Students frequently have questions when present policy “leaves us to xenophobia, racism, and imperial displacement.”
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 most recent” strategies for teaching social studies in tumultuous days” ( odd how things change when a Republican is in the White House ) includes those from Christie Nold, a high school teacher on “unceded Abenaki area” in Vermont.
( Not to mention Ms. Nold’s land acknowledgments are frequently found on almost every instance. )
Nold is a” base part and eventually table member” of the Vermont Education Justice Coalition, co-founder of the organization Kids Organizing Against Racism, and a resource for students who “develop critical literacy skills through both advertising and administrative fluency.”
It might not surprise you that Glenn Singleton’s” Courageous Conversations About Race” is the source material for Students Organizing Against Racism, aka SOAR, according to Nold ( in a blog called” Teaching While White” ). For context, I had to wait more than ten years to create about” Valiant Conversations,” which took place more than 20 years ago.
It might not surprise you that Nold ( pictured ), who is white and attended “electrified public schools” that “centered the voices of white men who had” conquered” foreign land and offered no critical interpretation of the situation, is white.
implications of that victory,” and worries that the new political leadership “may attempt to place restrictions on a professor’s ability to pull at specific events.”
( Like the land acknowledgments, the word” critical” frequently appears in Nold’s writings. )
Nold essentially shrugs her shoulders if white students experience pity when teachers give their” critical interpretations” of the previous:” [F]or me, pity only came from , not knowing the truth and in having to learn a story that had been wrongfully constructed.
However, don’t worry; Nold will be there to help students” carefully observe and incorporate” that shame:
Kids can integrate fresh, upsetting information about our country’s story into their coursework to gain a more thorough understanding and sense of self, as opposed to getting” stuck” in their sorrow. To impart a more thorough past requires the return of the voices of those who have been purposefully silenced. This more complete, accurate, and fair background has the power to rehumanize both our educational system and ourselves.
MORE: Concerned about your kids ‘ political views? Just a quick glance at what our American faculty do.
Nold advises “tugging” or “exploring modern issues” when examining current situations by tracing their historic origins. She says that when the threads of modern policy produce racism, prejudice, and imperial displacement, students frequently have questions about Trump’s professional order regarding birthright citizenship.
Sundays are reserved for current events in her classes where Nold “workes ] to integrate requisite internet literacy training and allow students to pursue their own stories, pausing when there is a direct link to a current product.”
It is not about telling students what to think in each of these discussions, but rather about encouraging them to think about what to think, Nold says. To “pull, build connections, and observe how our knowledge of the past can influence the present.”
In order to understand this, she instructed students to watch Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon ( below ), which addressed President Trump at the day before his inauguration, and then analyze both the latter’s response and how the media outlets covered both.
What does it mean that ethnic cleansing is in the headlines, asks Nold’s Holocaust Studies class. When was the first time the term was used? and” How are German newspapers reporting on Musk’s backing of the AfD party, the right-wing party?”
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde serves as the Bishop of the Washington Episcopal Diocese. She is the first woman to hold the position.
At the start of a new administration, she was given the great honor of being able to unite America around a Christian message. She chose to disgrace herself… twitter.com/IFA6a3nZno
— Charlie Kirk ( @charliekirk11 ) January 21, 2025
Consider “encouraging them to think how to think.” It’s a a thoughtfully phrased, yet loaded statement.
How does Nold convince her men to” consider how to think”? How did she “encourage” students to “how think” about why, despite two impeachments and numerous subsequent ( politically charged ) legal tanglements, Trump was able to win both the electoral and popular votes?
Did she adequately and thoroughly address the well-known debate over birthright citizenship? What exactly are her “essential media literacy lessons”?
I could go on and on and on.
Perhaps Nold’s presentation and discussion of current events and related historical ties is balanced. I am skeptical, despite what she chose to highlight and promote in Ed Week, her previous writings, her interest in oppression-based programs like” Courageous Conversations,” and her general political stances, particularly in blue states.
MORE: Critical race theory is taught in the hands of over half of American educators.
IMAGES: Christie Nold/X, StopAntisemitism
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