For some teens, Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was assassinated while speaking on a college campus this week, was an inspiration and a hero.
For other students who might be sitting right next to them in class—including some girls, students of color, and those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender—Kirk espoused abhorrent views.
Both visions of Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a student group with close ties to President Donald Trump, dominated social media this week, alongside videos of his violent death and speculation about who might have killed him. (On Sept. 12, authorities announced an arrest in connection with the case.)
There were conspiracy theories, misinformation, posts urging conservatives to take-out prominent liberal figures in retaliation and other posts cheering his murder.
That social media maelstrom, which emerges after nearly every breaking news event these days, worried Michelle Pearson when she got a news alert about Kirk on Sept. 10, shortly after her middle school social studies students had left for the day.
What’s more, teachers themselves have been disciplined—or even fired—for their own behavior on social media following Kirk’s death.
“I thought, ‘holy moly, my students have just gone home,’ they’re on their cellphones and they’re not going to have any context for any of this,” said Pearson, a teacher in the Adams 12 school district, in Thornton, Colo.
Helping students make sense of what they are seeing on Instagram and TikTok
In the wake of events like Kirk’s assassination, teachers can help students process their complex feelings and make sense of what they’re seeing on their TikTok and Instagram feeds, said Peter Adams, the senior vice president of research and design at the News Literacy Project, a nonprofit organization.
For instance, students may see extreme social media posts calling for conservatives to respond to Kirk’s murder by committing violent acts against those on the left, or posts showing showing liberals describing Kirk’s killing as justified. But it’s sometimes difficult to tell who published the content and why.
“You don’t know who people are online,” Adams said. “If you see somebody post a call for an ‘eye for an eye’, for example, you know they could be an American who is airing a reprehensible viewpoint, or they could be a foreign influence agent trying to deepen division.”
What’s more, Adams said that teachers should explain to students that there are a lot of unknowns as an event like Kirk’s assassination unfolds. People pushing a particular narrative online—such as the internet sleuths who mistakenly identified a transgender woman as the shooter—don’t have the facts and may have an agenda they’re trying to push.
“Ideological actors, trolls, propagandists, people who are looking to divide Americans, to push misinformation, are all going to jump into the void of that curiosity gap,” Adams said, “where an event has happened, and everyone wants more details than are available.”
Students should instead be encouraged to follow standards-based news organizations, even though they’re “going to move slower than you know your Twitter feed or your BlueSky feed or your TikTok feed, for good reason,” Adams said.
This was “obviously a deeply tragic event, but also emblematic of how breaking news events play out now,” Adams added.
How one teacher addressed Kirk’s death in a social studies class
Pearson addressed the shooting with her social studies class the next day. She paired a discussion of Kirk’s death with a planned history lesson about the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and infused both discussions with an emphasis on empathy.
Pearson explained the national mourning and antipathy towards Arab Americans that followed the terrorist attacks nearly a quarter century ago. Then she asked students about recent news events.
As she expected, they were quick to bring up Kirk’s killing, which many of them had watched on social video platforms such as TikTok.
Students talked about their shock, but also about media bias. Why were national news outlets spending so much time on this event and so little on a shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado, located about an hour away from their school?
Pearson used their questions as an opportunity to talk about media bias. She reminded her students how to check whether a particular outlet has a point of view and is reporting accurate information through strategies such as “lateral reading,” which involves looking at multiple news sources to fact-check particular claims.
And she challenged students to think about how their own posts about a topic like Kirk’s death might reflect skills like critical thinking and empathy. Is what they are posting accurate and respectful to people with whom they might disagree?
“We don’t often have that chance to really push kids on that next step of digital literacy — and this provided that opportunity for it, to be honest,” Pearson said.
Teachers need to model that behavior themselves, Pearson added.
“I lead by example on anything I post,” Pearson said.
When she posts something on social media she thinks to herself: “I better be able to say this in front of my family and be OK with it, because they raised me with a set of moral values and a set of community values. If I can’t say this in front of them, then I’m not posting it for other people.”
In the wake of Kirk’s shooting, there were numerous reported instances of teachers being fired or disciplined for social media posts justifying his death. (A number of teacher organizations, however, denounced the killing and called for civility in online posts.)
Fenner Parker, a North Carolina high school student who serves as the national communications director for the High School Republican National Federation, said teachers should not be sharing their personal views on the tragedy, either online or in the classroom.
“You have that name ‘teacher’ for a reason,” he said. “You’re teaching the next generation and if you’re sitting there celebrating the death of someone, what are you teaching students?”
But Fenner, 17, added that teachers shouldn’t shy away from talking about Kirk in class.
“This country needs a lot of healing, students need a lot of healing, and that’s going to come through talking to one another and sharing in the pain,” he said. “I truly discourage teachers from shutting down those conversations.”
Avoiding controversial topics is a ‘lost opportunity’
It’s understandable that many teachers wouldn’t want to wade into this politically volatile topic by bringing it up in class, said Ty Harris, the director of opportunity and achievement for Virginia Beach City schools in Virginia and a former social studies teacher.
But educators who avoid addressing the tragedy miss a chance help students apply their media literacy skills to a developing news story and to demonstrate how to have a respectful civic discourse—both in person and onlinedivisive .
Educators “want to engage in the conversation, I think, in order to help, but at the same time, there’s a real fear of saying anything that’s going to get us in trouble,” said Harris, who spoke for himself as an individual, not for his school district.
But his view is that avoiding talking to students about aspects of the story is a “lost opportunity.”
“If our goal is to develop individuals who are going to contribute to society, the ability to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with you is a pretty important skill to have,” said Harris, a 2025 Education Week Leader to Learn From. “It’s something that you only get through practice. It’s not something that comes inherently.”