Pache.co Information Technologies

“Some of you know more about this than members of Congress,” Rinaldi recalled telling his students during a discussion.

Though Rinaldi’s seminar has covered and simulated conflicts between Russia and Ukraine since 2014 (the same year President Vladimir Putin of Russia annexed Crimea), this lesson felt much different, as tension rose in the real world.

“In the past, there’s a potential for hyperbole because it was disconnected from reality. And I think this time, everyone understood that this is real,” Rinaldi said.

As the war in Ukraine unfolds, teachers have the unique obligation to balance giving students information and historical context about the conflict, while also quelling their fears and anxiety.

While some classes like Rinaldi’s seminar had a natural transition into these topics and already taught the context behind the war, many classes, especially for younger students, haven’t explained the modern history between the two nations.

But that hasn’t stopped teachers from having thoughtful discussions, even if they aren’t directly related to their curriculum.

When a current event is important, teachers can’t tell students “we’re studying the 16th century,” and skip the topic, said Steven Pacheco, a history teacher at Berlin-Boylston Regional High School in Boylston. “Of course we’re going to have a conversation about it.”

While Pacheco’s AP European history class will be creating two documentaries on why the invasion began, one from the perspective of Russian state-sponsored media and another from the point of view of the Ukrainian press, his younger students just want to know why the war is happening and what the consequences will be, especially if the United States becomes more involved.

Both groups have a lot to learn about perspective, Pacheco said. Even though Putin’s actions are not justifiable, he said, “we still have to understand the point of view and learn how to deal with it. Otherwise, you’re not going to come to a resolution.”

The fear of the war expanding and the use of nuclear weapons is palpable in a way it has never been before for students who weren’t alive for the Cold War and don’t remember the aftermath of 9/11, said John Anderson, the head of the history department at Monomoy Regional High School in Harwich.

Anderson said he’s been impressed by his students, who are constantly drawing connections between the current war in Ukraine and past conflicts, but he’s also startled by the fear the violence has produced in them. They’ve asked a lot about the potential for World War III and nuclear fallout.

Tiffany Luo, a senior at Boston Latin school and president of the Boston Student Advisory Council, said she’s felt very lucky to learn about the war in her comparative politics class, but she knows not every student has gone over what’s happening.

“There’s a lack of information, education wise, and a lot of [younger students] are getting it from social media, which causes a lot of fake news and misinformation,” Luo said. “And they bring it back to their peers.”

She said that talking more about current events in class could help curb the misinformation and even stamp out some of the anxiety the war is causing.

At Monomoy, Anderson’s department has been using material from Brown University’s The Choices Program to give current and historical information about the war. The program’s lesson on the conflict provides maps, political cartoons, and even a guide to monitoring the news on Ukraine, which Anderson said has been at the center of their efforts to give students a solid foundation of understanding.

The program’s lessons are free, thoroughly sourced, concise, and accessible, which means they’re for students of all learning levels, not just those in advanced classes, according to Andy Blackadar, The Choices Program’s director of curriculum development.

The program put together the lesson on Ukraine before Russia began its official invasion, anticipating that students would be hungry for information and teachers would be eager to include them in their lessons, Blackadar said.

“Teachers don’t ever have enough time to do all the things that they want to do,” Blackadar said, “so we see ourselves sort of filling that.”

History teachers at Newton South also used The Choices Program as a part of their lesson on Ukraine, said Rinaldi, who also anticipated students returning from February break would have a lot of questions about the war. Every student received about 30 minutes of conversation about the war at the beginning of their first history class after school vacation, Rinaldi said.

Although he’s been teaching a class closely following the topic, Rinaldi said the conversations he has had with other students after break were also meaningful and important.

“It could be really disorienting for a student to think there’s this catastrophic war happening, news outlets are dedicating huge amounts of visual space to this conflict, and yet we didn’t mention it once,” he said.

The conversations helped students realize that real people were being affected by the war, including their classmates with Ukrainian family who spent the last week worrying about their safety, he said.

“People have been joking a lot, but also not joking about there being a draft and fighting, and there are also a lot of students who have family in Ukraine and Russia,” said Arlo Cohen, a senior who took Mr. Rinaldi’s comparative politics. Cohen said the conflict also is bleeding into other parts of his academic life.

A classmate in one of his STEM classes shared that his family was in Kiev, which made the whole war “hit closer to home,” Cohen said. “It’s been hard to see how can we study anything else in this moment when a war of these proportions is going on.”

Colleen Cronin can be reached at [email protected].