Processing Current Events Through Literature

This week my combined 6th and 7th grade English language arts class started studying the book A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. Set in southern Sudan, the narration alternates between an 11-year-old Dinka boy in 1985 and an 11-year-old Nuer girl in 2008. On Wednesday we were discussing a background article on the civil war leading up to the creation of South Sudan, and the resurfacing of ethnic conflict in the new country afterwards. One student asked, “Why did they go so quickly to violence instead of using words?” I said, “That’s a good question. I wonder that, too.”

Thursday morning I woke up to the news of an armed mob storming the US Capitol. 

If you find the timeline confusing, it’s because I’m in Japan, many time zones and an International Date Line away from the events unfolding in Washington, D.C. It was surreal to watch  the kinds of actions that have always happened in other places happening in my home country. It's different for my students, though. They hold an assortment of passports, but none from the US. To them, it’s still one of those other places. 

“Why did they go so quickly to violence instead of using words?” The middle schooler's inquiry from the day before about Sudan became a burning question for me about my own country. I turned to BBC News, a good source for explaining the US to people outside the US, and read the article “US election 2020: The people who still believe Trump won.” I realized they believed that words had already failed. And they’re afraid. Like the characters in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” that we’d read in 6th and 7th grade right before Christmas break, showing how quickly fear breeds suspicion, prejudice, and violence. That fear triggers herd behavior, which we’d read an article on in response to the bullying in Wonder, which we’d studied earlier in the fall. Who knew that the 6th and 7th grade English curriculum would help the teacher process current events?

Arriving in 1st period, I asked if any of the students had heard about the violence in the US Capitol. A handful looked like they were vaguely aware of something. I supplied a brief outline of events and referred to the student’s question from the previous day: “Why did they go so quickly to violence instead of using words?” I said, “I think I have the beginning of an answer,” and I shared my string of connections to what we’d read earlier in the year.

“We’re learning political science in English class!” one student burst out.

“Political science involves human nature, and literature involves human nature, and we are all human, learning about how to live with and for each other,” I answered.