Education Week - March 9, 2022 - 12

Why Russia's Invasion of Ukraine
Is Relevant to Teachers
By Sarah Schwartz
In Rhonda Coombs' 9th grade world
geography class, the Russia-Ukraine
crisis has been a big topic of conversation
over the past few weeks.
Coombs, who teaches at Bozeman
High School in Bozeman, Mont., assigned
her students to analyze news
coverage in class in mid-February, as
Russian troops arrayed at the Ukranian
border. Coombs asked students
to make at least one connection to previous
lessons.
Some wrote about NATO and the
history of military alliances, others explored
the idea of international borders,
and a few made links back to the fall of
the Soviet Union. And they raised important
questions, too, that were playing
out in real time, such as: Why would
Russia send troops to the Ukraine border,
if it's saying it's not going to invade?
The crisis grabbed students' interest,
and kids left Coombs' class with
" enough knowledge to care, " she said.
" They can keep a pulse on this situation
and wonder what the U.S. is going to do,
and then form an opinion thereafter. "
The lesson was a hit. Even so,
Coombs acknowledges that classes
like hers may be more of the exception
than the rule. Just over half of all states
require a world history or geography
course for graduation, according to the
Education Commission of the States.
But even within those classes, Coombs
said, teachers often choose to avoid discussing
current international events.
" It's kind of scary because it's
fluid, " she said. Discussing world affairs,
and the United States' role in
them, requires both historical knowledge
and the ability to stay on top of
shifting news.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on
Feb. 24, more than 200 Ukrainian civilians
have been killed and one million
Ukrainians have fled their country as
refugees, according to United Nations
agencies. The United States and other
western European nations have responded
to the invasion with sweeping
economic sanctions on Russia. As the
situation continues to evolve, teachers
may find themselves fielding the same
questions that students ask when international
conflicts, war, or humanitarian
crises make the news: Why is this happening?
And why is-or why isn't-the
U.S. involved?
" The crisis is a great opportunity for
teachers to do a few things. One is to
explain: Something that's happening
across the world in Europe, why does
this matter to some young person in the
United States, or to the United States? "
said Richard Haass, the president of the
Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit
think tank that focuses on international
relations and foreign policy. The
group also publishes curriculum and
simulation resources for high school
and college educators.
" In order to be an informed citizen,
one needs to be globally literate. One
Displaced people wait in the Lviv train station to board a train to Poland on March 3. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has
forced more than a million people to flee their homeland in just a week.
needs to understand why the world
matters, how it works, how foreign
policy affects the world, " Haass said.
But international relations are notoriously
hard to teach.
" The vast majority of teachers don't
consider themselves subject matter
experts in the area of global issues or
foreign policy. And the reason is that
it falls between two of the subjects
that we usually teach, " said Emma
Humphries, the chief education officer
at iCivics, a nonprofit that promotes
civics education and provides educational
resources for teachers.
On one side of that gap is world
history, where most teachers start in
antiquity and might never make their
way to the 20th century, let alone current
events, Humphries said. On the
other side are American government
teachers, who may cover the United
States' actions in the wider world, but
are mostly focused on teaching the
systems and structures of this country.
International relations is also inescapably
political, a fact that can discourage
teachers from taking it on-
especially now, as some states have
placed restrictions on how teachers
can broach issues that may be seen as
" controversial. "
Discussing American involvement
in foreign wars, humanitarian crises,
and other conflicts raises big, thorny
questions: When and how should
the United States intervene in global
conflicts? Why does the government
intervene in some instances, but not
in others?
" Teachers are worried that it's controversial
to talk about U.S. military
engagement, or that it's somehow
unpatriotic, " said Jody Sokolower, the
co-coordinator of the Teach Palestine
Project at the Middle East Children's
Alliance. Sokolower, a former managing
editor at Rethinking Schools, also
edited Teaching About the Wars, that
12 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 9, 2022 | www.edweek.org
organization's guide to teaching about
the Iraq war and U.S. involvement in
the Middle East.
Posing nuanced questions and asking
students to evaluate different
sources to develop their own answers
can be a path forward, said Humphries.
" Really reasonable and intelligent
people disagree on this, and this disagreement
goes back through our history, "
she said.
Teachers build a foundation for
international studies
Getting to these lofty questions
about the United States' role in the
world requires background and context,
teachers say.
