“Dialogue is the heart of democracy. Civil discourse is the heart of community. \u2026Why we engage in the art of dialogue, it\u2019s not only to develop those personal skills but to develop the skills of citizenship and engagement in community.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Kate Toland, social studies teacher at Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morrisville VT, added that in a democracy we ned to engage in collective problem solving.<\/p>\n
\u201cReal problems require deep thought and deep thought requires being able to swim around in a topic instead of trying to build a wall that builds your point…who does that benefit? Thinking deeply with many people who see an issue differently or from different perspectives is where many solutions can lie and practicing being in discussion like that is I think what we want students to be doing and helping each other do.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her Open Letter to a Parent Afraid of Anti-Racist Education<\/a>, English teacher and equity expert Christina Torres pointed out that this is not something new. \u201cTeachers don’t just teach ‘content.’ We never<\/i> have. For generations, we have also taught our students to listen, share, and be empathetic. Teachers don’t just help students understand themselves and the world around them, we also model how to have constructive discussions with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n In a world of polarized politics and abundant hot takes, these difficult conversations may be more important now than ever. \u201cToday, students are already inundated on social media with this stuff, so it is important to provide them with a space to explore these issues deeply in structured, safe ways.\u00a0 It is also important to begin combating digital tribalism and echo chambers as early as possible,\u201d noted Paul Kramer, who teaches Humanities at the Harwood Community Learning Center.<\/p>\n Students should start delving into controversial topics as early as possible. We know, for example, that teaching about race and racism should begin as soon as students start attending school<\/a>. They are already forming their ideas and without guidance those ideas will reflect the misinformation, biases, and white supremacist ideology that permeate our society.<\/p>\n Middle school is particularly crucial, in part because students are becoming naturally more aware of the world. As Meg O\u2019Donnell, 7-8 grade Humanities teacher at Shelburne Community School, in Shelburne VT, noted: \u201cIt\u2019s all around us. These topics are what kids hear in the news and see play out in social media. It is so important to create space to talk about these things.\u201d<\/p>\n Young adolescents are more exposed to the world and actively working to formulate their identity<\/a>. This combination puts them in a unique and in some ways ideal position to learn how to engage in dialogue.<\/p>\n Kathy Forrestal, 7th grade Humanities teacher at Lyndon Town School (Lyndonville VT) put it this way: \u201cThey are starting to question the world. They are noticing the world around them in slightly more mature ways. They are questioning who they are and how they fit into the world. Looking at who they are at home. And realizing that they are allowed to have a thought about it.\u201d<\/p>\n For the sake of our democracy, students need to discuss and learn about controversial issues. And we need to get serious about this in middle school. Because they will be talking about these issues anyway.<\/p>\n Research shows that children and teens worry about political issues<\/a>. This anxiety may manifest in many ways, and when you throw in the social dynamics sometimes it can get ugly.<\/p>\n Lucia Johnson, Spanish teacher at Lyndon Town School, has seen and overheard some troubling examples this year:<\/p>\n I’ve had third grade students start a ‘Build the wall!’ chant while walking to computer class, sixth grade students declaring ‘I speak Taco Bell’ or ‘I speak American,’ and 7th graders ‘speak Spanish’ by putting on an exaggerated accent and making up fake words. Often they don’t understand the full impact that these words have, or the full context behind the issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lucia noted that when she talked to students involved in these incidents individually, \u201cabout 75% of the time they didn\u2019t understand what they were saying or how it could be interpreted.\u201d She saw these conversations as crucial: \u201cIf you don’t talk with them and offer context and other perspectives, a massive opportunity for change is lost. These conversations are happening among even very young students, with or without the guidance of teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n Gina Ritscher agreed. As a math interventionist she works with students across Lyndon Town School. \u201cTeachers should address these issues because kids are already hearing about them and thinking about them. Sometimes in biased versions.