Duck and Cover: Teaching Survival in Donald Trump’s America

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The intense sun in the cloudless sky was melting the morning dew that had collected on our bedroom window overnight, so I suspected the deafening sound of the emergency alert blaring from our smartphones was not related to a flash flood. I rolled over quickly, grabbed the phone off of my nightstand and read the foreboding text: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

“Get up!” I yelled at my wife. “Now!” The ensuing chaos of the following minutes will haunt us for a lifetime.

I immediately called a friend to ask if he had gotten the same message, holding onto a sliver of hope that we were experiencing some kind of service-provider snafu. The panic in his voice confirmed my worst fears, and he suggested that my wife and I gather supplies, seal the windows in the bathroom, and try to survive the initial blast in our shower.

We grabbed water, canned food, duct tape, and plastic tarps. We grabbed our puppy and put her in the bathroom, listening to her somber whimpers as we sealed off the windows. We called our loved ones and told them that there was an inbound missile to Hawaii. We said we loved them. We said goodbye. We sat in our small shower facing one another, our knees pressed hard against our chests, staring into each other’s eyes. “At least we get to die together,” I told my wife. We braced for impact.

After about 15 minutes, I was beyond relieved to see on my phone a tweet from Rep. Tulsi Gabbard informing her followers that it was a false alarm. It suddenly turned out that we wouldn’t be the first victims in what seems like an all-too-possible nuclear war, though the trauma of that morning did not dissipate so quickly. Later that afternoon, for example, I ran into a former student in the neighborhood while walking my dog. He’s a tough kid, a mixed-martial-arts fighter, though I noticed that tough-guy persona was gone as he gave me a hug, tears in our eyes. “What are we supposed to do if it happens again?” he asked.

It’s no surprise that community-college professors, by definition, are intricately involved in our communities. Aside from teaching and serving our institutions, we write countless letters of recommendation for our students, connect them to college and community services, and use every tool to help them overcome difficult odds: lack of college readiness, poverty, family and work obligations, etc. With hard work and patience, we prepare them to flourish in the “real world.” What is our role as educators, though, in directly preparing our students for the more nefarious realities of that world?

I never thought that I would feel inclined to prepare a PowerPoint presentation about how to survive a nuclear blast. I never thought that I would scrupulously practice the language of that lecture, carefully expressing the unlikelihood of such an event while also underscoring the importance of being prepared nonetheless. I never thought that I would lead a discussion about a nuclearized North Korea with traumatized young adults, dismissing their terrifying conspiracy theories about the false alarm while also discussing the realities of our country’s tensions with a nuclear-armed dictator. I never thought, for the life of me, that I would feel called upon to quell such panic and fear.

Additionally, I have some serious reservations about bringing my politics into the classroom. As an English professor, I often wonder if it’s my place to even hint at my political leanings. Discussions about the constitutionality of President Trump’s travel ban or the economic impact of his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act clearly don’t fall within my purview.

I’ve always thought that limiting my ideological opinions in the writing classroom allows my students to write with a sense of freedom, something that is crucial in fostering their craft. I want to help them develop a voice driven by independent thinking, one that questions assumptions rather than summons what they think their professor wants to hear. The Trump administration and the threat of nuclear warfare to our islands, however, are justifying a seismic shift in my teaching philosophy.

Despite the country’s political right becoming alarmingly anti-intellectual — a Pew Research Center poll reported in July found that 58 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say colleges have a negative effect on the country — it seems more important than ever to capitalize on the teachable moments that stem from this administration’s disastrous policies.

When a student comes back to class after losing her home to a record-shattering forest fire or a catastrophic flood, how can we as educators not find ways to discuss, even briefly, the impact of climate change? When a DACA recipient is under such stress that he can’t focus on his classwork, how can we fail to allow some discussion about our current immigration policies? Certainly, a part of me wants to avoid these heavy discussions and focus solely on dangling participles and MLA citations, but that just doesn’t seem like an option anymore.

After all, my students and I genuinely believed, albeit briefly, that we would be killed in a nuclear attack. In those terrifying moments, I believe there was not one person in Hawaii, neither staunch Trump supporter nor bleeding-heart liberal, who found some solace in a man who uses his Twitter account to instigate a nuclear-armed dictator. The president did not use Twitter to reassure the people of Hawaii that morning; his first tweet after the incident was about fake news and Michael Wolff, the author of Fire and Fury: Inside Donald Trump’s White House. That was the message from our leader following the most horrific moments of our lives.

If educators — especially those at community colleges, where students are more likely to be vulnerable to the vagaries of misguided public-policy decisions — can’t find the time and appropriate tone to discuss these issues, especially those that threaten our students and their communities, then maybe we shouldn’t be teaching in the first place. If you, too, had spent the first 20 minutes of a recent Saturday morning preparing for a nuclear attack, you might very well feel the same.

Beau Ewan is an English instructor at Kapiolani Community College, part of the University of Hawaii system.