not soon forget.

We worked with researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Education to create virtual tours of the tunnel. Some students used Google Street View to create photospheres and then made them interactive using ThingLink. Other students created walk-through videos and then added explanatory text slides. Both versions of virtual tours were shared with a wider audience.

Reflecting on the Life of Project HOPE

Project HOPE began as a grassroots effort inspired by my students and their families. It became a multitiered PBL experience that my students shared with our community via a powerful public display. In the end, Project HOPE wasn't just something they did; it was something that changed them and gave them a greater appreciation for the plight of immigrants and refugees.

There are many avenues to powerful PBL experiences. They often require the wisdom of educators, coupled with the innovation and energy of students. When we teach truth, seek justice, and stick together, we bring hope to our communities and the world.

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How Project-Based Learning Can Teach Empathy

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Project-Based Learning (PBL) When PBL is personal to students, it can provide more than just content knowledge-it can also foster important connections. Courtesy of Teague Tubach The author's students built a 'Tunnel of Despair' as part of their study of refugees and immigrants. It all started because of an email.

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Posters and Infographics - Re-imagining Migration

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In order to check in and make sure that educators feel that they can do all they need to do within the hours of the work week, she advises that school leaders provide space for teachers to ask questions, ideate and reflect with their principal or school counselor. "We have a cultural expectation that people aren't working after hours. And if you are finding that you can't keep up with your job expectations in the 40-hour work week, you're talking to your supervisor about getting support in a non-shaming way," said Alison Putnam, a school leader at Centerpoint School in Vermont. Her school leaders prioritized getting rid of unnecessary, extra meetings and giving teachers more opportunities to connect with each other.

"We do a monthly wellness group where teachers from across the school get together in small groups to talk about our wellness, and how we're feeling at work. We talk about goals we have for ourselves and what is supportive of those goals," said Putnam.

Another way to support teachers' working conditions and workload is " tap in, tap out," a self care strategy from Fall-Hamilton Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee. In this technique, educators form a text message group to contact whoever is available to temporarily fill in for them whenever they need to take a moment to step out and regroup during class.

"It's just so simple, but it can be so powerful in acknowledging that you don't have to carry this stress by yourself," said Venet. "It's more than saying, 'We're a community.' It's actually finding a way to put a structure around that."

Trauma happens inside schools

It's not uncommon for educators to think of students as "bringing their trauma to school" as if it's packed in their backpacks somewhere between their bag lunch and homework folders.

"Too often, teachers perceive trauma as something that comes from 'outside of school,'" said Venet. "Much of the research and writing on trauma frames it as resulting from factors schools cannot control." When effectively applied, trauma-informed education means critically examining how oppression at schools causes trauma in students. Oppression can happen outside of schools as well as within schools, caused by peers in situations, individual teachers and curriculum.

"Trauma is a lens, not a label," advises Venet in her book, pushing teachers to look beyond labeling trauma-affected students to understanding how structures may cause trauma.

Schools are not equitable for trauma-affected students and numerous studies show that children experiencing trauma have greater difficulty learning . On top of that, student responses to trauma, such as disengagement or misbehavior, are often unknowingly disciplined.

Venet recommends a universal approach to trauma-informed education so that schools are centering students' humanity, whether their trauma is apparent or not. She advocates for making responsive, social-emotional supports accessible to all students with as few barriers as possible. That means making sure students know what is available to them when they are struggling whether it's having flyers on the wall, information on the school websites, or informed teachers that can point them in the right direction.

A universal approach ensures that all students, including students who are unwilling to ask or have cultivated coping mechanisms that allow them to go unnoticed, get support. High achievers affected by trauma are especially at risk for being overlooked, and adults often misinterpret their coping for resilience.

Cultivate relationships rooted in equity

"Take whatever timeline you have in your mind for how soon you're going to have that strong relationship and multiply it by two, three or four because it just takes people so much longer to build that trusting relationship," said Venet about cultivating connections with students.

She cautions that students' capacity to trust will be lower as a result of the instability and uncertainty of the pandemic. When children go through trauma, they have some mistrust in authority figures and in systems, because often during trauma, those people and systems weren't there for them.

"I think we have a lot of work to do to rebuild and prove that schools can be places of safety and community," she said.

To do this, Venet urges teachers to take a stance of unconditional positive regard for students, a concept developed by psychologist Carl Rogers, that emphasizes removing conditions - such as compliance or achievement - for accepting another person. In schools, Venet sees unconditional positive regard as communicating to the student, "I care about you. You have value. You don't have to do anything to prove it to me, and nothing's going to change my mind."

She encourages teachers to build positive relationships during everyday moments like how students are greeted when they enter class or when they make a mistake.

"Any opportunity you have to affirm the student's inherent worth is a moment for unconditional positive regard," she said.

Establishing good relationships can be a long process. And just because students are not openly responding to relationship-building efforts, it does not necessarily mean that the care and support they've received are unappreciated.

Make sure to note students' progress and focus on their strengths. "Recognize that even though you might not see a shift right away, it doesn't mean the shift isn't happening," said Venet. Additionally, it's helpful to remember what is developmentally appropriate for students, so don't take it personally when a highschooler rolls their eyes or a kindergartener has trouble following directions.

Trauma-informed education is not going to look the same for every educator. In the same way that Venet encourages teachers to pay attention to what is going right when working with students, teachers can expand upon what they do well when it comes to their own practice.

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'Trauma Is A Lens, Not A Label': How Schools Can Support All Students - MindShift

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In order to check in and make sure that educators feel that they can do all they need to do within the hours of the work week, she advises that school leaders provide space for teachers to ask questions, ideate and reflect with their principal or school counselor.

