A Message for our Community - January 7, 2021

We at Civics Learning Project watched, along with you, the events unfolding at the U.S. Capitol yesterday with confusion, concern, and dismay. The storming of the seat of our democracy has left us all struggling to process what happened, and wondering what the events mean for the fundamental principles of democracy, the U.S. legacy of peaceful transition of power following elections, and the roles of free speech and non-violent protest that we are all committed to teaching and sharing with our students.

Your students will likely have all of these same feelings and questions in the coming days, and we know that you, as educators, will want to help them understand and move forward. We also know that helping students can be difficult to do as we try to process our own experiences of yesterday’s events. We at CLP want to encourage you to take care of yourselves as you take care of your students. Remember that continuing to build community with your students is one of the best ways to support them through tough times.

There are also many excellent resources for educators addressing tough issues in the classroom and we have linked to some of those below. If there are others that you are finding valuable, please let us know so that we can share them with the CLP community.

While we are also trying to make sense of yesterday, we are available to listen or talk with you. We stand by our motto that the best way to preserve democracy is to teach democracy and we want to help you do that in any way we are able. Please feel free to reach out.