With President Donald Trump now in office, educators have our work cut out for us in dealing daily with hate speech in our K-12 schools, with little training or precedent on how to respond.
After the election, Black students across the U.S. and at my daughter’s junior high received text messages asking them by name to report to plantations. Similarly, Latino students got personalized texts that they were being deported, and LGBTQ+ students got messages to report to re-education camps.
Although those texts were somehow sent anonymously and still their sender(s) have gone undetected even by the FBI, pointed hate speech in our schools is happening in real time. In November, male students at a high school in Wisconsin repeated the phrase, “Your body, my choice” at female students, copying white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who lives in a nearby Chicago suburb.
A K-12 district in Vermont saw harassment complaints quadruple the week after the election, with students citing harassment based on race, ethnicity, and gender and sexual identity. Native American students in Wyoming found a swastika and a racial slur hanging from the mirror in a school bathroom. Colleagues near and far have shared stories of white students telling Latino students that they will be deported.
At my daughter’s junior high, her principal pointed out that the text messages opened the floodgates among students, who opened up about the racist and hateful language they faced in school. Schools are supposed to be safe havens, but often mirror society’s ills, especially when they’ve become norms.
During the 2024 presidential election, Americans saw Trump’s use of racist, anti-immigrant, sexist, and homophobic language on full display in his campaign. Our children and adolescents saw it accepted as normal — and successful, when Trump won.
Where does this put schools? Many schools, like the public high school I work for and my children’s public K-8 district in the Chicago suburbs, follow the Illinois State Constitution, which protects students’ right to a safe environment free from bullying and hate speech.
But what if Trump is normalizing hate speech so much that students don’t recognize when they are using it, or don’t know how to speak up when it is being used against them?
Schools, teachers need a playbook for action
One way for Illinois schools to be proactive against hate speech is by training educators on how to respond. According to the federal government’s anti-bullying website, Illinois has some of the most comprehensive anti-bullying policies and laws in the nation. But we should require school districts to train teachers and staff on how to respond to bullying, the area where discriminatory speech often manifests in schools.
Educators in other states should look into their state’s anti bullying policies and laws, to see how they actually protect kids from hate speech — and advocate for stronger protection if needed. All 50 states have some policies and laws on this, but some states are less protective.
Schools need to acknowledge that children and adolescents are susceptible to repeating language that has become normal, and that the president’s rhetoric is often racist and sexist. Educators need to know the language that is circulating and how to respond.
School districts should replicate what happened when I was a high school librarian in Chicago Public Schools and the news media reported on sexual abuse and harassment in CPS, mainly between adults and minors. As a result, all schools led professional development on what interactions were permissible, “grooming” of minors and sexual harassment. Using a very clear, green light, yellow light and red light approach, it became very clear to all of us what was acceptable and how to react.
Yet I have never had the same level of professional development surrounding hate speech that is now seeping into our everyday lexicon.
Whether it’s opening a chat or text telling them to report for “plantation duty,” watching as male students chant “Your body, my choice,” or entering a bathroom to find a swastika, hateful speech has already entered our schools.
How will schools respond? How do we disavow white supremacy and the language of hate, when our country’s leaders embolden it and white supremacist language becomes mainstream? How do we support America’s multicultural, diverse student bodies, when the forces in charge act to denigrate, bully and harm them?
Schools need a playbook, one that doesn’t just punish kids or give consequences, but one that helps teachers and students discuss and respond to the language of hate and helps students build empathy. Educators need to learn to spot this language and be proactive against it.
I urge administrators and educators to plan professional development on this, so schools can remain safe havens for our children and teens.
If we turn a blind eye, we will succumb to the bullying and hatred we often claim to fight against.
Gina Caneva, Ph.D., is the library media specialist for a public high school in the Chicago suburbs and was previously an educator in Chicago Public Schools. Follow her on BlueSky @GinaCaneva
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