This post is by Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year, 9th grade humanities teacher and instructional coach at in Boston.
Sydney Chaffee supports a student writer.
One email can change the world. At least, that鈥檚 what I was trying to convince a roomful of 14- and 15-year-olds last month.
I stood at the front of my classroom explaining our next project to them, which would culminate in writing emails to the U.S. government. We had been learning in my 9th grade humanities class about 鈥渉ow to think like historians.鈥� Using the history of Christopher Columbus鈥� arrival in the Americas in 1492 as our case study, we鈥檇 explored the way history gets written and taught, analyzed texts for bias, debated the reliability of various sources. Now, I told them, they would evaluate the resources about Columbus on the U.S. State Department鈥檚 for English teachers abroad and offer their feedback as critical historians. 鈥淒o you think these resources are reliable?鈥� I asked. 鈥淒o they tell this history the way you think it should be told?鈥�
Kevin leaned all the way back in his chair and raised his hand. Voice thick with teenage skepticism, he said, 鈥淲hy are we gonna write to them? You know they鈥檙e not gonna write back.鈥�
One of his classmates agreed from across the room: 鈥淵eah, they probably won鈥檛 even read it.鈥�
To be honest, I worried that they had a point. Four years ago, my students wrote letters to members of a congressional committee about the prospect of Puerto Rican statehood. They worked for weeks to perfect the letters, and not a single response came back. So maybe they were right. Maybe these emails would disappear into the recesses of the internet, never to be seen again, voices in the void.
Teaching Is a Political Act
As the 2017 National Teacher of the Year, I have traveled around the country and the world talking to people about teaching and learning. Wherever I go, I tell people that education can help us work toward a more just world and that teaching is, therefore, an inherently political act. Helping students raise their voices and step into their own power is activism.
But my students do not always feel empowered. As young people, they rightfully suspect that adults will not take their ideas seriously. They are attuned, as people of color, to the ways a country founded on white supremacy is designed to try to delegitimize or silence them. So it makes sense that sometimes projects like writing emails to the State Department can feel useless.
Over the whiteboard at the front of my classroom, colorful letters spell out the message, 鈥淲E CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.鈥� Some days鈥攖he hard days鈥攊t feels more like a wish than a declaration.
In our current political climate, when white nationalism does not immediately disqualify one from public office, when transgender students鈥� very identities are threatened, when justice and equity feel far away, we need to believe that our young people have the power to change the world for the better. That means we need to teach them, regardless of our own political leanings, how to work together to create that change. They need to know how to collaborate, how to think critically and creatively to solve problems, how to raise their voices and communicate ideas effectively. These deeper learning skills apply not just to academic work but to activism, too. These are change-the-world skills.
What Kevin鈥檚 question reminded me, though, was that all the skills in the world won鈥檛 lead to justice unless our students believe that their voices matter.
Student Voice in Action
So what does it look like to show students that their voices are powerful? Last week, I walked around my school listening in on humanities classes. Everywhere I went, student voice reverberated.
In the 10th grade, students were rehearsing for the . They chose monologues that resonated with them from 鈥淔ences,鈥� 鈥淭he Piano Lesson,鈥� and other Wilson plays and worked on bringing the characters to life through their own voices.
The juniors were writing letters to their family members to persuade them which way to vote in this week鈥檚 gubernatorial race, having attended a debate and researched major campaign issues.
The seniors typed furiously, drafting 鈥淪enior Talks鈥� modeled after Socrates鈥� Apologia. Their narratives told the stories of their lives, offering life lessons and wisdom to younger students.
And in my room? Dana was telling her classmates about an email reply she鈥檇 received from someone at the State Department. 鈥淪he said I was right,鈥� she explained shyly. 鈥淪he鈥檚 going to look at the book and change it because the stuff in it is old.鈥�
Speaking Up Sparks Hope
If we want our students to be able to work toward a more just world, then we have to ensure that they know the power of their voices. We have to give them opportunities to practice using them鈥攃rafting claims, wrangling compelling evidence, wielding rhetoric.
Teaching is political, but it鈥檚 also deeply personal. Working with young people pushes us to grow in ways we never could have imagined before we met them. In , Rebecca Solnit writes, 鈥淎ctivism itself can generate hope.鈥� For both our students and ourselves, when we unapologetically teach toward social justice, we harness the power of hope. We remind one another of the incredible possibility that lies ahead. We change the world, one email at a time.
Photo Credit: Sydney Chaffee