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When current policy ‘leads us to xenophobia, racism, and colonial displacement, students often have questions’

Regular Education Week columnist Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and former Alinskyite community organizer (who isn’t very good at predicting things), has been writing about various teachers’ ideas on how to “thoughtfully navigate the challenges of our current national political environment.”

The latest entry on “strategies for teaching social studies in turbulent times” (weird how things become “challenging” and “turbulent” when a Republican is in the White House) includes those from Christie Nold, a high school teacher on “unceded Abenaki land” in Vermont.

(Land acknowledgments appear on virtually every reference to Ms. Nold, by the way.)

Nold was a “core member and later board member for the Education Justice Coalition of Vermont,” facilitated the group Students Organizing Against Racism, and helps students “develop critical literacy skills through both media and disciplinary literacy.”

It may not surprise you that Nold noted (in a blog called “Teaching While White“) that the “structure, name, and foundation” of Students Organizing Against Racism, aka SOAR, comes from Glenn Singleton’s “Courageous Conversations About Race.” For background, check out my own experience with “Courageous Conversations” which occurred over 20 years ago; I had to wait over a decade to write about it.

It also may not surprise you that Nold (pictured), who’s white and was “educated in predominantly white public schools” that “centered the voices of white men who had ‘conquered’ foreign land and offered no critical interpretation of the implications of that conquest,” also is worried the new presidential administration “might attempt to place limits on a teacher’s ability to pull at certain events.”

(Like the land acknowledgments, the word “critical” often pops up in Nold’s writings.)

If white students feel shame when teachers give their “critical interpretations” of the past, Nold essentially shrugs her shoulders: “[F]or me, shame only came from not knowing the truth and in having to unlearn a history that had been wrongfully constructed.”

Do not fret, however — Nold will be there to assist students to “thoughtfully examine and integrate” that shame:

Instead of getting “stuck” in their shame, students can integrate new and troubling knowledge about our nation’s history while developing a more complete understanding and deeper sense of self. To teach a more complete history is to bring back the voices of those who have been intentionally silenced. It is this more full, complete, and honest history that has the power to rehumanize our education system and ourselves.

MORE: Worried about your kids’ politics? Just look at what our English teachers do.

When it comes to examining current events, Nold suggests “tugging,” or “exploring contemporary issues [by] tracing their historical roots.” Regarding Trump’s executive order regarding birthright citizenship, she says “When the threads of contemporary policy lead us to xenophobia, racism, and colonial displacement, students often have questions.”

For her classes, Fridays are reserved for current events where Nold “work[s] to integrate essential media literacy lessons and allow students to follow stories of choice, pausing when there is a direct connection to a current unit.”

“In each of these discussions, it is not about telling students what to think but encouraging them to consider how to think,” Nold says. “To pull, build connections, and witness how our understanding of the past can help inform the present.”

That’s why she had students watch the sermon by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde (below), who chided President Trump at the National Prayer Service the day after his inauguration, and then analyze the latter’s response and how media outlets covered both.

Nold’s Holocaust Studies class considers questions such as “What does it mean that ethnic cleansing is in the headlines?” “When was the term first used?” and “How are German papers reporting on Musk’s support for the right-wing AfD party?”

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. She’s the first woman to hold the position.

She was given a great honor today, a chance to unify America around a Christian message at the dawn of a new administration. Instead, she disgraced… pic.twitter.com/IFA6a3nZno

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 21, 2025

Consider that “Encouraging them to consider how to think.” It’s a carefully worded, yet loaded, statement.

How does Nold get her charges to “consider how to think”? How did she “encourage” students “how to think” about why, despite two impeachments and numerous subsequent (politically charged) legal entanglements, Trump managed to win not only the electoral, but popular vote?

Did she cover the noted debate about birthright citizenship as adequately and thoroughly as this? What comprises her “essential media literacy lessons”?

I could go on and on and on.

Perhaps Nold is balanced in how she presents and discusses current events and related historical ties. However, given what she chose to highlight and promote in Ed Week, her past writings, her fascination with oppression-based programs like “Courageous Conversations,” and the political leanings of public school educators in general (especially in blue states), I am skeptical.

MORE: Over half of American teachers oppose the teaching of critical race theory

IMAGES: StopAntisemitism, Christie Nold/X

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