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A girl holds a flower during a vigil on Sunday at a makeshift memorial outside the Gold Spa in Atlanta. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

When former president Donald Trump began a year ago to attach the spread of the coronavirus to Asians and Asian Americans by using the term " the Chinese virus," he was hardly being original or clever. And neither is Robert Aaron Long, the accused killer of eight people in or near Asian American-owned businesses in the Atlanta area last week, who has now mounted a "sex addiction" defense to deny any racial animus.

The thread that connects Trump's racist phrase to the savage massacre at businesses that Long targeted is one that winds through a long, bloody history of dehumanizing Asian Americans.

"The Chinese virus" is an update of a very old trope, and a long-offensive one. Look at the reaction when the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed on the coronavirus and China last February with the phrase "the sick man of Asia" in the title, causing an international incident. That idea has even made its appearance in popular culture - for example, in the 1972 Bruce Lee movie "Fist of Fury," Lee's protagonist avenges his teacher's murder and a nation's pride in part by tearing up a brush painting of those words.

The United States is no stranger to anti-Asian racism. As early as 1882, the Chinese exclusion act banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. (Monica Rodman, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)

The trope dates to the 1700s, when Chinese doctors made detailed epidemiological drawings of smallpox victims. Years later, these images began to circulate in French popular culture devoid of context, and they were received - absurdly - as proof of the superiority of European medicine and the racist notion that the Chinese, as a race, were dirty, sickly carriers of deadly diseases. Never mind that at that same moment, Europeans bearing smallpox and measles were causing the decimation of native populations across the Americas and the Pacific.

In the 19th century, European nations, desperate to exploit the riches of Asia, forced open Japan and China. They began a trade of opium for silk, tea and silver, and when China attempted to end it by making the narcotic illegal, foreign powers began two successive Opium Wars. China's loss of both those wars opened it further to European and American business interests - which revived the notion of Chinese as weak and afflicted.

War set migration in motion, and stereotypes of impurity and contamination followed the migrants to America, where they were forced into racially segregated settlements that sometimes grew into Chinatowns, Japantowns and Filipino Towns. As the number of migrants grew, the backlash did as well.

Anti-Asian violence is often inseparable from misogyny

The impetus was often economic, but it was driven by a sense of racial entitlement. Whites claimed that Chinese were getting the best veins in the coal mines, staking the best gold panning spots, tilling fertile land that was meant for them. At rallies, demonstrators denounced "the Chinese plague," conflating disease with displacement. Years of brutality ensued. In 1886 alone, mobs burned down at least a dozen Chinatowns in California to the ground.

Among the battery of laws passed to restrict Asian Americans' civil rights, including access to education, cultural practices and business activities, were laws meant to enforce White male purity. California passed an anti-miscegenation law banning marriage between Whites and a "negro, mulatto, or Mongolian." Such laws culminated in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time any U.S. federal law sought to exclude an ethnic group.

The most direct predecessor of the Exclusion Act was the 1875 Page Act. It had been written narrowly to ban sex workers from "China, Japan or any Oriental country." Still, President Ulysses S. Grant made clear how he and many others saw Asian women: " But f ew of whom," he said, "are brought to our shores to pursue honorable or useful occupations."

As states moved in the late 1800s to protect the entitlements of White men and Grant demonized the actual bodies of Asian women, mob attacks on Asian Americans increased. Jean Pfaelzer's book "Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans" documents hundreds of forgotten riots, purges and lynchings in the 1880s that left thousands dead, wounded or displaced.

If they weren't being driven out, they were being quarantined. On March 6, 1900, a report of a possible bubonic plague-caused death of a Chinese American surfaced in San Francisco. The next day, city officials shut down Chinatown. Police roped off the neighborhood and escorted out all the remaining Whites. Health officials voted to encircle the area with barbed wire. At one point, leaders seriously discussed burning down these same 16 square blocks to which they had long confined the Chinese. Neither came to pass, but authorities did build a high wall around Chinatown's radius.

As successive waves of Asian immigrants and refugees arrived, often fleeing American wars, they too faced violence. In 1930, Whites rioted against Filipino American bachelors who frequented taxi-dance halls to dance with White women in Watsonville, Calif. In 1941, with war again as the backdrop, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rounded Japanese Americans up into concentration camps.

Bipartisan political rhetoric about Asia leads to anti-Asian violence here

In 1982 in Detroit, a young Chinese American draftsman named Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two White autoworkers outside of a strip club where he had gone to celebrate his bachelor party. Before they set upon him with a baseball bat, they had baited him by calling him ethnic slurs for both Japanese and Chinese - demonstrating the same confusion of pandemic-era attackers who have lashed out at Asian Americans of all ethnicities while thinking them Chinese - and told him he was the reason they were out of work. A judge sentenced them to probation, saying, "These aren't the kind of men you send to jail."

The massacres have never ended. In 1989, a gunman opened fire on a Stockton, Calif., elementary schoolyard full of Cambodian and Vietnamese American children. He killed five and wounded 32 more. In 2012, another gunman murdered six Sikh Americans at a temple in Oak Creek, Wis.

So when Asian Americans objected to Trump and others' use of "the Chinese virus," it was because many of us feared these words would yield a body count. We were told that we were overreacting. But now a year of anti-Asian rage has come to this: children slashed in department stores, elderly set on fire or pushed to their deaths, and women, attacked at twice the rate of men, chased, beaten, spit upon, as if we are not people, but pollutants - infections, contagions, stains on whiteness.

