Teaching When the World Feels Unsettled

There are days when the work of teaching feels heavier, even if nothing unusual happens inside your own classroom.

Recently, in Minnesota and across the country, there has been visible unrest connected to federal immigration enforcement. This unrest has taken different forms, including reports of detentions, a related shooting in our state, and enforcement activity near places where children learn and gather. While these events varied in scale and location, they shared a common impact: unsettling families, educators, and children.

Moments like this do not stay contained. What happens beyond school walls does not stop at the classroom door.

Children bring the world with them, even when it has no place in the lesson itself. They overhear conversations. They sense adult tension. They absorb uncertainty long before they have language for it.

Teachers are not immune either. We are living in the same world, carrying our own worry and unanswered questions. Teaching in moments like this asks us to show up steady, even when we feel unsettled ourselves.

I keep coming back to the responsibility I believe public schools carry: that when children walk through our doors, they are safe, protected, and worthy of care, not because of who they are, where they come from, or their family’s circumstances, status, or beliefs, but because they are children.

I believe that in moments of heightened uncertainty, public schools have a responsibility to respond with extra care, not because of politics, but because children are affected regardless of the choices adults make.

These are the things I am trying to hold onto in my own classroom on heavier days:

• Slow down when possible. Build in a little more transition time and a little less urgency.

• Assume stress before intent. Notice behavior as communication, especially when it feels sudden or out of character.

• Protect children from adult chaos. Be mindful of the language and tone children absorb.

• Extend grace to each other. Teachers and staff are navigating uncertainty too, and care has to flow both ways.

For me, this means paying closer attention to how safety, predictability, and belonging shape what children are able to access academically.

Public schools cannot fix the world beyond their doors. But they can decide what happens inside them.

When people someday look back and ask what public schools did in moments like this, I hope the answer includes this:

We assumed stress before intent.
We protected children from adult chaos.
We kept our classrooms human.
And we made schools places where every child was safe to learn, to question, and to exist.