Parenting, Protesting, and Protecting: Confronting Political Elephants in the Classroom

The past year and a half has been quite interesting, as it has been filled with extreme ups and downs that I never imagined I would face in academia and while parenting. When I completed my PhD in curriculum and instruction in 2012, I had no doubt about my ability to prepare teachers for the classroom. I had no doubt about my ability to engage preservice and in-service teachers in critical yet thoughtful rhetoric regarding teaching, learning, and the history of public education in the United States. I had no doubt that I would be able to contribute positively to the education and thought of the next wave of scholars who would undoubtedly find ways to make their research applicable to K-12 classrooms around the world. I am five years out of my doctoral studies, and, while I still have very few doubts about my abilities to effectively prepare the next wave of teachers, my education did not and could not prepare me for the aftershocks of the 2016 presidential campaign and the impact that it is having on my students and the beautiful child that I am raising to be a strong woman of integrity and a productive American citizen.

The Elephants on Campus

I am junior faculty in the College of Education at a historically black university in the southeastern United States. I am an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) professional. I prepare undergraduate preservice teachers with the tools that they need to teach K–12 students who are cultural and linguistic minorities. I teach them content knowledge (for example, language and content instructional strategies), policy (for example, educational laws, regulations, and student rights), and advocacy (for example, why and how we fight for our students and the teaching profession). At the graduate level, I coordinate a graduate ESL program that enrolls two populations of students: (1) in-service teachers who are seeking additional certification in ESL and (2) graduate students interested in earning a master’s degree to teach English internationally or teach adult English-language learners at one of the local community colleges. Because I also teach an introductory qualitative methods research course, I meet and teach students across the college and serve as a mentor to students who are enrolled in the curriculum and instruction, counseling psychology, and education administration and leadership doctoral programs.

In each of the various settings, the vitriol of the 2016 election and the negative discourses of the president have played a significant role. While President Trump’s highly publicized comments have caused quite a bit of angst, unnerving our immigrant student population, it has had a surprisingly positive effect on the manner in which I prepare and teach my courses and mentor my students. In the sections to follow, I describe incidents where the metaphorical political elephants in the room were so obvious that they demanded a response that resulted in calculated and critical parenting, protecting, and/or protesting.

Elephant #1: Studying Abroad during the Trump Era

In the summer of 2016, I was at my previous institution preparing to lead a study-abroad trip to Mexico. To provide some context, my previous university is a large, predominately white, research 1 institution in the South. It has a current enrollment of more than 65,000 students. Fifty-eight percent of its student population identify as white, 19.7 percent identify as Hispanic, 6.5 percent as Asian, 3.7 percent as black and 8.9 percent as international. The university’s strategic plan states that it is committed to increasing student participation in high-impact, international experiences. The university has lived up to this aspect of the strategic plan in that almost every department sponsors two or three faculty-led study-abroad programs.

The group of students traveling to Mexico was majority white. There were a few Asian students and one student who identified as multiracial. I believe that this was the typical demographic for study-abroad groups at this institution. While I had traveled to Mexico the year prior, I anticipated that this time would be different. Why? Because we...