The same twisted view of Asian Americans that Grant had echoes in Cherokee County, Ga., Sheriff Jay Baker's stunningly sympathetic read of Long's defense that he was trying to "eliminate" a "temptation." What stands out in Baker's news conference is who his sympathies went to - not the then-unnamed victims, most of whom were working-class Asian American women, but to Long, who had had "a bad day." These Asian women weren't people with lives and loved ones; they were symptoms of Long's sickness.

Long's defense - that he is not the perpetrator of a hate crime, but simply a sex addict in relapse - reduces the Asian American women authorities say he killed to the embodiments of his sins, there to service his filthy desires and remove him from God's grace. But to believe his lie is to deny a 300-year thread that has unspooled in commonly circulated texts and images, in wars and in bloodshed.

What Trump, Long and their defenders share is the twisted logic that connects two opposed, infernal ideas: that Asians and Asian Americans are impure and inferior - and if not stopped, they will conquer our world. This logic explains why the absurd, debunked idea - seemingly ripped straight out of a Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu novel from the 1910s - that covid-19 was developed as a bioweapon in a Chinese government lab has inexplicable persistence. It is congruent with the zero-sum Great Replacement idea that has moved from the fringes of white nationalism to the mainstream: that Whites face nothing short of demographic annihilation from the lesser races and that a total war must be waged to stop it.

That's how one might come to see a God-fearing Christian who has had a bad day as the fallen hero of this story, and in doing so, continue to dehumanize the most vulnerable Asian Americans.

correction

This article originally misstated the date of the Oak Creek, Wis., shooting at a Sikh temple. The shooting happened in 2012, not 2016.

Updated March 24, 2021

Atlanta spa shootings: What to read

The latest: Asian American leaders struggle over where to take their movement | Atlanta-area Asian Americans speak up | Atlanta spa shooting victims highlight struggles for Asian and Asian American immigrant women in low-wage jobs

The suspect: His life before the attacks | Accused Atlanta gunman's church expels him, as local Korean church leaders mourn, call for action
Photos: Crowds gather around the country to protest anti-Asian violence
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Perspective | The long history of violence against Asian Americans that led up to Atlanta

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When former president Donald Trump began a year ago to attach the spread of the coronavirus to Asians and Asian Americans by using the term " the Chinese virus," he was hardly being original or clever.

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The History of Anti-Chinese Racism and Disease in the United States

By Wayne Au

Honolulu Chinatown fire of 1900

On April 20, 2020, blogger LittleGrayThread made a Facebook post of a note her daughter had written. She reported that in a Zoom class meeting, one of her daughter's 2nd-grade classmates said, "I don't like China or Chinese people because they started this quarantine." The racist statement rightfully upset the blogger's Chinese American daughter, who wrote a response, which read:

When we did the Zoom meeting, someone said that he doesn't like China and Chinese people. This made me feel sad because he was my friend and I'm Chinese. I hope he will stop telling people that because it's mean and wrong. It's wrong because he doesn't know what he is saying. No one knows how the virus started for sure. When you say that you don't like Chinese people you're saying that you do not like me. I did not start this virus. Thank you for being my friend.

I love her written response to the racism she experienced. But as an educator and parent of a 4th grader, reading about what happened to LittleGrayThread's daughter was disheartening and maddening, yet sadly unsurprising.

This winter, as the coronavirus made its way from China to the United States, many of us knew what would happen: Racists in this country would confuse the coronavirus's origins in China with Chinese people around the world. Then they would turn their racist vitriol toward anyone who "looked" Asian to them, because to them we all look alike.

This winter, as the coronavirus made its way from China to the United States, many of us knew what would happen: Racists in this country would confuse the coronavirus's origins in China with Chinese people around the world. Then they would turn their racist vitriol toward anyone who "looked" Asian to them, because to them we all look alike.

Fear of the virus soon translated into patrons avoiding Chinese and Asian American restaurants before the virus took hold in the United States. As it spread, so did racist attacks. Reports of Asian Americans being spat upon, screamed at, told to "go back to China," being avoided by non-Asians, and told "don't bring that Chink virus here" started to appear across social media and in the news.

In an April 23 report, the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center documented almost 1,500 incidents of anti-Asian American harassment and assault since March 19. Asian American women were 2.3 times more likely to be harassed than Asian American men.

All this came on the heels of racist dog whistling by President Trump, who has regularly referred to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus."

We have to oppose this anti-Asian American racism, but we also have to teach our students how we got here. Trump's "Chinese Virus" and other attacks on Asian Americans recall similar attacks from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then, too, viruses were conflated with the humans who were afflicted by them, and then used to attack those people already suffering from racist discrimination. When students look historically at the intersection of race and disease they can better understand the white supremacy that has been revealed by the COVID-19 response.

Orientalism and Anti-Asian American Racism

To understand today's anti-Chinese American and anti-Asian American racism, we need to look at "Orientalism." Historically, European colonizers framed much of their world in terms of the West - the Occident - versus the East - the Orient. For them, the Occident was cultured, civilized, trustworthy, pure, and godly, while the Orient was barbaric, uncivilized, heathen, untrustworthy, and culturally and morally depraved - providing justification for European rulers' imperial ambitions. Orientalists viewed Chinese as "Mongolian hordes" who threatened European culture and values.

As "Orientals" entering U.S. territories colonized by white settlers, Chinese and other Asian American communities were never trusted as legitimate members of society. Whites often saw them as interlopers, temporary labor, outsiders, and a cultural "other." This is the ideological basis of the "Yellow Peril": In response to economic or political crisis, Asian and Asian American communities are framed as a non-Western threat to "American" values and supremacy.

