SEATTLE -- It’s a teaching moment that still makes Kyrian MacMichael’s skin crawl — that winter morning in her sixth grade Tumwater class when a few white students said that all Muslims should be banned from the United States.
“They said they were afraid of my Muslim students, and that these (Muslim) kids were planning to bomb the schools and terrorize people,” said MacMichael, the former Peter G. Schmidt Elementary School teacher.
The Muslim students came quick to their own defense.
'I’m not Muslim! I’m not Muslim!’”
In this classroom, the only defense they had was to hide their true beliefs.
“I could feel their suffering, and I could see it on their faces,” MacMichael recalled.
"I don’t understand why an 11-year-old is being accused of plotting to blow up our school.”
It’s no coincidence, MacMichael said, that weeks before chaos erupted in her classroom, Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” From his repeated vows to build a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico to his off-the-cuff remarks about certain groups of immigrants, kids are picking up the Republican presidential nominee’s statements on immigration that have become synonymous with his name.
For many Trump supporters, the tone of his campaign is what enamors them and what keeps them coming to the candidate's defense. He breaks a traditional politician's mold, and experts said that's been key to the success of his campaign.
But MacMichael and scores of other teachers across the country are drawing parallels between the bold and divisive rhetoric of the 2016 presidential campaign and an increased level of fear they’ve observed in their classrooms — especially among students of color and the children of foreign-born parents.
In June, a Washington state education official suggested to some of the state’s K-12 teachers that they should take preemptive action to protect students from getting hurt by the 2016 political tone, specifically from the GOP nominee.
“The anxiety is real. The reality is that some of these (students') parents are not documented,” said Maureen Costello, director of the Teaching Tolerance program at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They’re uncertain about what can happen and how much power a president actually has.”
Teachers: Students Have ‘Alarming’ Levels of Fear
When some students leave Katie Hirschfeld’s classroom, the high school teacher knows there’s a chance they may never return.
“I’ve had four or five students get up out of the classroom and walk out of school because they have to pick up their little brothers and sisters and go gather the family members that are left,” she said.
The English teacher has a front row seat to the immigration sweeps that have torn undocumented Hispanic families apart in the Aberdeen School District. After a raid last year, one of Hirschfeld's Hispanic students spent weeks terrified, hiding out in a car, the teacher said.
The raids aren’t new for the 30-year teaching veteran, but the ways Hirschfeld’s students have been responding to them are. She blames the GOP presidential nominee.
“I think Trump's rhetoric has brought out this layer of pervasive hatred and really a level of intolerance for diversity,” the teacher said.
Hirschfeld is one of about 2,000 K-12 teachers nationwide who responded to a five-question survey from the Southern Poverty Law Center about how the 2016 presidential election is impacting students.
“Of course, in years past, students have debated who is better, who would do a better job, etc., but the comments this year are different,” Hirschfeld wrote in her response. "They are serious talking about how their lives could and would change if a certain candidate were to be elected. It is of great concern to me. I hear a lot of ignorance in their voices when it comes to racial profiling and (Second) Amendment issues. But what I am hearing, is talk of fear and real safety issues."
While the April study, “The Trump Effect,” is not scientific, its results provide a rarely-documented snapshot of the political climate inside America’s classrooms. The study found the campaign rhetoric is inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in schools and creating an “alarming level of fear and anxiety” among students of color. About a quarter of Washington children come from immigrant families.
“The first time I read a comment that said an African-American student came in and asked, ‘Is it true that we’re going to be sent back to Africa?' I thought, ‘Ok, that’s bizarre.’ And then I read it like a dozen more times,” said Costello, who led the "Trump Effect" study.
More than 1,000 teacher responses mentioned Trump by name. Fewer than 200 comments contained the names of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Ted Cruz, according to the report.
"Teachers have pointed out to us that this (campaign rhetoric) goes against the kind of behavioral norms that are being preached in schools, which are basically anti-bullying norms,” Costello said. "This is the kind of language kids aren’t supposed to use.”
Why Kids Are Latching On To Anti-Immigration Messages
Deportation has always been a fear for many undocumented children in Washington, but even kids who face little threat of removal are talking about Trump’s plans to build a wall.
“Kids at that young age tend to think that the president calls all the shots. They tend to think of a president kind of like a king. So, whatever the president wants, that’s what happens. Well, that’s not the way our system works,” said Mark Smith, a political science professor at the University of Washington. “They might not understand the finer points of immigration law, and they might think that everybody who is foreign-born is going to be kicked out.
The proposed wall between Mexico and the U.S. is a simple concept that’s easy for young kids to understand, Smith said. The topic hits close to home for kids in a way that political experts, like Smith, haven’t noticed with other policy issues.
“This isn’t a matter of ‘How much are we going to spend on one program? and ‘What are we going to do on defense?’ and 'What are we going to do on climate change and abortion and so on?’ This is, 'Where do you live? Who are your friends going to be? How is your way of life going to be?'
"This is as personal as it can get, so it just greatly raises the stakes for the kids who are affected in a way that most public policy debates don’t,” Smith said.
Matt Adams, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said this is the first time he’s seen kids pay attention to immigration issues during a presidential election.
We asked Seattle children with at least one foreign-born parent to share what they know about the 2016 presidential nominees and issues. Watch how they responded in the video player below.
Trump Supporters: Candidate's Rhetoric Not To Blame
While more than two-thirds of the teachers in that Southern Poverty Law Center survey noted anxiety and fear from some of their students, there are also plenty of teachers who answered, ‘No.’
Some experts, like local immigration lawyer Carol Edward, said it’s hard to tell from her vantage point if the Republican nominee’s rhetoric has had an impact on the children of foreign-born parents.
“I think there’s always been this fear. I don’t know if it’s increased or not from what Trump has said,” Edward said.
Trump supporters insist that the Republican's rhetoric has no connection to the negative student behavior some teachers have described. In fact, many who support the candidate embrace the candid tone of his campaign.
"When you’re running against 17 other heavyweight politicians, if you want to use the flat language, you’re not going to grab the media’s attention. You have to use a muscular set of words and languages. This has to do with campaigning. I think his message is a human message — a message the people in America will like and end up voting for,” said Hossein Khorram, a Trump supporter who was a Washington state delegate to the Republican National Convention.
Khorram, an Iranian immigrant, backs Trump’s stance on immigration.
“We are a nation of law and order, and people ought to respect the way to get in and out, and not try to get ahead of the game. Trump’s wife is an immigrant herself. I don’t think he has anything against immigrants. He has hired immigrants and put hundreds of thousands of people back to work. He is a realist and he has respect for the law,” Khorram said.
"The idea is not to tear up families. The idea is not to make kids live in fear. If we did that, we are not Americans and Trump will not do that.”
