Category: dystopian reality

Complex Trauma in High School English Class

While all around me the federal government is being dismembered, it seems apt to bring up the novel we’re reading.

In English 12 we’re halfway through Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s hard not to draw parallels to what is happening in the U.S.A. today. I feel like Offred seeing the bodies from the “salvaging” hanging on the wall for the crimes they committed — men killed for gender treachery, doctors for performing abortions.

U.S. AID was butchered yesterday. The Department of Education last week. NIH before that. Canada is now an enemy. Undocumented immigrants are all criminalized. In Gilead, they know that nobody can be trusted. They know how dangerous scientists and intellectuals can be. “Eyes” are everywhere.

My EML students worry that family members will be deported while they’re at school, parents afraid to go to the supermarket or church. They bring these fears into the classroom, and either act out or remain unusually quiet. Some students just stop coming to school. Their anxiety seeps into our shared space. Whispered conversations, a heartfelt journal entry.

A teacher friend from another school told me that a student asked if she was legal. She is from South America and speaks with a slight accent. She replied, “I am now, but I wasn’t when I first arrived in this country.” The student responded, “Then I would have reported you to ICE.”

It could be worse. I could be a 53-year-old NOAA scientist with kids about to go to college — decades into public service, too young to retire, years of exceptional performance reviews — fired through a social media posting from DOGE.

I could be an undocumented LGBTQ+ immigrant about to graduate.

Seniors had to write an essay about the value and relevance of The Handmaid’s Tale for today’s teens. One student wrote that reading this text shows the consequences of not standing up against injustices in the world today. Another student wrote, “our government is meant to protect us, but if they ever turn against us, marginalized communities will be in the most danger.”

The fascist flexing taking place right now in the White House is meant to provoke fear and panic. Our president is inflicting continuous trauma on this country, with marginalized populations suffering the most. And they are sitting in my English 12 class.

Teachers have little training in how to deal with anxiety, emotional dysregulation, or persistent difficulties in sustaining relationships (symptoms of complex stress disorder), but we see them becoming normalized.

Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.

I have hope that my students will stand up against injustices, that they will fight for the future they want to live in. I will do everything in my power to give them the tools they need to think critically about our world. One of the best tools at my disposal is excellent speculative fiction, like The Handmaid’s Tale.

Because I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, I can (still) teach a novel that has been banned in Florida, Oregon, and Texas. This is exactly what we need to be reading right now. This is exactly what we need to be discussing. This is exactly how we can overcome the psychological stress of living through the next four years.

So long, it’s summer!

Last week I said goodbye to all the students who have hung out with me for 10 months. It’s a bittersweet time of year for teachers because we develop such a strong bond with our students. I’ve graded final exams and I’ll go in this week to clean out my classroom.

But I am still reeling from what some of them wrote in their final essays about a moral or ethical dilemma they faced. After reading their exams I had to get up from my desk and walk around the building. Most high school students are exposed to dystopian plots by reading science fiction stories, but my students have lived through such things.

One essay that particularly stands out was written by an African girl whose best friend disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to her. She knocked on neighbors’ doors and searched the community. She couldn’t believe that her only friend in the world would run away. Three days later the girl was found, barely alive on the edge of town. She was naked and bruised and filthy. My student went with her to a hospital and was there when her friend’s family walked in. Her friend started screaming hysterically and pointing at her own father, saying “get him out of here!” The father was apparently part of a cult that was required to perform savage acts on virgins. He was arrested and thrown in jail, but bribed the prison guards to be released. Shortly after, my student immigrated to the U.S. and her friend moved to another country. Thank god they were able to escape such horrors!

Another boy wrote about a classmate of his, a young woman forced into marriage at age 15. The following year she had a baby but unfortunately her husband died. The village elders accused her of murdering the man, but my student did not believe his classmate was capable of such a thing and stood up for her in front of his grandfather. The elders decided that her punishment would be burying her alive up to her neck then stoning her to death. My student remembered a quote from a movie he’d seen about how all humans have rights, so he went to a priest to speak up for his friend. The priest convinced his grandfather and the elders not to kill her; the girl was exiled to another village with her baby instead. It was his courage to speak up that saved the girl’s life. It’s impossible not to feel the pain of a 15-year-old processing such a real and profound ethical dilemma.

And you thought Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery was fiction?

I’m glad I have the entire summer to recover and plan. What new dilemmas will face these students this summer? I think I will teach differently next year, and I will try to be more sensitive to the quiet students and encourage them to write about their experiences more regularly. I will be thinking about this all summer.