In 1848, there were about 325 Chinese immigrants in the continental United States; by 1880, 300,000 Chinese had immigrated to the country. Although some came in response to the California gold rush, most worked on the transcontinental railroad. White railroad barons paid Chinese railroad workers lower wages and often gave them the most dangerous jobs (like dynamiting mountains in preparation for tracks).

White racism deeply influenced the living conditions in the Chinatown neighborhoods where immigrants were forced to settle. White landlords often mistreated Chinese American tenants and kept their housing in disrepair with no fear of reprisal. Coupled with inconsistent city infrastructure for sewage systems and clean water, this contributed to the substandard living conditions and general squalor that helped spread disease.

White racism deeply influenced the living conditions in the Chinatown neighborhoods where immigrants were forced to settle.

Popular media painted Chinatowns as seedy, dirty, heathen, dangerous, full of "vices" like gambling, drugs, and prostitution, and full of similarly dirty and dangerous people. Likewise, whites saw Chinatown neighborhoods as uncivilized, "foreign" spaces to be controlled by Western authorities.

These racist tropes laid the groundwork for equating Chinese Americans with disease - which first happened more than 100 years ago, and continues today.

The 1899-1900 Quarantines and Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown

On Dec. 12, 1899, health officials confirmed a single case of bubonic plague in Honolulu's Chinatown. The so-called President Dole - who came to power when a gang of white businessmen and missionaries overthrew Queen Liliuokalani, Hawai'i's Indigenous sovereign - declared a state of emergency. Honolulu's Chinatown - 14 square blocks, around 10,000 people - was quarantined the next day. Officials painted lines around Chinatown and placed guardsmen on 24-hour patrol.

White authorities subjected Honolulu's Chinatown population - mostly Chinese* but also roughly 1,500 Japanese and 1,000 Native Hawaiians - to daily inspections of their homes and bodies to check for signs of plague. Residents felt the intrusion of invasive bodily inspections by white inspectors of the "Citizens' Sanitary Commission," raising concerns about petty theft, racial harassment, and even attempted rape by inspectors.

(*Note: I refer to the Chinese in Hawai'i at this time as "Chinese" as opposed to "Chinese American" because, even though the white businessmen and missionaries had forcibly taken control of the Hawaiian government with the aid of the U.S. Marines, technically Hawai'i had not yet become a territory of the United States. So, the term "Chinese American" would be historically incorrect.)

Honolulu Chinese also pointed out the racist boundaries of the quarantine zone. The Chinese-owned City Mill was included in the quarantine, but the white-owned Honolulu Iron Works next door was excluded - forming a white quarantine-free peninsula extending into Chinatown.

A native Hawaiian newspaper, Ke Aloha Aina, pointed out that the Chinatown residents weren't to blame for the conditions there:

The Japanese and Chinese are not the unclean ones who are spreading the plague in the city. . . . Instead, it is the large land owners who rent units on a large-scale profit. These are people such as Samuel Damon, Dillingham, Keoni Kolopana, and some others who sit and collect huge monthly and annual profits.

White officials lifted the first Honolulu Chinatown quarantine after several days. However, when several more people died of plague, officials placed Chinatown under quarantine again and proposed a controlled burning of individual plague-infected buildings.

The Honolulu Chinese protested the burning plans, posting fliers and making death threats against the Board of Health and any Chinese officials who cooperated. Chinese property owners wrote letters, and community leaders petitioned authorities.

Then, on Jan. 14, 1900, a white woman who lived in a wealthy Honolulu suburb came down with the plague. Her death shocked the white community - who mistakenly thought whites couldn't catch the plague, and several white newspapers began to advocate for leaders to burn down Chinatown.

The wholesale burning of Honolulu's Chinatown never became policy, but whites who advocated its eradication soon got their wish.

Honolulu Chinatown fire of 1900.

On Jan. 20, 1900, during a controlled burn of an infected Chinatown building, the winds picked up, spreading the fire. The community of Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiians worked together with the fire department to regain control, but the inferno spread through Chinatown. The fire wiped out 25 city blocks and displaced at least 6,000 residents - most of whom were relocated to detention camps.

Less than three months later, bubonic plague was found in San Francisco's Chinatown, and the response there was as racist as it was draconian.

The Quarantines of San Francisco Chinatown

On March 6, 1900, there was a suspected death from bubonic plague in San Francisco's Chinatown, and the Board of Health cordoned off Chinatown. More than 35 police officers were posted around 12 square blocks. White authorities blocked traffic, limiting the movement of the 25,000 residents - mostly Chinese American, but also more than 1,000 Japanese Americans.

However, whites were allowed to leave because, like in Hawai'i, whites believed they couldn't get the disease.

The San Francisco Chinese Americans resisted this selective quarantine. Members of the community gathered to protest, and the Chinese Consul-General of San Francisco called the "Blockade of Chinatown" racist.

Mayor James D. Phelan countered that the quarantine was necessary because Chinese people were a "constant threat to public health."

The Chinese American community protests overwhelmed white officials, and less than three days after it began, the Board of Health ended the quarantine.

The Chinese American community protests overwhelmed white officials, and less than three days after it began, the Board of Health ended the quarantine.

With a cluster of plague deaths near the end of April, the federal government directed local officials to administer an experimental vaccine, one known to have severe side effects, to the Chinatown population.

By mid-May, large crowds of Chinese Americans protested, noting the vaccine's harsh effects. On the night before the forced vaccinations, fliers posted around San Francisco's Chinatown announced resistance:

It is hard to go against an angry mass of people. The doctors are about to compel our Chinese people to be inoculated. This action will involve the lives of us all who live in the city. Tomorrow . . . all business houses large or small must be closed and wait until this unjust action settled before anyone be allowed to resume their business. If any disobey this we will unite and put an everlasting boycott on them. Don't say that you have not been warned at first.

