Jan. 6, 2021 – A joint Congress session was held at the United States Capitol to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell took the Senate floor and declared that the courts and the states had spoken: “If we overrule them, it could damage our republic forever.”

While the certification of the votes was supposed to be the pinnacle part of the day, all eyes were on the 2,000 insurrectionists preparing to storm the Capitol.

Brady Shutt was teaching AP Government at the same time the insurrection was happening. On Jan. 6, while Shutt was teaching, he missed the crucial moment that would change the course of democracy.

“By the time those classes ended…I checked ‘PBS News Hour’ to see what their coverage was, or see how it was going, and realized that in that little gap, the storming of the Capitol started,” said Shutt.

While the teachers themselves struggled to process the events of the day, they also had to find a way to properly address and discuss the event with students. Stacey Strief, a social studies teacher at Liberty, also vividly remembers the emotions brought about that day.

“We were still processing what had happened as well… [but] we were still collecting information, trying to read and talk to one another and depending on each other as much as possible, so that we could get the right information to our students,” Strief recalled.

During the 2020-2021 school year, Liberty students were in the midst of dealing with constant changes throughout the school year, due to COVID-19. The Jan. 6 insurrection caused another level of uncertainty.

Avery Van Abbama, 12, was a freshman at the time of the insurrection. At 14 years old, she experienced a once-in-a-lifetime event. While she didn’t quite understand the full scope of the threat at the time, it weighs heavily on her mind, even four years later.

“What I remember from January 6… It didn’t seem like a big deal until I got home from school. I saw what was happening in the news and I was in denial… They were climbing walls and breaking windows, and it seemed too crazy to be real,” recalled Van Abbama.

As the 2022 Midterm Elections had one of the highest young turnout rates, more young people are getting more politically involved than ever before, for various reasons. For Van Abbama, Jan. 6 was a political turning point.

“That really spurred me to learn more about politics and understand why I believe what I believe. I come from [the] standpoint that we are all different, but many people react to things very differently…I definitely will keep this event in mind when I make any future voting decisions,” she said.

While there is a collective worry that Jan. 6 will be a turning point in how young people see democracy, Shutt wants students to remember that whoever you are rooting for in an election, at the end of the day, a democracy is a democracy.

“[Students may think] I’m out, the system’s rigged or whatever it might be. I hope they stay encouraged and think that’s sort of how it works sometimes in a democracy,” said Shutt.

This story was originally published on The Live Wire on January 8, 2024.