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Immediately following the Saturday, Oct. 7, attack on Israeli communities by Hamas and Israel’s resulting declaration of war, teachers began reaching out to the San Diego County Office of Education seeking guidance on how to address the war on Monday morning with their students.
Julie Goldman, the office’s director of equity curriculum and instruction, and her team spent that weekend compiling a detailed guide for educators and parents on how to discuss the events happening overseas. The guide, released Oct. 9, contains resources on how to have civil discourse on contested issues; historical information and current news on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; material on discussing war and violence in age-appropriate ways, and information on combating antisemitism and Islamophobia in schools.
Goldman said the office, which serves the county’s 42 school districts, 129 charter schools and five community college districts, has many Palestinian American, Israeli American, Jewish and Muslim students.
“We want to make sure that every child feels seen and heard and loved and valued in our classrooms,” Goldman said. “None of us can learn if we don’t feel safe, and so it’s really about creating those safe spaces for dialogue.”
The work Goldman’s office did to provide these educational guides is exactly how education leaders should respond to important social issues, according to Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
“Their job is to help students understand the world, to help them wrestle with a world which is complex and sometimes overwhelming,” said Hess.
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Hess and Jal Mehta, a professor of education at Harvard University, routinely debate big issues in education, often from opposing viewpoints, on their blog, “Straight Talk with Rick and Jal.” The goal, according to the two, is to offer educators a model for promoting constructive dialogue among students, where two people may disagree but can still learn from one another.
Mehta said teachers and principals may be tempted to stay out of teaching about the Israel-Hamas war because it’s so politicized. But even younger students are aware of what’s happening in the world – in particular Jewish and Palestinian students who may be deeply affected by the events.
“What schools can do is broaden students’ understanding and help them see kind of the multiple truths that are there in this situation,” Mehta said.
These conversations can be conducted in age-appropriate ways beginning in first grade, Hess added. While elementary students may be too young to understand the emotional, historical and moral debates surrounding Israel and Palestine, he said, they can build a basic understanding of the region’s geography, the history of how and why Israel was created, and why Palestinians feel like they have been “trapped in ghettos.”
“None of us can learn if we don’t feel safe, and so it’s really about creating those safe spaces for dialogue.”
Julie Goldman, San Diego County Office of Education’s director of equity curriculum and instruction
It’s okay for teachers to acknowledge with students that they aren’t experts on the topic, Mehta added. “In terms of this conflict, I wouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he said. Educators can share that they are learning alongside their students, he said.
Goldman said teachers trust her office’s resource guides because of the process that goes into to creating them. Starting in 2020, the office began putting together educator guides out of “a real and immediate need” to address political events, school shootings, hate crimes and various heritage months, as topics within the classroom, she said. Her staff reaches out to community groups and others for their input.
Goldman said a resource guide that includes vetted primary sources from different perspectives can give students and educators a way into difficult discussions without shutting anyone out. The guide on the Israel-Palestine conflict includes links to lessons and curricula from the education nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves and the Judaism-focused Institute for Curriculum Services, as well as sources from the Anti-Defamation League and AllSides, a company designed to combat media bias.
“We will have had this meaningful scholarly discussion that’s based in history and primary sources,” she said.
While the Israel-Palestine conflict has always been a difficult subject for educators, the recent adoption of policies in some states that limit conversations on topics such as race has added to teachers’ fears about discussing such contested issues, said Deborah Menkart, co-director of the Zinn Education Project, a collaboration between progressive nonprofits Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.
“Their job is to help students understand the world, to help them wrestle with a world which is complex and sometimes overwhelming.”
Rick Hess, director of education policy studies, American Enterprise Institute
The Zinn Education Project recently released a list of resources and lesson plans for educators that include both Palestinian and Israeli voices, but Menkart said the focus is on providing perspectives often left out of mainstream media or textbooks. Many of the resources on their list include Palestinian and Arab authors and lessons from nonprofits such as Teach Palestine.
That has led to some criticism of her group’s list of resources, acknowledged Mimi Eisen, program manager at the Zinn Education Project. But she said it’s important that educators both share resources that aren’t one-sided and uplift the voices of those who’ve been “oppressed and stifled.”
Classroom discussions, especially in middle school, should explain the differences between Judaism and Zionism, and Palestinian people and groups like Hamas, she said.
Eisen said she has heard from teachers who said that even if they aren’t able to dedicate full class periods to talk about what’s happening in Gaza, they leave time at the start or end of each class to ask students to share how they are feeling, what they are hearing and learning about the issue, and to allow some discussion that’s student-led.
In San Diego, Goldman said teachers have found the resource guide to be helpful for starting conversations on Israel and Palestine.
“The main point is, are we preparing teachers not to step away but to find these age-appropriate ways to have meaningful conversations,” Goldman said. “The essence is how am I creating an inclusive space, so that all of my children feel seen and valued and they know that they can bring all parts of their languages and cultures to the classroom.”
This story on teaching about Israel-Palestine was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.