When the mostly white doctors and health officials came to Chinatown to begin the forced vaccination program, they found businesses closed and residents leaving the area. In the days that followed, Chinese American protesters rallied against those Chinese Americans who they believed were cooperating with the vaccination program.

Health officials also directed the railroad companies to deny Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans passage on trains leaving the city if they could not prove vaccination.

A Chinese American merchant filed a complaint with the federal court. Federal Judge William W. Morrow invalidated the travel ban, saying that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. He ruled that the travel restrictions were "boldly directed against the Asiatic or Mongolian race as a class, without regard to the previous condition, habits, exposure to disease, or residence of the individual."

White health officials quarantined San Francisco's Chinatown again after more Chinese Americans died of plague. On May 30, 53 police officers patrolled the lines of this new racial quarantine. A San Francisco Chronicle reporter observed that in the "careful discrimination in fixing the line of embargo, not one Caucasian doing business on the outer rim of the alleged infected district is affected. . . . Their Asiatic neighbors, however, are imprisoned within the lines."

The editors of San Francisco Call demanded that Chinatown be burned:

In no city in the civilized world is there a slum more foul or more menacing than that which now threatens us with the Asiatic plague. . . . So long as it stands so long will there be a menace of the appearance in San Francisco of every form of disease, plague and pestilence which Asiatic filth and vice generate. The only way to get rid of that menace is to eradicate Chinatown from the city. . . . Clear the foul spot from San Francisco and give the debris to the flames.

The Board of Health added barbed wire to the cordon and doubled the patrolling police force.

In court, Chinese American leaders again complained about their treatment. Judge Morrow called the Chinatown quarantine the "administration of a law 'with an evil eye and an unequal hand.'" Again, drawing upon the 14th Amendment, he issued an injunction lifting the second quarantine of San Francisco's Chinatown.

A Moment to Teach About Racism

Given our country's history of racist Orientalism and anti-Asian American violence, it is easy to see how here in the United States the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has been so effortlessly and predictably mapped onto the Chinese and other Asian American communities. As students reflect on the myriad effects of the pandemic, let's help them see how agendas of racism and xenophobia have happened throughout our history. No doubt, fear of infection - whether from bubonic plague or COVID-19 - is legitimate. But time and again, epidemics have been used to attack Chinese, Chinese Americans, and immigrant communities more broadly. In early May the New York Times reported that long before the COVID-19 outbreak, Stephen Miller, Trump's chief immigration advisor, was looking to link various diseases to immigrants as an excuse to seal borders and increase deportations. When students study the historical antecedents to these efforts, they are better equipped to resist white supremacist attempts to equate disease with communities of color now.

In this moment, teachers building online social justice curriculum and parents assisting with distance learning are in a position to teach our children about historical injustices such as those visited upon the Chinese American community at the turn of the 20th century, as well as share historical victories won through resistance and protestations. And we can make connections to this history as we organize to resist Anti-Asian racism during the coronavirus crisis.

Historical Resources

"American Racism in the Time of Plagues," by Andrew Lanham. Boston Review.

Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown, by Nayan Shah. UC Press.

"The 'Chinese Flu' Is Part of a Long History of Racializing Disease," by Carl Abbott. Citylab.

"The Disastrous Cordon Sanitaire Used on Honolulu's Chinatown in 1900," by Rebecca Onion. Slate.

"Mike Davis on Coronavirus Politics," interview by Daniel Denvir. The Dig podcast, March 20, 2020.

Orientalism by Edward Said. Pantheon Books.

"Of Medicine, Race, and American Law: The Bubonic Plague Outbreak of 1900," by Charles McClain, Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer 1988), pp. 447-513.

Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown, by James C. Mohr. Oxford University Press.

"Review: American Orientalism," by Mae M. Ngai. Reviews in American History, Vol. 28, No. 3 (September 2000), pp. 408-415.

"Topics in Chronicling America - Bubonic Plague in Chinatown." Original historic documents from the Library of Congress.

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"I Don't Like China or Chinese People Because They Started This Quarantine" by Wayne Au

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By Wayne Au On April 20, 2020, blogger LittleGrayThread made a Facebook post of a note her daughter had written. She reported that in a Zoom class meeting, one of her daughter's 2nd-grade classmates said, "I don't like China or Chinese people because they started this quarantine."

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By Nina Shoman-Dajani

Illustrator: Leila Abdelrazaq

Leila Abdelrazaq

Of the hundreds of assignments my children have brought home from school over the years, not one of them has referred to Palestine or to Muslims. As a Muslim, a Palestinian American, and a mother, I want this to change.

My siblings and I often felt like outsiders growing up in California - struggling to find balance between our Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and American identities. As the children of Palestinian immigrants, we knew there was something special about who we were - but this special identity is what caused that outsider feeling at times. As second generation Arab Americans, my children should not have to struggle with their identity in school as we did - but unfortunately, that is not the case.

