Olina Banerji on How Schools Are Processing the Election

In which Dan chats with Olina Banerji, a reporter for EdWeek who recently wrote a great article, "Schools Are Eerily Quiet About the Election Results, Educators Say." Dan and Olina talk about why "the impact never came" following Donald Trump's election, how different stakeholders are processing the results, and what Olina and her colleagues could be reporting on in the weeks leading up to inauguration day.

See also:

• EdWeek - The public education paper of record
• "Teachers toss their lesson plans, give students the floor to grapple with Trump win" from Chalkbeat
• "Moreno Valley teacher on administrative leave after making anti-Trump remarks in class" from ABC7

Music: Gingersweet from Massobeats

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hey listeners, welcome to What's the Big Idea? Here's a rare episode for me, a reaction to current events as they're happening. As the election continues to reverberate throughout the United States, I wanted to get a sense of how this is playing out in classrooms around the country, other than my own. So I reached out to Olena Banerjee. She's a reporter at Edweek, and she recently wrote a great piece about what she describes as the eerie quietness around the election in schools. We had a great chat about how the election is impacting students, teachers, administrators, and I want to share it with you, see if it jives with your experience, if it meshes with how things are playing out in your community. As always, leave a comment or question at big ideaed Instagram X. And I hope you enjoy this conversation and I hope you are processing the election in a healthy and productive way with your students and children. Well, Olen, I want to thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah, I'd imagine anyone listening knows Ed Week. I describe it as like the New York Times of the education world, maybe is a fair way to put it.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

That's a great analogy. I'm going to take it back to my editors. I don't think I've got that one floating around, but yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

The paper of record. Um so I reached out to you because you recently wrote a great article in Ed Week called Schools Are Eerily Quiet About the Election Results, educators say. And I thought it was a great in-depth and nuanced take on how schools are um wrestling with the election results. So maybe we just start a big picture. Uh, in your reporting, what are some things you've been hearing from schools um about the election?

SPEAKER_02 2:12

I think um, Dan, we made those calls the day the results were announced. In fact, I think the the Republicans hadn't won the House yet, they'd won the Senate. Um, but it was pretty clear that Donald Trump was going to be the next president. So we made the calls in in the afternoon of Wednesday, and I think we were just trying to get a temperature check on how people were feeling. And big picture, my my takeaway was that students were eerily quiet, like I said in my in my article. They were not a lot of people were talking in school, not a lot of chatter, not a lot of uh I I believe in 2016 um there was there were a lot of tears, there were walkouts, there were protests in schools from from students, but I think in this cycle, students just seemed to not either want to talk about it or they didn't care, or um, or you know, their their their fears were silent fears. Um I think the people that were talking about it were teachers. Um they were expressing either their concern or, you know, their um possibly I I didn't personally speak to any teachers who were feeling happy about the results, but um I did speak to some who were who were concerned, who had talked to their colleagues about what that what this result would mean. And the third category of people were principals, so I think they were just trying to manage emotions and they were just trying to brace for impact, but that impact kind of never came. So that's that's I think big picture of what I saw.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah, that's so interesting. The impact never came. And I would say that reflects my own experience in where I teach. I how do you report a story like this? You know, with so many educators and and students around this country, how do you and your colleagues actually go about reporting a story like this?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

I think the caveat is that we probably didn't get all the emotions and and and reactions in there, but we focused, I tried to focus on battleground states where um I thought there'd be people who, you know, there'd be split opinion about who should be president. Um, some of the states also had some um battles over, you know, the future of public education. Um there were educators, there were superintendents who felt differently about, you know, um, how much power should uh public schools have. Um and there were there are places, for example, in Texas, um there's been a big voucher fight going on for the last couple of years. So um I tried to focus on educators who might be teaching in divided classrooms who might be teaching in divided environments and kind of get a sense of how are you dealing with this, right? So I think if you talked, I did also speak with some with educators in extremely blue states and extremely red states like Alabama, and you could see sort of the the difference in perception of what they were dealing with, right? So even between Texas and Alabama, there were differences and how students were reacting. So um, yeah, I think I think we tried to focus on a variety of educators across the country. So the the article really spanned people all the way from New Jersey to Nevada. So trying to get a sense of and just a lot of calls and a lot of legwork.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yeah, you know that uh across the country, um, disappointment, anger, and celebrations have been largely muted. So this isn't just a uh the people who are upset are being sort of quiet, sort of everybody, even those who are happy. What do you think is the the biggest factor in that eerily quiet environment that we're finding in schools about this? It was such a build-up to this election. I mean, it's all we've talked about for months, and then as you say, it's like crickets as soon as it's over.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

I don't know if I can explain it because I think as adults, we have a propensity to try and justify everything that's going on around us. And that's why I think there was a difference between how teachers were responding and how students were responding. And right before the results came out, we actually did my colleague a piece on how students actually just don't want to talk about their political persuasions, even those that were voting. Yeah, they they just didn't they just didn't feel comfortable either sharing it or they were over it or they were saturated by the amount of news coming out. So that could have played a factor in also, you know, the the the sort of silence that we that was so loud.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

That's actually a great point. Just fatigue, maybe. Maybe, maybe just happy it's over. Were people willing to speak with you for the story? Was there any reluctance uh in speaking on the record with you about this?

