By Emily Swope ‘22, Feature Editor

It has become almost clichéd to say that right now, we are living through “unprecedented times.” However, when there is an attempted coup, acts of domestic terrorism, and insurrection at our nation’s Capitol amidst a global pandemic, it is fair to say that we are in uncharted territory. How are we as students, educators, and administrators expected to respond to such events? Are we supposed to continue normal classes so we can still be prepared for the upcoming test? Is it overwhelming and exhausting if every class is solely dedicated to political violence and distress? There is no guidebook leading us or helping us answer these looming questions, so we are left stranded, wondering if teachers have an obligation or responsibility to interrupt their curriculum to discuss current events and political unrest.

When exploring this conundrum, I conducted an interview with Newark Academy’s IB Spanish teacher, Alexis Romay, better known in the NA community as Profe.  In all of his sections and levels, Profe felt a duty to break from his curriculum to discuss the insurrection at the Capitol and “dedicated the first class after the assault on the Capitol to a conversation about its origin, significance, and implications.” Profe explained that after growing up in Cuba under a dictatorship, an “interruption of constitutional order activated an atavistic response in [him].”  The insurrection was a reminder of a past he had left behind in Cuba and yet was happening right here in the US. Profe noted, “It is important to acknowledge [coup d’etat attempts] and make every possible effort to not normalize them.”

When deciding to interrupt his classes to discuss political distress, Profe primarily wanted to give his students an opportunity to reflect on their reactions to this act of terrorism by giving them the first five minutes of class to write about what they were thinking and the next five to write about what they were feeling.  Profe explained, “Having no historical perspective on the current moment — because we are fully immersed in it (in the midst of a global pandemic, to top it off!) — I wanted to offer my students the opportunity to pause and write about it.”  Newark Academy junior Kaya Patel, one of Profe’s students, noted that it was interesting and meaningful to have the comparison of and to recognize the differences between thinking and feeling; she also noted that it was nice to have a safe space to reflect, document, and share her thoughts and feelings.

Following these two writing opportunities, Profe put students into breakout groups through Zoom to have small group discussions before reconvening as a class to share their thoughts, feelings, and reflections with each other.  Profe noted that “students of all (perceived or openly declared) political affiliations were legitimately concerned about the horror they had just witnessed [and were] thankful to engage in a conversation … that would help them process and make sense of this collective nightmare.”  Profe also gave the students the opportunity to shift the traditional power dynamic between students and teachers by leaving his ideological biases behind and allowing students to have a completely safe, open space, and he offered students “the possibility of not speaking for those who didn’t feel comfortable sharing,” even though he usually “makes a point of having everyone speak in every class.”

Throughout the interview, Profe emphasized that coup d’etat attempts, acts of terrorism, and political violence and trauma are not events that can be normalized. When describing his intended purpose in having these discussions, Profe explained, “I never know what to do after a coup. If there is a Post Traumatic Coup Disorder, I have it. This is not a joke. There’s nothing funny about trauma. Well, there is one thing I know not to do when it comes to political violence: not to normalize it. I was hoping that my students would understand that I respect their intellectual growth and emotional wellbeing. And that I was not going to pretend that it was a regular Thursday.” Profe used his class periods following the insurrection at the Capitol as an opportunity to demonstrate care for his students, allowing them to process trauma and recognize the significance of political violence and trauma, not allowing it to be normalized or ignored.

These conversations interrupted Profe’s curriculum and disrupted his original plans for those class periods, but they were also by no means out of the scope of the class material and the subject matter of the curriculum. Profe clarified, “I want to make clear that this conversation in all my sections did interrupt my original plan for the day, but it didn’t fall outside the curriculum.” In all of his classes, Profe began the semester by studying political violence by watching different films surrounding a 1973 coup in Chile in his IBSL class and the government response to the protest of Perú’s indigenous population’s right to land in his IBHL class.  Profe explained that “it would have been an act of hypocrisy and a missed opportunity if [his classes] were to lock [their] gaze in 1973-Chile or 2007-Perú, when we had just witnessed an attempt to destroy democracy in the US.”  Furthermore, the failed coup connected to the IB themes of “social organization” and “identity,” adding to its connection to Profe’s curriculum.

During our interview, Profe recalled that as a child learning English in his middle school in Havana, he was taught the sentences: “This is not a chair. This is my pencil.”  However, after living in the US for over two decades, Profe explained, “I have never found myself in a situation in which I had to make that clarification to anyone. I became a language teacher to do the absolute opposite of that. I choose teaching language as a vehicle to speak about things that matter.” Profe uses his platform as an educator to teach and discuss “things that matter,” including current events, political unrest, and coup d’etat attempts in the Americas.  Through his teaching and recognition of these events, Profe is ensuring that these events are not normalized.  He concluded our interview by quoting Karl Marx and explaining that “it is important that we caution ourselves not to believe ‘the enemy to be overcome when he was only conjured away in imagination.’ Because today’s current events will be the history of tomorrow. And history has a tendency to repeat itself: ‘the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’”