When I arrived at work on November 6, 2024, I found middle and high school students milling around in their usual fashion. They stood in groups of friends with slightly raised voices, excited by talk of the election.

Most seemed eager to share or hear the opinions of their peers, although of course they had other topics on their minds as well. From my vantage point, I saw no outward signs of triumph or despair. The sun had risen and it was another day at school.

I teach at Pacific Ridge (PRS), an independent school in North San Diego County. Last summer, members of the administration presented a plan for how we would welcome the upcoming US election. This was part of a larger theme for the school year, which Bob Ogle, our Head of School, called “Challenge and Care.”

Students, families, teachers and staff at PRS are politically different. So our purpose was to promote student civic engagement while taking into account the needs and experiences of everyone in our community. Instead of broadcasting our own partisan views, faculty and staff would encourage students to listen to competing views and come to their own conclusions.

By emphasizing respect for differences and curiosity about complacencythe culture at PRS promotes what researchers call intellectual humility. Ideally, this means that students are “more willing to learn about opposing perspectives and are better at engaging in conversations about controversial topics.” As Darcia Narvaez and other developmental psychologists have noted, this degree of flexibility and openness to others’ perspectives also contributes to moral imagination and mature moral functioning.

This effort to remain neutral on politics felt new to me, as someone who had previously taught at a progressive middle school in San Francisco. But in the first few months of the school year, I saw its wisdom more clearly. Especially now that the election is over, I have come to appreciate the challenge of caring for students in this way.

Encouraging participation

PRS is one Harkness Schoolwhich means that most classrooms are defined by an oval table where students and teachers sit together in seminar style. The expectation is that everyone is involved in the discussions that arise and students quickly learn that this requires both stepping up and sharing the air. Balancing the Harkness pedagogy requires patience for all of us. Yet the regular practice space builds students’ confidence while holding them high.

Before each formal Harkness discussion, I usually ask students to set goals for themselves, then afterwards we reflect on how we did. There are opportunities to give other students a shout-out to celebrate their unique efforts, and together we look up an area of ​​improvement for the group as a whole next time. The idea is to make these reviews as non-judgmental as possible so that everyone feels safe and can continue to make progress.

In their foursome Integrative ethics education modelNarvaez and Tonia Bock emphasize that the first step in supporting students’ moral character development is to “establish a caring connection” with each student, which “allows mutual influence for mutual benefit.” This can happen in many ways. But community practices like Harkness discussions integrate both depth and levity, so students know they’re being challenged and cared for.

In my eighth grade English class last fall, we also undertook a pen pal project with students and teachers at St. George’s College in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Part of our aim was to examine the role of bias, censorship and propaganda in news media and the literary texts we read (ours was Fahrenheit 451). At the same time, the project was an opportunity to dialogue about differences with curiosity and respect.

Using Google Docs, students shared a total of four letters with their pen pals describing their own media use and what they observed about politics in their home countries. It was fascinating for students at PRS to learn how their Argentine peers saw their political system as separate from the United States. And they wrote their last letters the day after the election on November 5.

After the election

The first morning after we finally knew the results of the presidential election, I started class with a journal prompt. My students quietly entered the room; whatever they felt, it seemed that most expected a normal day in class.

Continuing safe and familiar routines is a way to regulate intense emotions, along with subtler shades of confusion when the world feels disrupted. But I wanted to mark the historic moment and show them that we could begin to pause and reflect as a community—that it was worth doing so today. So, in whatever order felt right, I asked them to write about these questions:

• What do you know so far about the election results?
• How do you feel?
• What do you want to understand better?
• What do you want to ask or tell your future self in four years?

My goal was to give the students space to reflect and create a kind of time capsule. I wanted to challenge and take care of them. And almost immediately they began to write. I hoped the open-ended questions would slow their thinking and speed it up deeper curiosity.

As I listened to the sound of their keyboard, I felt my own strong emotions and intention to stay grounded, to be resilient for them and for myself. It was not easy with little sleep and in the midst of the shaking feeling that everything had changed. But the morning sun shone brightly through the windows of my classroom, and the students continued to write. I felt strangely grounded by their ability to carry on. I hope my presence also signaled to them that we were in this together, whatever the election means and whatever the future holds.

After seven minutes or so, I let the students know that we would have some time for a short Harkness discussion. I reminded them of our school policy that teachers were not to share how we voted, but they could share anything they wrote. My challenge, and our shared purpose, was to create space for respectful dialogue where they could learn from each other and where we might all understand more clearly what had just happened.

The discussion began slowly when a brave student shared the fear they felt about the future. Others expressed more academic questions about the margins in particular battleground states, and together we worked to interpret the electoral map. No one said directly who their family had voted for. And there were no arguments or instances of name-calling.

Most of the time I sat quietly and let students talk to each other. Their conversation was respectful, curious and open-hearted. They also seemed careful not to turn to statements that might hurt anyone else who had a seat at the table.

In one reflection after the election, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein emphasized the choice between contempt and curiosity. Both are possible responses when the shock of difference occurs. And right now, many Americans on both sides of the political spectrum are tempted to choose contempt.

We can ask ourselves what future we are helping to create when we choose contempt. What becomes possible if we choose curiosity instead?

The sun will continue to rise. Students will continue to come to school. The question is: How should we meet them, and what can that change?