Nearly a month ago, students turned on the television or looked at the notifications on their phone and saw news that angry rioters were storming the Capitol building. As Twitter came abuzz and the rainbow frame lit up everyone’s Instagram profiles, teachers were hard at work planning the next day’s lesson. 

Teachers have the daunting task of educating their students on the world in which they live. They often use current events to relate something with the curriculum they teach in order to make these lessons come alive. Talking about current events however, especially surrounding what will forever be one of the most historic events of our era, comes with much anticipated arguments, commentary, and criticism. This connection of current events to the curriculum often happens in classes like sociology and government here at North Penn High School. 

“Sociology as a whole, attempts to get you to see events in the world as an outsider would, and try to get away from the emotions and the judgements and try to ask the questions ‘Why? Why am I seeing this?’ when it comes to group behavior,” Sociology teacher Mr. Robert McCreary said. 

After a drawn out and hotly debated election everyone seemed to have an opinion on the state of our country’s democracy, with some dogmatic personalities being more vocal than others. It seemed as though within minutes of the insurrection on our Capitol everyone knew, and everyone was talking about it, students included.  

“You may have heard your grandparents talk about Pearl Harbor, you may have heard your parents talk about where they were on 9/11, and now you guys get a chance to say ‘Hey, I was alive, I remember where I was. I remember the emotions,” McCreary said. 

The insurrection was the first event in NPHS students’ lives that will be remembered as one of those “where were you when” kind of days. Teachers saw this as the perfect opportunity to teach, especially those in government and sociology. At the time, sociology classes at the high school were discussing deviance, while government teachers were helping students understand the checks and balances of government. The insurrection gave something students all knew about and could easily relate to, however, they knew they had to tread lightly. 

“My concern going in was that this would be the gasoline on the fire in terms of anger and frustration from both sides, and I spent a lot of time that night trying to figure out what to do. I decided to trust my students, and I kind of left it to them to talk about,” Government teacher Mr. Brian Haley said. 

To their surprise, teachers saw less of a reaction from their students than they had anticipated. Whether this has to do with the online environment, a lack of interest, or just a general consensus on students’ opinions is left unknown. 

“I expected our classes to have more division. I expected students to actually come to the defense of the rioters. Just because I thought, well the country is this divided, I assume my students are going to represent that point of view…I was approaching my planning with trying to be committed to being respectful of a range of points of view, and it’s still important to do, but it was impressive and startling to me” Government teacher Mr. Colin Likens said. 

Creating connections between what students are learning and what is going on in the world around them gives a life and purpose to the content being taught. It takes topics that otherwise may seem irrelevant and unrelated to our everyday and gives students something to take interest in. Important events like the insurrection reemphasize the value of education as it pertains to current events. 

“Very often culture and societies change a little bit at a time and there’s pros and cons to that but there are certain events where overnight we see certain changes. This might be one of those events where good and bad, America changed overnight as a result of that event” McCreary said.