\u201d<\/p>\n The same logic of talking about race and racism can be applied more broadly: in the absence of purposeful instruction, youth are left to form their ideas largely on the basis of confusing and often problematic messaging from society.<\/p>\n When big stuff is happening in the news, teachers are forced to decide whether and how to explicitly address it in the classroom. When those events have a partisan charge, or relate to something that is personally affecting, it can complicate a teacher\u2019s calculus.<\/p>\n The recent Presidential election was a good example. Many schools and classrooms that had mock elections in the past skipped it this last round. Some teachers cited the fact that with everybody already stretched thin by pandemic schooling, the focus was on maintaining community and supporting social emotional safety. They didn’t feel up to inviting the divisiveness of the outside world into their classrooms.<\/p>\n Andrea Gratton and Kyle Chadburn addressed the election in the grade 5-8 Humanities classes they co-teach at Orleans Elementary School. Before the election, they mostly focused on the basics of the electoral process. They also helped students connect learning they had done about personal biases to the presence of bias in media sources<\/a>. Afterwards, they used classroom time to hold space for students to ask questions and process their reactions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One question that often comes up for teachers is whether to reveal their own views in the classroom. All teachers interviewed for this post tended to keep things close to the vest. Kate Toland captured this approach well:<\/p>\n My advice to myself at the beginning of the year is to relax and realize there is absolutely no need to convince anyone of anything. It is not our job to create a particular set of political beliefs; it is our job to help students find their voices and express their thinking respectfully and to use and explore reliable and trustworthy evidence to make our decisions about issues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This view aligns with what unabashed anti-racism educator Christina Torres noted in a recent interview on the Have You Heard podcast<\/a>. She drew a sharp distinction between the way she approaches tough topics with adults versus her students. She noted that in her classroom the emphasis is on skill building: \u201c’Here\u2019s what a lot of people think, what do you think?’ I don\u2019t present my own views. I\u2019m not going to say what a 13 year old is doing is racist. I\u2019m not saying they can\u2019t be racist, but I\u2019m not going to name it that way usually. Because I want them to come to realize that themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Even when current events are partisan and complex, and perhaps especially then, teachers are in a position to provide students with the space and skills to navigate the world.<\/p>\n In many cases, students bring up controversial issues at times and in ways that teachers aren\u2019t expecting.<\/p>\n Kathy Forrestal shared a recent example where a student brought up Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n It vaguely related to the topic at hand but the classroom was quickly embroiled in a passionate conversation. Students expressed that they wanted to talk about racism and inequity in the context of current events more often.<\/p>\n Kathy asked them why.<\/p>\n Meg O\u2019Donnell shared a different sort of example, where the class learning was focused on politics, but the conversation went in a direction she hadn\u2019t anticipated. Students were looking at historical polling data that showed the large extent to which views on various issues had become polarized. After a few minutes of introducing the data, Meg noticed that a contentious discussion had blown up in the chat related to one of the issues on the list.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s like when you are stuffing the Thanksgiving bird and the skin rips. I realized that the norms I thought were established in my class was more of a thin veil. They weren\u2019t tightly woven as I thought, or integrated into daily practice. \u2026 When we were tested we didn\u2019t have a strong enough scaffold.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meg noted that the norms in this classroom were particularly tested by external stressors and by the online environment. \u201cThere\u2019s something about this moment. This interface. This child would have never said that in person.\u201d<\/p>\n But Meg, as a consummate professional, simply redoubled her efforts. She reached out to colleagues to process the experience and for advice on how to reinforce norms and scaffold discussion skills on a daily basis.<\/p>\n This recent incident has reminded her of something she\u2019s always known:<\/p>\n \u201cNorms can\u2019t just be a cover, they need to be a foundation. Norm setting is not something you do in a day and move on, but something you hit every day, every opportunity. How to ask a question, how to respond to something when it lands hard on us. How to understand the speaker and the perspective but not just shout louder.