Teachers toss their lesson plans, give students the floor to grapple with Trump win

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters In collaboration with the Headway Election Challenge from The New York Times, we’re asking: What should future students of American democracy know about the 2024 election? “Doomed.” “Baffled.” “Scared.” “Happy.” “I don’t care.” “We are so cooked.” Those were the reactions to the presidential election result that students scrawled on a white board Wednesday morning inside Joshua Ferguson’s 11th grade government class at Ypsilanti Community High School in Michigan. Before he knew that former President Donald Trump had won a second term, Ferguson thought he would do a lesson on disinformation in politics. Instead, he gave students room to talk. The most important piece of this lesson, he said, was for his students to feel safe and heard. “I think that’s my job as a teacher,” he said. Educators across the country awakened Wednesday to the news of a second Trump presidency, then headed into school buildings where students were feeling everything from elation to shock to despair. Some had carefully scripted lesson plans at the ready. Others, like Ferguson, scrapped what they prepared and simply listened. For civics and social studies teachers who had been...