Fires in Our Lives

FIRES IN OUR LIVES by Kathleen Cushman with Kristien Zenkov, and Meagan Call-Cummings offers “Advice for Teachers from Today’s High School Students.”  The first half of their book provides background and student quotes on “What Makes Schools Matter.” I especially liked the boxed sections like “Learning from a World of Crises” or “Newsday Tuesday” where students are encouraged to answer What? So What? and Now What? about an issue. Other activities (“I Used to Think … but Now I Think” and “Finding the Right Question”) are clearly valuable for our Civics and Research classes. The second half of FIRES IN OUR LIVES is even more action oriented and presents five “briefings” on issues of particular importance to students: “climate change, community violence, voter engagement, immigration, and gender identities.” Each of these offers some facts or statistics and points to ponder, but the real value is potential for increased engagement through the suggested exercises like reading and discussing a poem or participating in a role play on guns and gun violence from the Classroom Law Project. At the end of the book, notes and resources, including suggested books, links to lesson plans, activist organizations, and professional development, plus an index are provided.  In the past few years, we have generally shifted to having students explore and research an issue of importance to them, so they already use almost all of the resources described. I don’t think there is a great deal of “new” information here, but it is helpful to have it gathered together and other school districts, particularly those less comfortable with inquiry-based learning, would benefit from a review of this text.

Returning to the introduction, I want to highlight a point the authors stress: “Personal contacts and connections make the biggest difference, students told us.” It seems that will be a huge challenge as we prepare to re-enter school this fall. And that idea has been reinforced recently by Jonathan Haidt and Jean M. Twenge in their work in The Journal Of Adolescence, described in articles from The New York Times (“This is our chance to pull teenagers out of the smartphone trap”) and Washington Post (“Teens around the world are lonelier than a decade ago. The reason may be smartphones”). Pew Research data also reflects the “unprecedented level of anxiety” for teenagers (Feb. 2019 report) and for adults - parents and teachers - (March 2021 report, reflecting pandemic impact). If you have resources to share, please reach out.