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We have to be intentional about having tough and timely conversations in classrooms. We may still overhear stuff that needs addressing. And students will surely keep surprising us by bringing up topics when we least expect it.<\/p>\n But every situation will go more smoothly if we’ve scaffolded the art and skills of dialogue.<\/p>\n As we mentioned in our post about online communication<\/a>, the late great Ned Kirsch, longtime educator and Vermont superintendent, used to insist that digital citizenship is just citizenship, but online.<\/p>\n From day one, you\u2019ve worked with your students on learning who they are, where they come from, and what matters most to them. As a learning community, you\u2019ve built norms for interacting. These likely cover everything from seating choice to restroom breaks, device check-out and unlimited testing re-takes.<\/p>\n In case they don\u2019t also cover face-to-face (or mask-to-mask as the case may be) communication, here are three sets of norms to consider in creating or revisiting conversational norms.<\/p>\n Three simple rules:<\/p>\n Perhaps the most powerful phrases in any language are:<\/p>\n and<\/p>\n Those first three might seem overly simple, but in the heat of conversations about emotionally charged topics, these phrases can be key in dismantling tension. Especially if as a group, you all are used to using them.<\/p>\n Especially that fourth one.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a moment:<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019m understanding you correctly…you just stated that you believe aliens have landed in Bellows Falls and replaced all our regular coffee with Folger\u2019s Decaf? Is that correct?\u201d<\/p>\n While we\u2019re all going to be extremely lucky if decaf-bearing space travelers are the 2020 topic causing conversational mayhem, the key here is that you can use this phrase to do two things in the discourse: 1) slow it down, and 2) ask for clarification. Both these approaches can be life-savers.<\/p>\n Sometimes, we don\u2019t hear everything they\u2019ve said because of background noise, a lag in our speech-to-text device, a momentary distraction or because what we think we hear the person saying has whipped up our emotions to the point where they\u2019re difficult to manage.<\/p>\n Additionally, the rise of social media has created what Kathy Forrestal refers to as \u201cTik-Tok understanding\u201d: the idea that we can fully grasp nuance and context from social media soundbites. They\u2019re so short! So easy to make! So easy to consume! And yet, without rigorous online information safeguards, they can also be misleading, biased, or flat-out wrong.<\/p>\n Social media in general can cause us to speed up or gloss over our comprehension in actual, real-life conversations, whether online or in-person. As Meg O’Donnell put it: “They have the soundbites, the kernels, but don\u2019t always have the historic thread or the depth beyond the soundbite. They have the retort, but not the wisdom behind it.”<\/span><\/p>\n Building background knowledge using a range of sources can help. Regardless: there will be points where it\u2019s time to throw the handbrake.<\/p>\n When you use it, what you\u2019re doing is creating a space in the discourse to focus on one sentence, or one idea, and ask for additional detail. You\u2019re creating a space where you can connect with the speaker more directly by establishing a feedback loop. That feedback loop, in turn, can help the speaker understand if what they said came out right.<\/p>\n Oh, we have all been there.<\/p>\n Perhaps what they meant to say came out wrong. Perhaps their own emotions overwhelmed them during the discourse. Now they have a chance to connect with their listener (or listeners; this absolutely works in a group setting) and clarify.<\/p>\n Even if (and this is key), in those few seconds where they hear their own ideas repeated back to them, they realize that they\u2019d like to retract, or amend their statement.<\/p>\n Give them that opportunity. Give them that grace.<\/p>\n Breathe in, breathe out. Listen well. Accept retractions, amendments or apologies in the name of preserving or re-establishing community.<\/p>\n Part of learning is the importance of recognizing context. Again, during conversations where emotions are running high, it\u2019s easy to get carried away, that\u2019s why we\u2019re all here in this article. But if students already have a known and used norm of thinking about whether they\u2019d make a certain utterance to a specific loved one, that can slow down the derailment.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s unpack, just a little. First of all, we\u2019re going to recognize that the mother example will not just not work for every student, but can, in certain cases, be traumatic for students for whom their mother is a traumatic figure. That\u2019s absolutely something to negotiate and work around.