Education Week - March 31, 2021 - 24

OPINION

INSIDE

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21

'It Is OK to Grieve'

The Story of Remote Learning
And Suicide Is Still Being Written

How Schools Can Prioritize
Students' Emotional Well-Being

We Are Part of Something Larger
Emerging from
a year of loss

F

or most of us, educators and
students especially, the past
12 months have been a time
of relentless destabilization,
constantly requiring us to
reset our expectations for
normalcy and reevaluate
our place in the world. From the COVID-19
restrictions that began in the spring of 2020,
to the protests following the killing of George
Floyd and so many other moments of racial
violence, to the divisive presidential campaign,
the election and its aftermath, to the very recent
Atlanta and Boulder, Colo., shootings, this has
been a period like no other.
Young people have found themselves
separated from classroom environments and
cut off from their peers; educators have been
forced to reimagine an already-difficult job for a
time of unprecedented health concerns. While
we cannot yet comprehend the full impact of
these changes, increasing educational inequities
and worsened social-emotional health tell us
that both educators and the young people we
teach badly need tools to help recover from the
past year.
Religious and spiritual traditions may offer
some of these tools. As a 30-year professor of
religious studies, I know that ideas taught in
these traditions, though not limited to them-
ideas about community, our place within
history, bearing with suffering, and dealing with
complexity-can help students do more than
merely endure horrific events.
caused by attachment. Considering spiritual
Many spiritual approaches teach us to see
exemplars, some of whom are secular heroes
ourselves as part of something larger and to
as well, teachers can tell students with
embrace our ability to shape the future. In the
confidence that terrible times have sometimes
face of depressing isolation, several religious
opened new worlds of empathy and hope.
traditions suggest we draw
The traditions see sadness and
sustenance from community-
discouragement as human and
By Roger Brooks
for example, Islam's notion of
normal even if not a permanent
BROOKS is the president
an ummah that supports and
psychic resting place.
and CEO of Facing
confirms belief and practice,
Spiritual traditions also
History and Ourselves, an
Buddhism's ideal of a monastic
address complexity and
international nonprofit
order or sangha, and Judaism's
contradiction. Often, young
that uses lessons of
commandment to find joy in
people in particular experience
history to challenge
family, community, and society.
a reality in which the world
teachers and students
Imagine how at this moment
as we live it and the world as
to stand up to bigotry
this insight can help students
we imagine it do not match.
and hate. He is a former
and their teachers confirm a
Sometimes civic as well as other
longtime professor
sense of agency: What would
rituals can help to unite these
of religious studies at
we change to connect more fully
worlds (à la anthropologist
Connecticut College.
with the world, to create a sense
Clifford Geertz's seminal 1966
of joy? Our students could gain
essay, " Religion as a Cultural
agency to shape their own emotional lives and
System " ). Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance,
perhaps make a difference in the lives of those
for example, confirms our belief in " liberty
around them. Teachers can help students turn
and justice for all, " even when we too
to each other and, at the same time, teachers
frequently see reality diverge from that ideal.
themselves can draw sustenance from their
Holding two mutually contradictory beliefs
professional colleagues.
can be the essence of aspiration, even of
It has been a year of hardship and tumult,
prayer. In his letter to the Touro Synagogue
and religious traditions often attempt to
in Rhode Island, George Washington wrote
explain suffering or urge us to emerge from
that the government of the United States
suffering wiser and more pliable than we were
" gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution
before. Many traditions offer models for us
no assistance. " Yet, he led a new government
to follow, from Job's unwavering piety in the
that sanctioned slavery and himself owned
face of adversity, to notions of self-sacrifice
other human beings. At one and the same
in imitatio Christi, to Buddhism's eightfold
time, Washington could participate in a
path-a prescription for eliminating suffering
world of racial violence and aspire to a nation
24 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 31, 2021 | www.edweek.org/opinion

Mary Haasdyk for Education Week

without bigotry or persecution.
Washington might not even have seen
the enslavement of Africans as bigotry and
so may have been unable to imagine that
he was straddling his lived reality and a
different world. But nothing could be more
vital than for students (and their teachers)
to understand that although we may live
in a moment that diverges from our ideals,
we have the power to bridge a connection
between those realities. People make choices;
choices make history. Faith traditions tell us
that, working together with others, we can
change the whole world, beginning with an
act of imagination and decision.
Underlying all these teachings are skills
that young people and adults can learn and
apply-to manage emotions with a sense
of hope about the future; to feel and show
empathy that enables positive relationships;
and to make ethical and resilient decisions.
Deep learning happens best when social and
emotional learning are incorporated into
rigorous academic study. Critical thinking
requires us to abstract ideas from one set of
data and then use our own agency to apply
those principles to new information and
situations. To the extent that educators can
help young people fuse together different
kinds of learning-critical thinking, emotional
engagement, ethical reflection-they will also
give them the ability to make sense of novel
concepts and unexpected events in the world
around them.
At Facing History and Ourselves-the
organization I lead-we have learned that

students come to a deeper understanding
of history and human behavior if they
collaborate with others, especially peers,
and explore their own and others' emotional
responses.
History comes about not through
unstoppable, predetermined forces but
through the smaller decisions of individuals
who could have made different choices. In
order for students to stand up to the forces of
bigotry or ignorance, they need to appreciate
how those forces came about and found
purchase. And they need to know how to use
community to combat their own fear and
inaction. By using the tools suggested by
social and emotional education, teachers can
help students fine-tune their moral compass
and seize their own agency. Even in dark
times, students can be proud of how they
conduct themselves and the contributions
they make.
We are all, I hope, about to begin a " new
normal. " With COVID-19 vaccine production
ramping up and inoculations increasing
exponentially, many of us are beginning to
think positively about the world to come-
about what it might look like and what our
place in it might be. Our choices have made
history-but they will also define the future.
To achieve all that we hope for them, our
students must be ready to embrace the
complexity of the world we live in, to build
confidence in their own agency, and to gain
motivation to move forward into the world as
it must be. Teachers have the opportunity to
ensure they do. n
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Education Week - March 31, 2021

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