Before Coombs' class ever talked
about the Ukraine-Russia crisis, they
had learned about the Soviet Union,
NATO, and the European Union. Now,
they're moving into another unit, and
Coombs is laying the groundwork for
students to take on the roles of members
of the White House National
Security Council, in a simulation of
discussions about the militant Islamist
group Boko Haram, and its insurgency
in Nigeria.
The simulation, part of an educational
resource called Model Diplomacy
developed by the Council on Foreign
Relations, is geared toward older
high school and college students. But
Coombs said her 9th graders can take
it on with the right scaffolding. She
built up students' knowledge systematically,
focusing first on colonialism
in Africa, then the Nigerian independence
movement.
It's not just world history or geography
teachers who can prepare students
to analyze international affairs. There's
a way to do it in U.S. government class,
too, said Humphries.
" If I'm a government teacher right
now, I'm teaching about UkraineRussia
from an institutional perspective, "
she said. Humphries said she
would explain the U.S. Senate's role,
and why a delegation of senators traveled
to Ukraine in January. She would
talk about the evolution of presidential
powers in the United States, she said,
and why Congress passed the War
Powers Resolution of 1973, limiting the
president's ability to engage in armed
conflict without a declaration of war by
Congress.
Sokolower said that building students'
ability to understand the United
States' role in the world today also involves
" taking an honest look at U.S.
history. "
" Textbooks, U.S. history and world
history textbooks, tend to paint a very
rosy picture-as though U.S. involvement
is always for altruistic reasons,
or that we're always on the right side-
and that often isn't true, or it's much
more complicated, " Sokolower said.
Bringing in voices from other countries
is essential, said Anton Schulzki,
the president of the National Council
for the Social Studies, and an International
Baccalaureate history teacher at
William J. Palmer High School in Colorado
Springs, Colo.
Schulzki teaches the IB course History
of the Americas, in which he covers
the history of the United States,
Canada, and Mexico. " We try to talk
about different viewpoints, " he said.
" How do Mexican historians look at
the relationship between the U.S. and
Mexico, and how does that begin to explain
the current relationship between
the two countries? "
" It's not just the history of Manifest
Destiny, " he added.
Sokolower said it's important to hear
the voices of everyday people, too. Her
recent book, Determined to Stay: Palestinian
Youth Fight for Their Village, collects
testimonies from residents of the
Palestinian village Silwan and is written
for young people.
" Traditionally, history is taught in
terms of kings and presidents and military
leaders, " Sokolower said. " And
if you look at history in terms of who
are the people and who are the movements,
what were the issues that they
were confronting and how were they
trying to fight for more freedom, it really
casts things in a different light. "
Prompting students to ask: 'What
should be our priorities?'
Still, it can be hard for students to
think about international conflicts,
and the United States' role in them,
without bringing in their pre-existing
opinions about U.S. leaders and politics,
Humphries said.
" What you don't want students doing
is evaluating current presidential actions
based on their opinion of the president, "
she said. Humphries, who used
to be a classroom teacher, shared one
activity she did to get around this issue.
She would write summaries of decisions
that past presidents made regarding
U.S. military involvement or
other interventions in international
conflicts, but without any identifying
details that could give away who the
president was or what historical event
she was referencing.
Then, she'd ask students to discuss
the unnamed president's actions: Were
they acting within the outlines of executive
power? Did they make the right
decision?
Eventually, students and teachers
can get to complex, weighty questions
about the United States' role in the
world, Humphries said.
Questions like: " When the U.S. promotes
a global market and ideals of
democracy and justice, are we projecting
our self-interests or our ideals-or
both-and are we improving global
interests and justice? "
This question, specifically, is posed
as part of the Educating for American
Democracy Roadmap, a new set of
guidelines for social studies education
released last year. It was developed by a
national panel of dozens of academics,
educators, and civic nonprofit leaders.
One of the roadmap's seven central
themes is " A People in the World, "
and it offers key concepts and driving
questions that ask, among other things,
what role the United States should play
on the world stage. Getting students to
this place where they can wrestle with
these questions of foreign policy is a
process, said Haass, of the Council on
Foreign Relations.
" The sequence is first to get them to
understand why this matters, why it's
important, why it might affect their
lives, " he said.
" Once you absorb that, either in
principle or specifically, you can go on
to: What are the options? What are the
potential tools? What should be our
priorities? What costs should we be
willing to pay? "
Bernat Armangue/AP

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - March 9, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - March 9, 2022