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Not a whole bunch. I was surprised because I I didn't think, especially teachers, right? I think teachers are a little bit are a little bit more vulnerable um in terms of um uh their exposure to all of this and their exposure to critique. So um I I didn't really face um face much of an uphill battle. Um some people didn't get back, which was fair. Like they they maybe didn't want to speak, they didn't, they weren't comfortable. But most people I reached out to were just happy to share what they were experiencing. And I think that's partly because there wasn't a lot of stuff going on. So, you know, there wasn't they didn't feel like they were they were putting themselves in some kind of you know in in harm's way in talking about this, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

One thing that's interested me throughout the election cycle and certainly after the election is the schools and their missions, schools and their values, and how those values either jibe with the results or maybe are contrasted by the results of the election. Did you get any sense of that talking with us, particularly the leaders, uh principals, administrators, how they were sort of fitting the election results with what they kind of saw as the mission or values of their community and school?

SPEAKER_02 8:11

That's a great question. And I think this I think the reality of what's happened might might sink in over time. Um but but that for that point in time, I can say that for school leaders in states where I think the result pretty much went how um in in in red states where they where the result went pretty much how the students probably wanted it to go, I think there was more of a sense of, okay, this is done, let's move on, you know, next thing. Um, there wasn't a lot of reflection on what might happen to um minorities in the school or what what might happen to protected classes or just students feeling uncomfortable with the result because potentially those schools aren't, you know, um maybe as diverse, or those schools 80, for example, 81% of um the population of a school in a mock election voted for Trump, and that kind of reflected the results of how that how their town voted. So, you know, you can see you can see there's this sort of like an overlap in values and uh the result. Um not not not to not to say that there aren't students there who aren't feeling and who are feeling uncomfortable, or there are students there who are in the minority and may want in the future some kind of reassurance from their leaders. Um in other places I felt like because there wasn't a lot of chatter, there wasn't a lot of sort of like obvious fanfare about the election after the results, the principals were falling back on affinity groups, they're falling back on counselors to sort of you know um help um help basically make kids feel safer, make kids feel more comfortable. I think what I did hear was a lot of teachers talk about how some of their kids were worried about being deported or their parents being deported, especially, you know, um kids with Hispanic backgrounds, um, students of color, they're feeling dismayed, uh feeling sad, feeling kind of lonely, you know, um in uh after the results. So I think teachers were kind of seeing more in real time how those how those emotions were coming out.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah, I should note that even since you wrote the article, the president-elect has started uh naming uh cabinet candidates that are affirming some of probably those students' worst fears. And on that question, what do you how do you foresee the next couple of months playing leading up to inauguration day? And what what are you going to be looking for in your reporting? What stories do you think you'll be following uh as this uh develops?

SPEAKER_02 10:59

I think some stuff has already come up. We've reported on um uh racist texts going out to students of color in in different states, and that's sort of, you know, that happened almost immediately after the results came out. Um, and so we're gonna we're seeing sort of a rise of threats against uh trans students and LGBTQ plus uh students who identify as LGBTQ plus, and we're gonna follow that track very closely because um repealing some protections under Title IX are going to impact not just students but also the educators that look after them or the schools that you know spend resources on supporting them. So that's definitely going to be something we're gonna keep our eye out on. Um, I personally want to see how, because I cover the principal beat, I personally want to see how school leaders are kind of affirming some of those values, like you said, right? Like you mentioned, how how are the values going to be um how how are the values going to play out with what happens politically? And one of the things are a lot of our school leaders lead schools with diverse populations, a lot of them are going to be Hispanic kids, who are going to be worried about deportations, they're going to be worried about their families being separated. So I I foresee talking to a lot of people about how that's going to impact school, school culture, how we're going to protect students. And yesterday, I think, you know, um the the Chicago uh uh Board of Education um held an emergency um meeting and then they talked about how they're gonna prevent ICE officers from coming into their schools. So I think I think schools are more uh more on the front line of this than people realize, and so they're gonna be a lot, there's gonna be a lot of stuff coming out, you know, from from these clashes. So uh yeah, we're gonna keep our eyes, uh our our our all our eyes on that.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah, it's gonna be for some schools a real stress test on their values. I'm always I'm always fascinated by how um prevalent schools make their values and how much they stick to their values in times of stress like this. And it's interesting, right? Because students most students can't vote. They're not old enough to vote, but as you say, they really are now finding themselves uh possibly on the front lines of the consequences of the election. And I w I wonder of the the different um stakeholders in schools, students, teachers, administrators, parents, even who do you think is gonna face who's going to face the biggest challenges over the next couple of months?

SPEAKER_02 13:33

It's a great question. I don't know for sure right now, but I I do think it's people response directly responsible for looking after kids. So I think it's gonna be teachers and principals who um who in real time face difficulties in either teaching, you know, um teaching sort of uh a social studies unit, for example, right? Where there's gonna be pushback on um things like uh critical race theory or um or or or or schools trying to enforce SEL mandates, and there's gonna be pushback against that. And like I said, there's gonna be uh there's gonna be huge concerns and mental health concerns around the protections of uh LGBTQ plus students and students who who may get deported or their parents may get deported. So I do think it's educators who are facing these realities with kids in real time.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Well, I appreciate your perspective on this, and uh we'll definitely uh recommend to all my listeners to stick with Ed Week doing some great reporting on top of how all this is playing out. Um, and Olin, I really appreciate you taking some time this morning to uh share your thoughts, and uh I'll put links to your article and all the Ed Week stuff that's been coming out in the show notes. And uh thanks so much.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Thank you. Thank you for giving us this space, Dan.