I am an Arab American Muslim educator, born and raised in the United States. My parents were born and raised in Palestine and moved to the States in the 1960s for better opportunities following the establishment of the state of Israel and the refugee crisis that followed. My parents instilled a love for Palestine in my heart from a young age and my U.S. foreign policy lessons started at about age 3 - as the children of parents who were born in the 1940s during the British Mandate for Palestine, and the subsequent establishment of Israel on Palestinian land, we were surrounded by political discourse at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

My siblings and I were the only Arabs at our elementary school and it was apparent at a young age that we were different. We lived dual lives: one filled with tradition and culture at home - watching Mom make fresh bread over hot stones and learning the Palestinian national anthem in preparation for a community event - and the other filled with constant attempts to blend in and maintain friends at a school where you had to shop at the Gap to fit in (as the youngest of seven, my wardrobe consisted of hand-me-downs, so Gap was pretty much out of my league). While I watched my classmates ascend from Brownies to Girl Scouts and admired the large colorful bows in their hair - I managed to make a few friends in elementary school. Once I was invited to a friend's house to play after school and her mother commented to another parent who was over: "Nina is Palestinian . . . isn't that interesting?" I did not think too much of it at the time but I knew even as a child, she was not making a compliment. I remember that moment decades later - now as a mother. My own experiences make me overprotective of my children, who I naturally want to shield from being "othered."

It was not until junior high and high school that I was engaged with peers from other marginalized communities - finally feeling like I was not an outsider. Most of our peers thought my siblings and I were Mexican and our dark hair and brown eyes allowed us to blend in rather than feel "out" as we did at the predominantly white school that we attended previously.

In college I made Arab and Muslim friends (other than my siblings and cousins) for the first time, on my large university campus in Northern California. I was able to celebrate and further cultivate my love for the Palestinian traditions and culture my parents taught me by getting involved in social and political activities on campus and in the community. As an undergrad student when the second Palestinian Intifada and second war in Iraq started, there were plenty of opportunities to join protests against U.S. involvement in the Middle East. These protests were not just about opposing war in Iraq though - they became a meeting place for like-minded activists to gather and speak out against U.S. global hegemony and the unfair foreign policy the United States supported regarding Palestine.
Hopes for My Three Children
Now, as a mother of three children, I reflect on my own life as I attempt to navigate parenthood. My daughter and two sons are second-generation Arab American Muslims. Their grandparents on both sides were born and raised in Palestine. In terms of "fitting in," not much has changed since I was their age. My children also attend a predominantly white school as I did. The reality is that my children are Arab American Muslims with Arabic names and the only time they hear any mention of Arabs or Muslims in America on TV is from the news and they hear "terrorist, threat, or war" associated with Arab, Muslim, or Palestine. At school, the first and only time that my son came home to tell me that Arabs and Muslims were discussed at school, it was in the context of learning about the horrific acts of Sept. 11, 2001. He was confused and disheartened, yet adamant that real Muslims would not kill innocent people. My response was to sit my three children down and teach them how to engage in a discussion about Islam when they are confronted with a situation where their religion or identity is misinterpreted at school. In the 4th grade, when children are taught that Muslims are terrorists, as in this teacher's September 11th lesson, how are they supposed to process who their Muslim classmates are? Especially at a time when the president openly supports anti-Muslim racism.

My children are asked questions about their faith and heritage by other students and are too young to discern if the questions are out of curiosity or fear, just like I endured. "Why don't you celebrate Christmas? Do you believe in Jesus? What's Palestine?" can be difficult questions for very young children to answer when put on the spot. Teachers who are oblivious of the background or culture of my children typically do not intervene or discourage students from asking personal questions, much like my teachers in elementary school.

The school curriculum does not attempt to offer understanding from a global perspective so it is no wonder the students turn to my kids with questions. Between my three children and the hundreds of assignments they have completed over the years, I have never witnessed a homework assignment or class assignment refer to Palestine, Arab Americans, or Muslims. Whether it is Palestine, the history of Arab Americans or the fact that Muslims have been in North America for hundreds of years, not one reference that I am aware of has been made.

When geography is studied, even when in the context of ancient civilizations, there is no mention of Palestine in the classroom. Curricular silence is not an attempt to remain neutral - it is an acceptance of the Western-dominated narrative that fills our social studies books in U.S. schools. Although some lessons may explore "ancient civilizations," the historical contributions of Muslim scholars (such as the creation of algebra and discoveries in astronomy) are ignored while Western civilization remains at the center of the curriculum. So far, my children have not had an opportunity to write, present, or share in any capacity their heritage with their classmates. Even at my elementary school, I remember we were invited to dress up in cultural clothing and share a traditional dish with our class in 3rd grade. (My teacher was Greek and appreciated cultural exchange.) My children are now in 2nd, 4th, and 7th grade, and I cannot recall a time when teachers provided such an opportunity. This may seem like a simple example, but the validation that such opportunities provide can have a lifelong impact on how a student views their identity in relation to their classmates, in their community, and within the national conversation.

We live at a time when the president has expressed disdain for Brown and Black communities. The president backs a Muslim ban, openly encourages anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism, has halted Syrian refugees from entering the country, and wants to build a wall to block families searching for safety. The current president also has given every stamp of approval needed for Israel to continue its settler colonialism and military Occupation of Palestinian land - my parents' and my grandparents' homeland. Palestine is typically not in elementary world history books and my children ask me why Palestine is not on the maps they study at school. I respond, "Palestine exists - it's where your grandparents and great-grandparents were born," and regardless of which map they see, they know where to find Palestine. Now, when we come across a globe in a store, my kids always point out where Palestine is - regardless if they see Palestine printed there. Of course, we discuss their heritage and family lineage at home, just as we did when I was growing up, but it would be great to have reinforcement from school, not an erasure of my ancestors' homeland. One of my boys has an affinity for studying flags and asked me why the Palestinian flag is not in the almanac he checked out from the school library. Non-Palestinian students wouldn't even realize Palestine was missing. Why should children have to wait until they get to college to learn the truth? And that is if they opt in to explore such topics.
My Children's Teachers
My children do not see a reflection of themselves in their teachers. Although the student demographics are shifting at the school they attend, every single teacher in their school (with the exception of the physical education teacher) is white. I have a hard time believing this wasn't intentional when I see that every administrator and school board member is also white.

