White Supremacy Culture and Teachers’ Pedagogical Choices After the 2021 U.S. Capitol Insurrection

Within hours of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, teachers were “floundering,” trying to figure out if and how they would discuss what happened with their students the next day. Through the lenses of Days After Pedagogy and white supremacy culture, we examine the following research questions: (1) How, if at all, did teachers pedagogically address January 6, 2021 in their classrooms? (2) What language did they use to describe their choices? We utilized an open-ended online questionnaire to learn about teachers’ experiences around the U.S. and analyzed their responses through Critical Discourse Analysis. Findings illustrate that educators’ beliefs about the purposes of schooling, teachers’ roles and responsibilities, and students’ abilities and skills manifest in teachers’ discourse about their pedagogical choices in critical moments on days after, as they did after the Capitol Insurrection. These beliefs are often rooted in the characteristics of white supremacy culture and represent a critical facet of teachers’ work in contentious times.