By Mary Bisciaio
An election year was a history teacher’s dream. It was the ultimate teachable moment. In almost thirty years of teaching, I had more than one opportunity to focus on our democratic process with my eighth and ninth graders. For them, it wasn’t something buried in the past. It was their reality and their future as the campaign unfolded.
I spent countless hours preparing lessons that focused on the issues. What were the two candidates talking about? What were their strengths and weaknesses, and what was their party’s platform? We looked at viewpoints and dissected why the interests of Michigan auto workers was different than the farmers in Nebraska, or why the urbanites in New York had different concerns than the energy workers in Texas. We defined the labels—liberals, conservatives, the GOP, and party politics. I strove to make it personal. What were important concerns to them?
In our society, we raise our children to be thoughtful voters, educated voters, and voters who ultimately control the future. Inevitably, through the unit or immediately after the election, one of my curious students would ask my choice in the election. That was yet another lesson. The secret ballot was to ensure no intimidation would prevent voters from making their choices. Besides, it was more fun to allow them to guess my vote. I never told.
Just prior to election day, we held a mock election. I gave them the opportunity to apply for a ballot and supplied them with laminated voters’ ID cards. It amazed me how they proudly wore them around the school on their lanyards, and I impressed on them the need to have that ID when we held our own election. They took it so seriously. As life and death as any real election, and after election night, we compared our results to Michigan and the nation’s results.
But here is where I dropped the teaching baton. How I wish I had focused on what happens next, AFTER all the election hoopla was over. I had the most magnificent role model to pattern after.
When I was in the seventh grade, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. (Stop doing the math. Age is just a number.) Anyway, I was scrambling to my last hour class at the end of a long hallway, because tardiness wasn’t an option. My formidable English teacher didn’t take late or any excuse that went along with it. (More than once I wished for that superpower as a teacher.) Over the last few minutes of sixth hour, there had been a buzz in the air. Teachers talking in the hall and some, the more perceptive of us, knew what had happened.
I darted quickly between other students to my seat near the front as the warning bell rang. Then Mrs. L. came in promptly while the last bell was still ringing. She looked distracted, unusually pensive, as she picked up her attendance book. We were quiet as church mice until John broke the silence. I have come to realize since then that John was a typical seventh-grade boy. He is just the kind of student I had in middle school. Let me explain that at this age, boys, in particular, are not known for their tact and timing. He announced to everyone what he had gathered from his last hour teacher. “Hey, somebody plugged the President.”
The eyebrows arched, the eyes lifted, the entire class sucked in a collective breath. For some reason I had the feeling we were all in trouble. Mrs. L. scanned the classroom and with laser eye precision focused a hostile stare on John.
As we expected, she unleashed a tirade of information that successfully had John sliding further and further down into his seat. I’m sure he wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole. I don’t remember much of what she said, though I’m sure the word disrespect was probably amid her speech at least a dozen times. What I do remember distinctly, what I can so clearly hear her saying after fifty years was the very last comment she made. Important enough to be her last words before we got down to the business of English and the day’s lesson.
She straightened her shoulders, held John’s eyes, and spoke with an emotion we had never seen. Her eyes misty, and her voice strained, she said,
“I DIDN’T VOTE FOR THE MAN, BUT HE WAS STILL MY PRESIDENT.”
Profound. I knew it that day, and maybe that is why I can’t remember yesterday, but her words have remained with me for so long. That’s what I should have left my students with after the election. I hope they understand now that the strength of this country is our democratic process; free elections, the power to choose where one candidate wins and another loses. That our strength to the rest of the world is our ability to rally for the person who leads for the next four or eight years regardless of whether we voted personally for that candidate. We have a completely dignified peaceful transition of power unlike many countries around the globe. We give our new leadership a chance to rise or fall on his own merits, to fulfill campaign promises, and to make America a better place for all of its citizens, and the beauty of our system is in four years we do it all over again.
We don’t have to like our leadership.
We will always reserve the right to criticize.
And we will use the power of our vote and the ballot box to keep America a free nation; free to think, free to lend our support, free to help others, and free to change.
I wish I could thank Mrs. L. for what she gave me that day, November 22, 1963. A sad day, yes, but a solid day for democracy as the Vice-President, Lyndon B. Johnson, peacefully took the oath of office on Air Force One.
Life keeps changing, and I’m hanging on. Find my books at www.amazon.com/author/teadeluca
