Chauvin trial a teachable moment
The last thing Kara Cisco wants is to traumatize her students – to force them to relive the pain of a moment.
Especially this moment last May in Minnesota: The death of George Floyd, and the nearly 10 minutes that led up to it as Derek Chauvin, a white man and former police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck.
But Cisco is a teacher near Minneapolis, the city where Floyd, a Black man, lived and was killed and where last year’s wave of Black Lives Matter protests erupted in response to his death. Students of color make up about half of her school’s population.
Plus, Cisco’s not just any teacher – she’s a civics teacher. She can’t teach civics without discussing race and law enforcement and civil unrest.
Now that Chauvin’s trial is approaching its end, it’s impossible – and, many educators would argue, irresponsible – not to talk about the case in social-studies classes. That’s especially true amid renewed protests in response to a police shooting of a Black man in the Minneapolis area. Daunte Wright, 20, was fatally shot April 11 in a city suburb by a white police officer during a traffic stop.
The question now for educators is how to talk about the trial in a way that’s thoughtful and constructive. How does a good educator address historic, tragic events in the nation, while also limiting the pain surrounding them?
Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges. Closing arguments began
Monday in what is arguably the most followed trial of the past decade.
On a recent Friday, as the Chauvin trial forged ahead, Cisco’s students discussed media coverage and several policies dictating when a Minneapolis officer can – and should – use force on a suspect.
First, they identified words and phrases that stuck out from the coverage – injustice, murder, democracy. They scrutinized the nuances of policies and their role in Floyd’s death.
Classrooms across the country are engaged in similar discussions that, at their core, look at fundamental questions of prejudice, civil rights and freedom.
Some classrooms, like Cisco’s, have worked to dissect the more concrete aspects of the case. They’ve debated public-policy language and the logistics of criminal litigation.
Others, like Emily Lew’s “Action Through Literature” course at Newton North High School in the Boston area, have analyzed the trial through the lens of historical and modern texts.
Lew’s class focuses on “how our actions are often caused by our beliefs,” she said. The goal is for students to learn how to be “conscious consumers of information.”
This past semester, Lew’s students have explored the idea of “power and space” – how they vary depending on identity and how they influence policing and race relations. They’ve done so through the lens of texts by authors ranging from Audre Lorde to Brent Staples to Ta-nehisi Coates.
Over the course of the semester, Lew, who’s Asian American, noticed that her white students have become more inclined to pause before they speak. “They’ve found the power in listening deeply,” she said.
The aim, both Cisco and Lew say, is to ensure students – especially those of color – feel like their classroom is a safe space where they can process confusing emotions and figure out how to act on them.
“Seeing this as a Black person, it’s a lot more traumatizing than it is for someone who’s white and seeing this,” said Bailey Evans-williams, a senior at Newton North High who’s co-president of the school’s Black Leadership Advisory Council. Forcing students to watch the footage of Floyd’s death – even the witness testimony recounting it – “can be really insensitive,” she said.
Which is in part why one Texas teacher’s attempt at incorporating the trial into lesson plans garnered backlash.
High school students in the unidentified teacher’s communications class, in a suburb of Dallas, were asked to serve as mock jurors in the trial, which kicked off in late March. As part of the assignment, students were expected to “be attentive to the actual trial, listening and paying attention to the evidence of both sides, defense and prosecution,” according to an outline provided by the teacher and acquired by the local ABC affiliate station, WFAA. The plan was to have students watch a livestream of the trial for 45 minutes a day.
Parents bristled at the assignment, submitting a letter to the district that highlighted how traumatizing the incident’s footage has been for people of all ages, especially children.