CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Schools are starting off 2021 with educating students on a historic Inauguration Day, after months of educating students about a pandemic, protests, human rights issues and riots.
Along with the beginning of Joe Biden’s term as president, Inauguration Day will mark the swearing-in of Kamala Harris as the first female vice president and the first Black or Indian person to hold that position. The celebration also follows a mob rioting in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, leading to a slew of arrests and increased security for the inauguration.
For Shaker Heights history teacher Roy Isaacs, the inauguration is another step in the process of guiding his 10th-grade students through the election year.
“An election year is a wonderful gift to us as U.S. history teachers,” he said.
Isaacs has been weaving in Harris’s unique background into lessons throughout the year, touching on points including immigration.
Leading up to the election, students watched a historian on CSPAN who walked through some other Inauguration Day speeches that came during national turmoil, like Abraham Lincoln’s speech following the Civil War and John F. Kennedy’s speech which addressed the Cold War. Isaacs doesn’t typically assign much homework during the pandemic, and the actual event is during lunch, but students were assigned to watch or read about the inauguration.
“I’m asking them to observe the inauguration and make some comparisons,” he said. “How is this being handled? What is the tone based on the time period we’re in, after the Jan. 6 riot or insurrection? We’re expecting very much like Lincoln after the Civil War, about some kind of message of malice toward none and coming together and that kind of thing.”
Shaker Heights schools encouraged teachers to use Inauguration Day as a teachable moment, but mainly wanted to serve as a support, district spokesman Scott Stephens wrote in an email. Warrensville Heights schools also don’t have any district-wide programming scheduled, but do encourage students to tune into the inauguration, spokeswoman Savannah Heck wrote in an email.
For Laurel School, an all-girls private school, Inauguration Day is a day-long event. Leighann DeLorenzo, dean of students for the Upper School, said the day will include historic speeches and lessons centered on exploring freedom of speech, social media, immigration, female representation in politics and the pass-down of presidential power, among others.
“What better day to come together as a community to honor the political significance of the day but the historical significance, which is of course, watching Kamala Harris ascend to one of the highest offices in our country,” DeLorenzo said. “Our thinking when we put this together is, we realized that our time is now. ... It’s a reminder to women that make up a little more than half of the population in the country that we have waited in the wings for too long.”
DeLorenzo said a student support team is on call to help if there’s any conflict during the event and that the school also works to establish strong faculty-student relationships and advisory teams to guide students. The afternoon will include student-led discussion on the inauguration.
“I look forward to doing a lot of listening tomorrow and learning from them,” DeLorenzo said. “These are some incredible young women that have some important things to say and we just have to listen.”
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January 20, 2021 at 05:41AM
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Schools prepare for historic Inauguration Day - cleveland.com
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