Vermont’s history and social science teachers knew while reading the first headlines about the Russian invasion of Ukraine that they would be getting questions from students. In the month since, many have been adapting their curriculums to include the context behind the conflict.
“We got back on March 2, after our long February break. I knew that students would be asking about the Ukrainian conflict,” said Zach Gonzalez, a social sciences teacher at U-32 High School in East Montpelier. “… They’re going to ask you, like, what is going on with Russia and Ukraine?”
Because of the invasion, said Ben Beaudoin, who teaches social sciences at Colchester High School, “it felt inauthentic to jump into the next unit and to continue with our curriculum, because of what’s going on in the world.”
“I’ve heard from teachers who are doing everything from examining the geopolitical and historical contexts of Ukraine and Russia at the secondary level to those making paper sunflowers to hang around the school with our youngest learners,” said Dr. Alyssa Hadley Dunn, an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State who runs a Facebook group, “Teaching on Days After.”
Rebecca Cunningham, a student at Burlington High School, said she learned about the conflict within her AP government class through the perspective of the U.S. and NATO.
“I think that was helpful to understand the politics behind the whole situation and not get caught up in the emotional aspect for a second, just to have that baseline understanding, because I think a lot of the news that comes out is really scary,” she said.
Gonzalez has been incorporating the sanctions against Russia into the economics class he teaches, but he’s also been finding that his students don’t have a lot of context for the war. Instead, they primarily get information and context for the war from social media, especially the app TikTok.
Gonzalez has used the conflict to encourage students to rethink where they are getting their information, telling them that, while he is a teacher of history, he isn’t an expert in the conflict and doesn’t have access to any information they don’t have access to.
In Colchester, Beaudoin found his ninth-grade history class, titled “Thinkers and Revolutionaries,” uniquely situated to learn about the conflict. Students in the yearlong class learned about different authoritarian leaders during the fall semester, including a unit on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The focus was on “authoritarian government and how authoritarian leaders gain and maintain power; the second semester is about how people resist oppression,” he said in an interview.
“I decided to pause [the] curriculum for two weeks, and I call it an emergency two-week Russia-Ukraine Unit,” he said. “We started with the context, the causes of the invasion, and then we looked at the effects of the invasion. … I think that the students were more engaged in that than, you know, really anything that we’ve done this year.”
Beaudoin said his students have all taken the conflict immensely seriously and have had a range of questions, from “what is the fear of NATO expansion” to “is this going to be the next worldwide refugee crisis?”
Mark Cline Lucey, who teaches modern U.S. history to juniors in a global context class at Vermont Commons School in South Burlington, has found students are highly aware of the conflict and want to learn more about the historical context behind it, as well as nuanced aspects of the conflict — including seeing a difference in blame between ordinary Russians and Putin.
For his younger students, he’s been opening up the class for discussion and questions, rather than following an in-depth class plan dedicated to the invasion.
Cline Lucey sees parallels between his own experience as a youth — he was in high school as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 — to today. He feels like he didn’t learn about the Berlin Wall at the time and knew much less as a high schooler about the wall and the USSR than his students do today about the conflict.
Cecilia Luce, a student at Thetford Academy, feels disappointed that the invasion hasn’t been incorporated into her classes, other than a discussion in her chemistry class.
“I definitely wish that it was built a little bit into the actual curriculum more,” Cecilia said in an interview, “because I’ve been just following along with like New York Times Instagram posts, which seemed like they just keep coming. So it would definitely be helpful to have … a more cohesive experience learning about it.”
Beaudoin and Gonzalez are both trying to balance teaching about the conflict after students have already experienced so many historical events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, Donald Trump’s presidency, the 2020 George Floyd Protests and the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. “I think that that is both, you know, crazy, and sometimes unsettling to kids, but it also engages them,” Beaudoin said.
“I usually try to lean optimistic when talking about my students, their learning, etc., but there really is absolutely no silver lining with any of this when there’s this much suffering going on,” he continued.
Looking to the next semester, Beaudoin expects his ninth grade history class unit on Putin to be significantly changed to incorporate the Ukrainian conflict. Cline Lucey too, expects to continue teaching about the conflict as long as it continues.
“There’s also constantly new developments, and thus new angles and new elements to talk about,” Cline Lucey said.
