DENVER (KDVR) — What is happening right now in Washington D.C. will be talked about in classrooms for generations to come, but local districts and teachers are not waiting for new text books to be printed before discussing this history in the making.
After watching history unfold last Wednesday, Peak to Peak Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. Government and Politics teacher Meghan Lukens spent her night rewriting lesson plans for her high school students.
“I had an entire lesson planned, designed for my AP government students, it was actually going to be introduction to the presidency unit,” Lukens said.
Lukens still discussed presidency, but she immediately set the tone of Thursday’s class with a focus on emotions and reflections.
“I actually prepared four different scenarios for my classroom and I had the students vote on the four different options on what they want to discuss and how they wanted to discuss what happened,” she said.
In all three of her classes, Lukens said students wanted to hear Senators’ speeches following the riots that turned deadly. Given the chance to write instead of speaking their thoughts, Lukens said her students wanted to talk.
“There were a lot of questions about if this happened before but then a lot of emotions as well,” Lukens said.
Lukens told her students emotions will continue along with these lessons on current events in real time. She then ended class with a question for her students to consider.
“America is a hopeful country, America is a resilient country, how are we going to move forward? Because our Democracy is going to continue, the question is how,” she told her students.
Lukens says both the Boulder Valley School District and her principal sent out letters to all teachers encouraging them to check in on students and talk about what’s going on. She says there’s a conversation policy covering how to discuss major events like what is unfolding.