I must mention that my children have had some great teachers at their school. However, there was a year that I received so much critical feedback about one of my children (in kindergarten!) coupled with the hostile demeanor and negative tone of the teacher during every conversation I had with her, that I couldn't help but think, "Does she have a problem with my child because he's Arab? What assumptions are made about my child because of his name?" Regardless of being U.S.-born, a name with cultural significance defines you in this country. Names pay homage to your ancestors . . . or in my daughter's case, to her grandmother who was born in Palestine. The beauty in the range of students' names is rarely recognized but can serve as a rich lesson to learn about the heritage of the children in a classroom.

The lack of diversity in the teachers at my children's school (and any school) is reflected in the curriculum, in the lessons, in the molding of every child in each classroom. As I see an influx of children who are Muslim and/or of Arab heritage at my children's school, I wonder when the administration will make adjustments to welcome this population.

One lesson on Islam or Arabs - is that too much to ask? It can be as simple as inviting a parent to speak about why their child is fasting during Ramadan at school. I believe it is reasonable for teachers to recognize when children are fasting and to have a conversation with the class about what this means so children are not confused about why their classmates aren't joining them at lunch. Regarding cultural traditions and practices, it would be great to solicit suggestions from parents about how their heritage can be shared in the classroom as a way to educate their child's peers about global customs. I know many parents would be happy to share information.
Keeping Hope
Unless parents, educators, and advocates for social justice speak out against the status quo that controls the curriculum in our schools, nothing will change. I am not the only one wrestling with how to raise proud Arab American Muslim children while countering the hostility that exists toward Arabs and Muslims in our society. Is it too much to ask that teachers simply recognize children for who they are? For teachers not to pass judgment on their students or their families and to make attempts to celebrate the heritage of all children in their classrooms? I hope that it doesn't take another generation for us to witness a more expansive social studies curriculum that includes Palestine and the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East - from the perspective of the people who are from the region.

With the struggles, there is also triumph. One day when my children are my age, and they reflect on their childhood, they may recall children who asked them curious questions and ignorant teachers who didn't acknowledge their faith or heritage and a time when we had a racist anti-Muslim president.

But that's not all they will remember. I hope they remember this moment when not one, but two American Muslim women, one of Palestinian heritage, Rashida Tlaib, and the other of Somali heritage, Ilhan Omar, were elected to Congress. These are the women we sometimes discuss at our breakfast, lunch, and dinner table - leaders who offer hope and that my children can strive to emulate. It was the election of these women that prompted Scholastic News to publish an issue focused on the newly elected women in Congress that included Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on the cover. That is progress toward telling stories to our children that are not in the social studies text (yet!).

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As an Arab American Muslim Mother, Here Is the Education I Want for My Children

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A Palestinian American mother describes the alienation that she felt in school, and how she draws on her experiences to imagine the schooling she wants for her children.

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What better way is there to learn about something than to actually live it? That's the thinking behind classroom simulations, where teachers attempt to re-create an event and have students act as participants. Once they've walked in the shoes of the people who are actually part of a given situation, students should, in theory, reach new levels of understanding about that situation.

And for many academic topics, this holds true. Students will understand our legal system better if they participate in a mock trial. They'll gain a deeper appreciation for what led to the Boston Tea Party after playing out the roles of colonists being taxed. Virtual simulations offer even more possibilities: A digital chemistry lab, for example, will allow students to mix many more chemicals and see their results far more easily than if they tried to gather and mix the same chemicals in real life.

But when it comes to certain events-those related to slavery, the holocaust, war crimes, or any other event where people experienced violence or trauma-simulations can do more harm than good. Although teachers who conduct these activities do so because they want students to develop deeper empathy for the people involved, they end up putting students in a position to inflict pain on each other and experience real trauma, all without much educational benefit at all.

We can do better.

To learn more about this issue, I talked with Hasan Kwame Jeffries, history professor and host of the Teaching Hard History podcast. In our conversation, we discussed why certain historical simulations are harmful, why teachers should stop doing them, and what they should be doing instead to teach those challenging topics well.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries

What is a classroom simulation?

"A simulation is basically an attempt to re-create a situation or a phenomenon from the past," Jeffries explains, "to put students in a re-created environment as much as possible so that they can generate a stronger sense of empathy, particularly for those who suffered as a result of this historical situation or phenomenon."

When they are designed well, simulations allow students to gain a deeper understanding of a particular situation, like this one about farming in the Gilded Age.

"Teachers are gravitating to simulations out of a desire to be better," Jeffries says, "to think creatively and get students engaged in the classroom."

Unfortunately, those good intentions don't always get the desired results.

How Can Some Simulations Harm Students?

Problems with classroom simulations arise when teachers attempt to simulate traumatic experiences.

One example is the New York classroom where African American students were asked to play the role of enslaved people in a mock slave auction. Other simulations ask students to lie side by side on the floor to simulate the horrific Middle Passage across the Atlantic.

How do these experiences cause problems?

"Part of the problem with trying to simulate any traumatic experience is that you can't actually recreate it," Jeffries explains. "You can't really simulate what it would feel like to be dehumanized on an auction block and separated from your parents. What you would need to do to actually re-create these scenarios would put you in jail."

"So then what are you left with?" he continues. "You're left with not only the potential for traumatizing children, but you're reinforcing contemporary inequality: We cannot divorce the present from the past. We still live in a white supremacist world, and children are bringing that in. We don't talk about racism and white supremacy and inequality in our society for the most part. But then we're going to create this one-off classroom situation in which we're going to sell black kids. What it does is create confusion on the parts of both students of color and white students. It can reinforce stereotypes rather than disrupting them. And especially when you begin to isolate children of color in these scenarios, it can really create a traumatic experience because you're putting these children in what can be intense, sort of under-the-microscope conditions in which they are being treated as unequal. And then what are you doing to repair the damage after that?"

