October can be a long stretch for teachers and students. 

Maybe it’s because the school year isn’t new anymore. Teachers know who their students are. We did ice breakers and team-building exercises to get to know one another at the beginning of the year. We assess their work to figure out what they need and how to support their learning.

Inevitably, the end of the first quarter brings with it deadlines, piles of grading and extra meetings. Teachers are busy, and students’ stress levels increase as report cards loom.

It’s tempting to abandon resolutions we set over the summer, revert to old habits and stick to what we’ve done in the past. But the busiest periods are when we need them the most.

I needed mine when a student started FaceTiming during class. The class was reading quietly, and she asked to step outside to take a phone call. I was happy to let her step away, as that’s the norm my student teacher and I have worked to establish. But she returned to the room before the call was over and carried on while the other students tried to work quietly.

It seemed ridiculous. I didn’t understand how a ninth-grader would decide this was the best way to handle the call.  Just before throwing my arms in the air, I reminded myself that I set a goal in August to be less reactive when my most challenging students misbehave during class, that dialogue is an essential component of the restorative practices my school’s implementing and, as someone who writes about building positive relationships with all students, it was an opportunity to put those articles and blog posts into action.

But I still didn’t know what to say.

When in doubt, I follow the advice of a long-time mentor who watched me mishandle similar issues when I shared his classroom during my first year of teaching. 

“Remember,” he told me over and over again, “they don’t act out to disrespect you. When you have a conversation, deflect their attention away from the negative behavior and you might figure out why they’re doing it.”

So I asked the student to return to the hallway, commended her for stepping out to take the call and asked her if everything’s okay. 

“It was my friend,” she said. “He’s in the hospital. I was taking care of him this weekend but now he’s by himself. I didn’t want to miss class because I’m already absent so much, but he needs me and I don’t know how I’m going to get there after school.” 

After a brief pause she apologized for talking in class. I was again speechless, so we returned to class and got back to work.

Letting her speak first accomplished two things that I couldn’t have initiated myself. First, she did have a good reason for her behavior and shared personal information that helped inform my planning and instruction for weeks to come. I already knew her life outside of school was complicated, and she did only make it to class a couple days each week. But now I have some context.

Additionally, it turned a negative experience into a positive. She returned to class knowing that I care about her, but also that she needs to bring her grade up in order to pass the class.

Sometimes the right approach with students is to say less instead of more. I was lucky to guess right this time and hope to find more (and less obvious) opportunities to have similar conversations with other students more often. 

Hurricane Florence mostly spared Durham. The eye of the storm veered south and weakened as it moved inland. We still experienced heavy wind and rain, flooding and power outages, but it was much worse in other parts of the state.

A few days ago, as I reflected on my first few weeks of school, I thought about my Silent Sam article, mentoring my student teacher and learning my students. I was ready to write about the end of the “honeymoon” – those first few days before students reveal their true colors – and current events like Aretha Franklin’s death, migrant farmers and their children’s education and Colin Kaepernick, all of which I turned into Articles of the Week.

But Florence put my mind in a very different place. Now I’m thinking about how the relationships and community I’ve worked to build with students during the first three weeks of school could stretch beyond the classroom and support families who lose far more than two days of school.

It seems trivial to call a natural disaster a “teachable moment,” but it will certainly influence what happens in class this  week.  First, students basic needs (food, water, shelter) have to be covered before we can worry about learning. After that, we’ll need to acknowledge the challenges students and their families experienced and help them feel help them feel safe again. Only then can we reasonably expect them to take risks and grow.

Teachers don’t have to bring natural disasters into their classrooms. The events that affect our students lives outside of aren’t listed in our curriculum standards and won’t show up on standardized tests. However, as my friend Justin Parmenter wrote last week, these experiences bring to life the lessons we deliver in school.

In so many ways, moments like these are where the rubber meets the road. Hurricane Florence and its aftermath will require students to process their feelings, make decisions and lead others. They’ll use the skills they learned in school and communicate their experiences through social media, text messages and conversations. If I’m committed to integrating current events into my instruction, addressing students’ social emotional needs and implementing the restorative practices, I can’t return to school this week and not discuss the storm.

Click here for more information about Durham’s shelters. To assist with hurricane relief efforts, consider making a donation to the Red Cross. 

The toppling of monuments is a tricky subject to bring into a classroom. But it’s also a powerful opportunity to analyze institutional racism, the First Amendment, and American history.

