McHenry County-area educators cautiously approach unprecedented breach of Capitol this week as teaching moment for students

When McHenry resident C.J. Nemec heard his seventh-grade son say, “Dad, this is giving me chills,” as they watched news coverage of Wednesday’s unprecedented breach of the U.S. Capitol, the Streamwood High School teacher knew his students wouldn’t ever forget the historic moment either.

Nemec, who teaches sociology and United States history, was among the public school teachers living and working in McHenry County who approached the shocking events of this week in Washington, D.C., as an educational opportunity. Many more sought to ensure students knew they could reach out to their teachers to discuss their feelings.

While remote learning made it impossible for teachers and students to simply pause what they were doing in classrooms and spend the day watching news coverage, as many did in school buildings during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, local teachers quickly realized discussing Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol with their students would be important.

“There’s been some argument about whether you should compare this to 9/11 because the death and destruction didn’t match. While that is certainly true and making direct comparisons like that can be a slippery slope, there were some similarities that I shared with my class the next day,” Nemec said Friday in an email.

He said he first pointed out how confusion resulting from the attack on the Capitol led to actions similar to those taken after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center almost 20 years ago, including how members of Congress were getting ushered to safety and talks of protecting the line of succession.

That aspect of Wednesday’s chaos provided a lesson in the transfer of power and the mechanisms of government for students, Nemec said.

“The second similarity was that this was a terrorist attack on the United States. When I reconvened my classes on Thursday, this was the most important part of my discussion with my classes, and we spent the large majority of class discussing this. To frame this as anything less than a terrorist attack would be doing my students an enormous disservice,” Nemec said.

For Eric Samuelson, a business teacher at Hampshire High School in Algonquin-based Community Unit School District 300, a big difference exists between Sept. 11, 2001, and what adults and students alike saw on their televisions, social media feeds and newspapers regarding the protesters in the Capitol.

“For me when I look at 9/11, I didn’t have to pick a side,” Samuelson said. “It was pretty easy to go, ‘Those are terrorists from another country.’ What scares me the most about what happened Wednesday within our own country is it will divide us further. As far as I can tell listening to my students and just trying to pay attention to the world around me, our country is pretty divided. When 9/11 happened it actually brought our country together.”

For him, the news events Wednesday meant reissuing his open invitation to students to come to him to talk if they were feeling unsettled, which he has consistently offered since the pandemic forced students into learning from home.

“While I think it’s important to talk about current events, you have to balance on a fine line,” Samuelson said. “... These kids, they’re hurting. I haven’t had students in my classroom since March 13. For me to start bringing up specifics from Wednesday did not seem right.”

Carolina Giraldo, the social studies chair at Woodstock High School, talked with her colleagues about how they planned to incorporate the events at the Capitol into lessons.

Some teachers posted online polls asking students whether they wanted to talk about it and many did, Woodstock Community Unit School District 200 spokesman Kevin Lyons said. Three out of four in Giraldo’s classes expressed a desire to discuss the events.

“I told my class this is a safe zone. Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions, but make sure you are respectful and agree to disagree,” Giraldo said through the district spokesman. “We may have more to say about this years from now as the facts become clear, but there was a lot this week that we didn’t know. We don’t have all of the answers.”

Giraldo’s students talked about how some who identified as conservatives wanted to make clear that the violent actors in Washington this week did not represent their views, just as peaceful protesters who participated in the Black Lives Matter movement last year did not want to be lumped in with looters and rioters.

The Woodstock students were eager to talk about Wednesday’s news events like they were following the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in 2017.

Giraldo said because of students having varied political backgrounds, it is key for teachers to act as facilitators and allow the students to lead conversations as long as they are respectful of their fellow pupils.

Andrew Conneen, a Cary resident who teaches civics at Stevenson High School in Lake County, said a political action club at the school had a meeting scheduled for Wednesday night, and the uncertainty of how Congress might move forward that evening was a topic of conversation.

“Both chambers were still closed, so we didn’t know what the result was going to be when they were going to start the procedures up again,” Conneen said. “That night with the club, there were questions none of us had answers to at that moment, in terms of when Congress was going to reconvene to certify the electoral votes.

He said he hoped that family members of students have been able to listen in the discussions taking place in virtual civics classrooms since Wednesday.

“I think Sen. (Mitt) Romney said it best on the floor of the Senate, which is the best way to respect voters who are upset is tell them the truth. We try to tell civics students the truth as civics teachers,” Conneen said.

He specifically referred to a rumor circulating online among supporters of President Donald Trump over the past few weeks that Vice President Mike Pence could somehow legally block the certification of the Electoral College votes in Biden’s favor.

“To make up that the vice president had these magical powers to toss out electoral votes, no, we say the truth. That’s now how the system works,” Conneen said.