I write this just shy of 1 week after the 2024 presidential election won by Donald Trump. I was upset by Trump’s election as were many, although definitely not all, of my students. I want to use this post to reflect on what I did in connection to my classes last week and think about what I might do in the future.
In 2016, I tried to teach with a business as usual approach the day after election day. I was teaching research methods, and we were talking about validity threats. I thought it best to just stay on track as students had a lot of deadlines coming up and really needed class to stay on track. A student quickly asked me if the election constituted a history threat in their studies, and I knew I’d made a poor choice. Not all of my students were ready for business as usual, but I also wasn’t prepared to lead a discussion where class members likely had vastly different reactions to the election results – especially while I was still trying to process my own reaction.
This year (2024), as I created my syllabi and course schedules for the semester, I immediately started thinking about what I’d do for the class meeting after the election. I didn’t specifically put anything in my syllabus about my plans, but I was making some…
I initially thought I would cancel the first class meeting after the election – whether on Wednesday or Thursday (we don’t have classes on election day) – and let students know that I’d be in my office as an extra office hour if they wanted to talk with me. I also planned not to let them know until the morning of election day when announcements would go out on Canvas.
In addition to thinking about what I saw as my mistakes in 2016, I thought back to 2 classes I had in grad school. One was a social psych seminar that met the day after the Columbine school shootings happened. The professor set aside our planned discussion of readings for the day and we talked about what happened (theoretically through a social psych lens). The other was a health psych seminar that was scheduled for the afternoon of 9-11. That professor cancelled class after hearing from many of us that we were not ready to talk about class topics that day – especially as those of us from the north east (we were in Arizona) waited to hear about family and friends in New York City.
In the end, I made a slightly different call. Since this was a foreseeable event, I wanted to give more advance notice to students. I also didn’t want to plan anything where I functionally forced people to discuss something they weren’t ready to have a discussion about (even if actual participation in that discussion was optional). Finally, I wanted to provide a space where people could be with others if they desired.
In the end, I decided to make clear what my plans were at the end of the week prior to election day when I posted the weekly overview page on Canvas covering election week. I made the class meetings on the class day following the election optional. There was no penalty for not attending class, but I told them I would be in the classroom during class time and they were free to stop by for some or all of the class period. They could talk with me, their classmates, or just be with other people. I wanted any election discussions to be opt-in, however, as I knew from 2016 that not everyone was ready to discuss the election (including me) in the days immediately following it.
I don’t think this was a perfect choice – not that I think there was a perfect choice – but I’m happy with the choice I made.
I mostly had empty classrooms, but a small number of students in each class came to chat. In one, they showed up part way through the class meeting and just wanted to process how they were feeling with other people. In another, we started out talking about the election before moving on to other lighter topics that helped give us a sense of normalcy. Two students specifically took time to thank me for holding space for them to talk about a challenging issue while also not forcing a class-wide discussion since they weren’t really ready to hear all perspectives.
I was, of course, also reacting to the election. I was overwhelmed and not sure what to say. After all, I was trying to deal with my own emotional reaction while also offering support to my students. Also, sometimes you just don’t know what to say – such as when a trans student I knew well asked me what they could expect, both in general and on campus, in the coming years. I did my best to be real with my own emotional reactions while trying to keep the students and their needs centered. Creating this balance is an ongoing work in progress, but I think I handled this better in 2024 than I did in 2016 (or 2020).
This week (the week after election week), I need to spend getting caught up on grading. I was not in the headspace to provide useful feedback to students last week as I was incredibly unfocused. The reality is that I wasn’t any more ready for business as usual class meetings than my students.
I don’t know if I’ll take this same approach after all elections (or even all major elections), but I am considering it.
What did you do in your classes in the wake of this (or other) elections?