Some teachers might wonder if this problem can be solved by randomly assigning roles so that a student of any ethnicity might play the role of an enslaved person or a slave owner, or even deliberately reversing roles, having white students act as the enslaved people in the simulations.

Jeffries says no. "Essentially you would be telling these other children, okay, you're going to be the black people for today, right? That doesn't really help, because they can just walk in it, and then they walk out of it. And then how do they carry that into the playground? It's like, okay, I had my black experience, and that is about being sold. In other words, even pretending that we're going to do something that is race-neutral around a subject that is not race-neutral doesn't really help the scenario either."

Another problem with these types of simulations is that they run the risk of treating the subject matter too lightly, of trivializing it. When students are put in uncomfortable situations, they might laugh or goof around in response to that discomfort. "That's a response to being insecure in the moment," Jeffries says. "And that can have this sort of ripple effect that then trivializes a subject that you do not want to trivialize."

He also warns that some online experiences can have a similar effect. "We have to be careful of the gamification of history. One of the most common online simulations is about enslaved people running away. I actually like the idea of having students think about the tough choices and decisions that it would take for somebody to escape slavery, but you have to create the right scenario for students to understand what the issues are. You can't just have the character suddenly just wake up one morning and say, okay, do I leave or do I stay?"

To be worthwhile, an online simulation will have to provide more complicated, nuanced situations. "What are the consequences? What are the costs? Who's being left behind?" Jeffries says. "There are so many other permutations that have to be included. And if they are not included, then I think you wind up going back to trivializing this history. If they're not getting a full sense of the scope, of the conditions and circumstances, and the reasons why people would decide to escape and stay, then you're actually doing a disservice. They're learning less than what they should be learning."

What Should Teachers Do Instead?

Rather than try to re-create these traumatic experiences, Jeffries recommends a more thoughtful, discussion-based approach, where teachers use literature or other texts to learn about particular phenomena, then ask students to think about and discuss the decisions people made in those circumstances.

"You don't say, hey, what would you do if you were this person? You say, what did this person do? And what were some of their options? And so you're inviting children on their own terms to put themselves in the shoes of another person simply by thinking about the decisions that they have in their lives."

And these kinds of conversations should be happening all year, not just as part of an isolated unit. Harmful simulations, Jeffries says, are part of a larger problem of teaching topics like slavery in isolation. "We do such a poor job of integrating these difficult subjects, throughout the curriculum over the years, but rather we just sort of drop it in. In Ohio, they get a little Underground Railroad in the third grade, and then they don't deal with early American history and slavery until the eighth grade. So there's these two moments with nothing in the middle."

Instead, we can be integrating our study of these issues throughout the curriculum. The Teaching Hard History curriculum created by Teaching Tolerance offers a solid collection of resources and lessons that help us do just that.

Teachers who are used to offering students active lessons might be concerned that giving up certain simulations will make their classrooms less engaging, but Jeffries points out that engagement doesn't necessarily have to equal fun.

"Education is not always entertainment," he says. "We just have to accept that. Sometimes it's just sitting down and literally having a conversation, getting students-even at the younger ages-just to think critically about things in conversation, in dialogue, without trying to make it entertaining. Because it is traumatic. And we have to treat it with the sensitivity it deserves."

Come back for more.
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Think Twice Before Doing Another Historical Simulation

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Sponsored by ProWritingAid* and Chill Expeditions *Cult of Pedagogy is an affiliate for ProWritingAid. If you sign up for a paid account through the provided link, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. What better way is there to learn about something than to actually live it?

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US history is complex. Scholars say this is the right way to teach about slavery, racism. - USA TODAY

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Before the fervor over critical race theory, scholars on the left and right agreed on several aspects of how to teach about U.S. history and slavery.

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It's time to dismantle racist infrastructure. Let's start with American highways - Fast Company

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The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill now moving through Congress will bring money to cities for much-needed investments in roads, bridges, public transit networks, water infrastructure, electric power grids, broadband networks, and traffic safety.

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Birthday chart with culturally relevant questions to highlight the student's identity

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Birthday chart with culturally relevant questions to highlight the student's identity

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Ways to learn deeply, use multiple texts, and create authentic products

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Ways to learn deeply, use multiple texts, and create authentic products

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Visuals to represent the materials the student will need

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Visuals to represent the materials the student will need

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Critical Literacy books in 3rd grade classroom

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Critical Literacy books in 3rd grade classroom

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Part of a culturally relevant alphabet in 3rd grade classroom

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Part of a culturally relevant alphabet in 3rd grade classroom

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Part of a culturally relevant alphabet in 3rd grade classroom

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Part of a culturally relevant alphabet in 3rd grade classroom

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Part of culturally relevant alphabet in 3rd grade classroom

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Part of culturally relevant alphabet in 3rd grade classroom

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See/Think/Wonder chart about life long learning

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See/Think/Wonder chart about life long learning

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How we work together as adults to create a safe, joyful, and inclusive school environment is as important as our individual contribution or competence

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How we work together as adults to create a safe, joyful, and inclusive school environment is as important as our individual contribution or competence

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Great cognitive growth occurs through social interactions

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Great cognitive growth occurs through social interactions

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Teaching social and emotional skills is as important as teaching academic content

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Teaching social and emotional skills is as important as teaching academic content

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How we teach is as important as what we teach

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How we teach is as important as what we teach