How teachers talk to pupils about major terror attacks
Training for educators needed to address violence in reassuring, tolerant way, experts say
It was the Tuesday after Victoria Day weekend and high school teacher Jenny Chen was wondering what to tell her class about a terrorist attack that took place in Britain.
A bomb had been detonated at Manchester Arena the night before, killing 22 people, many of them teens. It was all over the news.
“You’re having this internal debate. ‘Do I talk about it? Do I not talk about it? Is the school going to talk about it?’ ” said Chen, who has taught in Toronto since 2003.
With high-profile attacks dominating social media and news coverage around the world, Canada’s elementary and high school teachers increasingly find themselves addressing students’ questions, fears and stereotypes about terrorism and violence.
But those are difficult conversations, especially when teachers are trying to inform students without frightening them, or to explain complex political and religious issues in a digestible way, without making generalizations or otherwise hurting kids from varying cultural backgrounds.
“Children are exposed to (terrorism) whether they hear about it on TV or from other children . . . or from overhearing adult conversations,” said Richard Messina, principal of the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
“It’s important to provide avenues where we can be reassuring to children and answer any questions they may have.”
Chen, who teaches law and civics courses, said she feels comfortable talking to her students about topics like equity, oppression, power and privilege.
“But not everybody is,” Chen said, adding that she has received some training from her teachers union on facilitating challenging discussions. “The assumption is that every (teacher) comes with those skills and I’m not sure that is a fair assumption one can make.”
In any given class, there could be students whose families are directly affected by a terrorist attack, Chen said. There could be kids who emigrated from countries where the incident took place, or whose family fled violence in their home country.
Aafia Talib grew up in Canada and now teaches elementary grades at a private school near Washington, D.C.
“I’m not very religious but I was raised Muslim, so for me it’s very personal,” she said in a phone interview.
“Kids will make comments like ‘Oh, Muslims hate us,’ or ‘Islam is this or that.’ . . . What they’re saying is what they’re hearing at home, or what they’ve heard in the news.”
Talib tries to teach her students that terrorism is separate from religion, no matter what the perpetrator says. “With Muslim kids in my class . . . I’m very careful to make sure they’re not offended and they don’t feel isolated. But I also want other kids to understand that this is not what Islam is.”
Sometimes discussions about terrorism fit organically into the curriculum. When Talib teaches her Grade 5 students about the U.S. civil rights movement, or her seventh graders read To Kill a Mockingbird, she uses events such as the racially motivated 2015 shooting at a Black church in Charleston, S.C., to offer students a modern context.
“We talk about all kinds of people who are impacted by (violence), and about the fact that some people hate people who are different from them,” Talib said.
Schools and school boards take different approaches to responding to attacks in the news.
Ryan Bird, a Toronto District School Board spokesperson, said the board has no “set procedure” for addressing terrorist incidents, but it does post messages on its website after certain high-profile events, like the Manchester bombing or the 2016 Orlando, Fla., nightclub shooting, offering condolences and advising parents how to discuss the incident with their kids.
“Within (our) schools, there is no . . . direction to staff to proactively speak with students about the incident,” Bird said. “However, should students have questions, staff respond in an age-appropriate way, as they would with any tragic event.”
The Peel District School Board posts similar letters containing tips for parents on their website. Board spokesperson Carla Pereira said the PDSB will sometimes distribute a standard message for teachers to deliver to their students after a terrorist attack.
“Recently, we’ve sent out fewer messages, as our social work team would suggest this may heighten anxiety and panic for many students, especially those who recently suffered a trauma and who may be vulnerable,” she added.
Standard messages could be helpful, Chen said, but individual teachers need to be prepared to field followup questions from students.
The government, school boards and teachers unions must come together to train teachers, added Chen, who was recently elected to an executive position with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation.
“I don’t think (discussion) should be the responsibility of an individual teacher, but rather a school coming together and thinking about what would be best, for the children of our school so that everyone feels supported,” Messina said.
For Talib, the main goal of these class discussions is that students don’t feel they’re in danger.
“The bottom line with kids is to make them feel safe,” she said.