<\/p>\n The key aspect of the strategy deals with the idea that when our emotions carry us away from staying present and focused on who we\u2019re speaking to, it\u2019s helpful to have this norm which encourages us all to identify and re-presence one individual, one particular person in our lives whose opinion we respect, and to whom we always try to present our best selves: our mother, our beloved grandfather, our cousin serving in the Navy, our priest, etc.<\/p>\n Now, that all said, part of your classroom norms discussion inevitably covers what\u2019s up for discussion, and what\u2019s not. Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy, authors of The Political Classroom<\/em>, refer to these as \u201copen\u201d vs \u201csettled\u201d issues. (We love this NPR interview with them<\/a>.)<\/p>\n As a community, you and your students sat down and decided on items that are established facts and firm beliefs; they are not up for discussion.<\/p>\n Black lives matter. Climate change is real. COVID-19 is not a hoax.<\/p>\n These are things that you can decide are simply not up for debate. They are settled issues. Instead, what could be up for debate are questions such as what to do about anti-Black police brutality, how to solve climate change, and what science says about preventing the spread of COVID-19. Those are topics that you can (and likely should) discuss.<\/p>\n Despite our best intentions, conversations will go awry. We\u2019re all a little frazzled, we\u2019re all 300% done with Zoom meetings. We\u2019re all sad and scared and anxious and unsure. And while we\u2019re all doing our best, we are in a situation where a lot of improbable events have congregated in one place and are cha-cha-ing all over our mental health. At the best of times, we all sometimes mis-speak or get carried away. And these are not the best of times.<\/p>\n Someone\u2019s going to say something that hurts someone else.<\/p>\n Pause.<\/p>\n That is the crux of miscommunication. As communication seeks to build connections, miscommunication severs them. So then the task we want to address is rebuilding that connection.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at a couple ways to do that.<\/p>\n Learning to accept the consequences of your own actions, especially when they\u2019re not always perfect, is a hard skill. Hard but necessary.<\/p>\n Apologizing is a skill. And like other skills, you have to learn it. At the heart of every true apology lie two things: a recognition that you caused injury, and a focus on how you are going to atone for doing the injury.<\/p>\n Sounds simple. Too bad human emotions tend to get in the way.<\/p>\n Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone puts it this way<\/a>: \u201cNo matter where it took place \u2014 in the workplace, the street, on Instagram or in someone\u2019s DMs \u2014 if you hurt someone, you need to make it right.\u201d<\/p>\n Choose your venue: should you write it out on paper and share it with the injured party? Should you call them? Should you apologize face-to-face with authority figures involved? Does a text cut it?<\/p>\n First of all, the feelings and safety of the injured party are paramount. What feels safest to them? What would make them feel heard and attended to? And above all else, what will make sure to not compound the original injury?<\/p>\n Rabbi Danya Rutenberg has a thought-provoking thread unpacking teshuvah (\u05ea\u05e9\u05d5\u05d1\u05d4), a process of forgiveness, atonement and repentance.<\/p>\n I want to distinguish between "atonement," "forgiveness," and "repentance," which are three different concepts in Judaism. The critical one, in my view, is repentance, where the real work is on the person who has done harm.<\/p>\n — Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) July 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nMiddle School too? A big yes<\/h4>\n
Outside of the classroom<\/h3>\n
Outside events entering the classroom<\/h4>\n
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<\/p>\nSpontaneous classroom discussions<\/h4>\n
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Students get it.<\/h4>\n
It can be tough when things go sideways<\/h5>\n
So what do we do?<\/h4>\n
Laying the ground rules for the hard stuff? Starts with the easy stuff.<\/h5>\n
3 sets of conversational norms:<\/h4>\n
1. The Craig Ferguson Route<\/h6>\n
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2. Four Phrases for Kindness<\/h6>\n
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Sometimes, we misunderstand people.<\/h4>\n
![\"difficult](\"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/3.png\")
\u201cIf I\u2019m understanding you correctly\u2026\u201d is your handbrake<\/h4>\n
3. Would you say it to your mother?<\/h6>\n
This We Believe:<\/h4>\n
When things go wrong (because they will)<\/h4>\n
Rabbi Danya\u2019s Guide to Repentance<\/h4>\n
What makes a good apology?<\/h6>\n
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