Last week, protesters at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pulled down “Silent Sam.” The statue of the Confederate soldier was erected in 1913 with donations from the Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate “the sons of the university who died for their beloved Southland 1861-65,” according to the university’s website.

The monument sparked controversy for decades, but protests against the statue intensified following last year’s violence in Charlottesville, Va. As Silent Sam’s fall made national headlines, counterprotesters, advocating for the statue to be reinstalled, joined protesters on campus. Police donned riot gear and made arrests. I worried about students’ safety, but also thought about ways to incorporate the events into my own lessons.

I brought the topic of Confederate monuments into my freshman high school English class for the first time last year. After protesters toppled a Confederate statue in downtown Durham, my students and I considered its symbolism. We had just finished Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” In the play’s final scene, after learning of the two lovers’ sad demise, the Montague and Capulet families agree to build statues of each other’s children. Their monuments would mark the end of the families’ long-running feud and be symbols of peace in the city of Verona.

The play gave us an opportunity to consider symbolism and monuments in our own community. We began with easily recognizable images that represented both itself and something else, like an American Flag, a halo, and Nike’s Jordan “Jumpman” logo. But when an image of the Confederate flag appeared on my projector, the conversation stopped.

“Racist!” one student called out, but no one followed his lead. I sensed discomfort, so I backed up.

“Like our first example,” I said, “this is a flag. What country did it represent?”

A couple more students volunteered historical facts about the Civil War. They noted that it was a war between the northern and southern United States. The Confederate flag was a symbol for the South, but because the North wanted to end slavery and the South wanted to keep it, the flag was a symbol of slavery, too.

“True,” I said, “But the Civil War ended over 100 years ago. Slavery’s been gone for a long time. Why, then, is this symbol still such a big deal?”

Students acknowledged that the flag also symbolized Southern heritage and pride and not all who displayed it on their hats, clothes, and cars were racist. We were getting somewhere, but many students were still reluctant to talk about it.

The next day I showed them images of famous monuments like Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington. We talked about why countries and communities build them and what they symbolize. Then, we read about monuments around the world that protesters had pulled down.

Finally, I put up an image of Durham’s fallen Confederate statue. I asked them what the city should do about its statue. Should it go back up, go away completely, or move to another location? Should a new monument replace it? If so, who or what should it be?

I gave students two ways to express their conclusions. Some designed a new monument, complete with a nameplate and brief description of what it symbolized. Others wrote letters to members of the county commission who really did have to decide what to do next. Many believed the statue symbolized values that our community no longer held. Two weeks later, a student representative even spoke at a county commission meeting and shared recommendations from our class.

As I consider how to build Silent Sam and other cultural controversies into my instruction this fall, I’ll keep a few principles in mind:

1. Consider the timing. Although the Silent Sam statue fell in August, I will wait a few weeks to understand my students, establish a safe classroom environment, and have them practice speaking and listening. Students know that it’s my job to teach them reading and writing, not American history and institutional racism. Build trust with your students before tackling social issues.

2. Keep the conversation closely tied to the curriculum. Without a close connection to the course content, students won’t understand why they’re studying it. Scaffolding instruction to make it clear why and how students are studying a particular issue will help them contextualize it. In an English/language arts setting, the topic could be an extension of a literary unit, an opportunity to demonstrate their writing skills, or a speaking and listening activity focused on rhetoric skills.

3. Keep it student-centered. Do not aim to reach consensus–it’s about deepening the discussion, not winning an argument. Provide accurate information that will, in turn, inform students’ decisions about what should happen next. Adding real-world consequence to their decisions, such as offering them the opportunity to share their ideas with audiences outside of the classroom, enhances their experience even more. But always remember that the experience is about them.

4. Reflect on how it goes. It may feel sloppy at times, and not everyone will feel passionately about the topic. Last year my students’ writing and illustrations were excellent, but our discussions never took off. I should have shown examples of other monuments earlier and let them bring up Durham’s Confederate monument themselves. Perhaps a more organic transition would have inspired more students to contribute.

Looking back, the aftermath of Charlottesville was a scary time, and I was uncomfortable approaching the topic in class. But the opportunity to learn, reflect, and take action was too good to pass up. School is one of few places where students can hear different viewpoints. If teachers develop a process that invites a variety of perspectives, models appropriate reactions, empowers students to make a decision, and later consider its impact, they can make any current event or controversy a teachable moment.

This article was originally published by EdWeek.