Name: How The Capitol Siege Rewrote Lesson Plans In LA Schools
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How The Capitol Siege Rewrote Lesson Plans In LA Schools

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Support for LAist comes fromWe Explain L.A.Stay ConnectedLAist is part of Southern California Public Radio (SCPR), a member-supported public media network. Hear our news on-air at our partner site:Our top stories delivered weeknightsShare ThisStories like these are only possible with your help!You have the power to keep local news strong for the coming months. Your financial support today keeps our reporters ready to meet the needs of our city. Thank you for investing in your community.Sign up for How To LA, delivered weekday mornings.Our news is free on LAist. To make sure you get our coverage: . To support our non-profit public service journalism: Donate Now.When a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol two weeks ago, teachers in L.A. watched the violence with their students in mind. , they planned for a real-time civics lesson. Between the violence at the Capitol, the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, and the pending impeachment trial of outgoing President Donald Trump, there's been plenty to talk about. And the spate of historical events has reignited debate over whether civics gets the attention it deserves in school curricula.Support for LAist comes fromOne thing that became clear in interviews over the past week is that students have lots of questions and are engaged in the debate.Don Luong, an 8th grade history teacher at Gage Middle School in Huntington Park, dedicated all of his lessons in the week after the siege to analyzing the attack, trying to make sense of it."I have my own personal opinion, yes," Luong said. "But as a history teacher, I want them to have their own opinion and back it up. That's what it comes down to."During the first Zoom lesson of the week, Luong asked students to parse the differences between a protest, a riot and an insurrection.For example, he said, if students started randomly throwing paper and chairs around the classroom, that might be considered a riot. But if they got together before school and planned to create chaos in class, that could be an insurrection. With those definitions in mind, the students watched and tried to classify what they saw. Most called it a riot.Then, for comparison, they repeated the process, watching , after the police shootings of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. Finally, Luong showed , of a British tax collector being tarred and feathered.Luong says he and his fellow teachers collaborated on this lesson addressing current events, in part, because it gets students' attention. "The students are way more engaged in it than before," Luong said. "And as teachers, you're always trying to pull from things that students are engaged in."Support for LAist comes fromA STUDENT'S VIEWKahlila Williams, a senior at Girls Academic Leadership Academy in Midcity, was disappointed that her social studies class only spent the beginning of class debriefing the attack. She agrees with Luong that most students want to talk about politics."We could've had a whole, week-long conversation about it, honestly," Williams said. "Especially if you're in the Gen-Z generation, you have something to say about this."And it's not just because students have questions. Williams said she and her classmates need space to emotionally process the violence and racism they likely saw on social media. "Our mental health is already messed up," Williams said. "You can't expect us to focus when there's all this stuff going on. You have to, as an educator, say to yourself, 'What do my students need right now?"Nearly all of the teachers that LAist spoke to for this story have watched students grow more politically active in recent years -- in part because of recent events in Washington, but also because of Black Lives Matter activism and other racial justice movements.Still, , a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., suggests that civics education isn't getting as much attention as it could be.In California, . Plus, the state only requires one semester of civics education, compared to a full year required by a handful of other states."Although most states offer civics courses in middle school and high school -- and some even mandate civics projects -- since 1998, overall test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics exam have persistently shown that less than 25% of students are proficient in the subject," the report reads.Plus, federal funding targeted at civics education has declined over the years. , compared to .IS CIVICS EDUCATION IN DECLINE?Brent Smiley, a middle school history teacher at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, pushes back on the idea that the civics ed curriculum has deteriorated. "I reject that notion," Smiley said "It used to be just rote memorization."Now, he said, teachers have more flexibility, and with the help of the internet, can connect current events to the curriculum. In his class, they talked about the attack on the Capitol in the context of other wars and insurrections the U.S. Constitution has weathered. Civics is just built into those conversations, he said."These are the lessons that are alive, right in front of us, as we're living it out," Smiley said. "It's all trying to explain that model of being a good citizen and understanding that we do have shared goals."Still, Smiley's view on the state of civics education is hardly a consensus among teachers. Dranae Jones, a social studies teacher at King Drew Medical Magnet high school in South L.A., does feel like civics has been deemphasized, especially in comparison to subjects tested more often."If you don't know how the country runs, how are you going to be an effective member of society?" Jones asks. "Are you going to go to work, come home, sit on your couch and watch Netflix? Or are you gonna get in the game and complain?" One lesson Jones teaches her students is determining how and where to voice your complaints -- a point that was lost, she said, on the pro-Trump insurrectionists. "You have a bunch of individuals storming the Capitol who were screaming, 'My vote counts,'" Jones said. "Yeah, but majority rules. If you don't understand that, your social studies teacher failed you."

Support for LAist comes fromWe Explain L.A.Stay ConnectedLAist is part of Southern California Public Radio (SCPR), a member-supported public media network. Hear our news on-air at our partner site:Our top stories delivered weeknightsShare ThisStories like these are only possible with your help!You have the power to keep local news strong for the coming months. Your financial support today keeps our reporters ready to meet the needs of our city. Thank you for investing in your community.Sign up for How To LA, delivered weekday mornings.Our news is free on LAist. To make sure you get our...

How The Capitol Siege Rewrote Lesson Plans In LA Schools

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