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In this episode, we chat with Joe Schmidt and Nichelle Pinkney, co-authors of Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities. The book connects current scholarship on civil discourse to meaningful, practical classroom practices.
Drawing on insights from their work and book, they speak on the necessity of fostering true discourse that values information sharing over a zero-sum game mentality and emphasize understanding as foundational to civil discourse and the importance of questioning and discussion in developing students' empathy and critical thinking. The Big Dream Joe and Nichelle envision a future where education centers around vibrant discussions and joyful learning. They dream of an educational landscape where students, despite varying backgrounds, engage in meaningful conversations that build empathy and understanding. Additionally, they aspire to empower educators to explore new teaching methods, thereby fostering a nurturing environment where learning is both a joy and a transformative experience. Mindset Shifts Required To foster a culture of civil discourse, teachers need to embrace the possibility of failure without fear. Both Joe and Nichelle stress the importance of understanding that not every discussion will go well. The topics and conversations are tough, and it might not always go according to plan. It’s crucial, then, to shift towards a mindset that values learning from missteps and encourages continuous growth. A second mindset shift is, “if not me, then who?” It’s an attitude of agency and embracing the opportunity ahead of you as an educator to bring positive change. Action Steps To start bringing meaningful civil discourse into your classroom, educators can start with these action steps. Step 1: Know your “why.” Why have civil discourse? Joe and Nichelle speak to the power of sharing ideas — we are better together than individually and sharing ideas is the best way to find the best possible solutions. Step 2: Identify a challenging topic or discussion you've been hesitant to address in your teaching practice. Reflect on the core concepts that students need to understand in order to engage meaningfully with this topic, and consider where their understanding has come from and what resources they’ve had access to so you can fill in the knowledge gaps. Step 3: Develop a comprehensive lesson plan that builds students' background knowledge and sets the stage for civil discourse. This should include building disciplinary concepts and defining essential ideas; for example, concepts like privacy, authority, rule of law, and other ideas are key when discussing contentious subjects and need to be brought into the planning. Step 4: When the groundwork has been laid — you know your “why” and are filling knowledge gaps — you can facilitate discussions in a structured way, practicing with non-contentious topics first to build students’ discourse skills. Use practical tools and patterns like sentence stems to structure the way these conversations go. Joe and Nichelle offer more practical strategies for discourse in their book. Challenges? One of the primary challenges in cultivating civil discourse is overcoming the fear of failure and our tendency to avoid contentious topics. Additionally, ensuring that all students have the necessary foundational knowledge to participate fully can be difficult, requiring a lot of preparation work. One Step to Get Started For educators feeling overwhelmed by where to begin, our guests suggest starting with "silly" but engaging topics like whether a hot dog is a sandwich or whether a straw has one or two holes. These seemingly simple debates can help students practice the skills of civil discourse in a low-stakes environment before moving on to more complex or contentious subjects. Stay Connected You can connect with Joe on Instagram, his website, or check out The Social Studies Field Guide. Connect with Nichelle on X or LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guests are sharing Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 275 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Joe and Nichelle, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Joe Schmidt: Well, thanks for having us. This is awesome. Nichelle Pinkney: Thanks for having us, Lindsey. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. Let's dive in by just, like, you know, what's something that people should keep in mind today? So having, you know, heard your bios both at the start of the episode, you know, what is either something else to keep in mind about you, something that's on your mind at the moment, um, anything that you want the audience to be aware of. Joe Schmidt: I think one thing that I think's always a big overarching takeaway for me that I feel like I've had to stress a lot lately or remind people a lot lately is I think we really need to just keep remembering that true discourse is an information sharing. It is not a zero-sum game. It is not a winner-take-all type stuff, and I think the more we can go into conversations with a goal of learning or acquiring new information, that doesn't mean having our minds changed, it doesn't mean agreeing with the other person. Uh, but just I think that mindset is something that you'll probably hear kind of threaded throughout a lot of my responses, um, coming up. But yeah, I think that's my big lead- Nichelle Pinkney: I would say under, in this time right now, understanding is really important. Understanding where everyone is coming from, where people's experiences, backgrounds, how they influence how we move in this world, and being able to acknowledge it, accept it, and being able to just live amongst it, 'cause that's what makes us so great. So I think if we keep that in mind, the idea of what is true understanding, what is true listening, I think, um, then that civil discourse becomes even better Lindsay Lyons: I love both of those framings, and I am just really excited for the audience. I'm, I've been talking about this book in other iterations on solo episodes and with other guests, but the book Civil Discourse that you both put together is brilliant and just such a testament for how to do all out of that, as well as, like, I thought a really great integration of both theory and practice. So like, what's the scholarship that informs it, and then how do you literally do it in the class? Um, so really excited to, to think about that today. And I think before we get to kind of the, the how or even the scholarship piece, I'd like to just zoom out a little bit and think about the, the big dream that you all hold for civil discourse or even education more broadly. Really inspired by Dr. Bettina Love's, um, ideas on freedom dreaming, which she describes as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So would love to know kind of what, what's that driving dream for you? Nichelle Pinkney: I would say my big dream that I hold for education right now most definitely is that, um, civil discourse and that idea that, like I said, that understanding that we are all from different backgrounds and places and experiences that are all, like, interwoven together to make something beautiful, and I think a lot of people have forgotten that. And so every day that I go to work, I used to say I became a teacher to make the world a better place, right? And then I was like, "Well, how am I doing that?" And, and now some, a lot of years later, it's the same thing, but I think it means even more now because that's my dream for education, that kids can have, um, that students have conversations, that students understand who's in the room, that students build empathy for people around the world. Like, I didn't, I didn't build that empathy until I went to college 'cause I was so surrounded by just everyone who looked like me. Um, and when I went away to college, I met girls, I went to a women's college, I met, um, women from India, from parts of the continent of Africa, from South America, like all of these different people and from different experiences and different things, and it just allowed me to build understanding and empathy for them that I would've never experienced if I hadn't left where I was from. And so I think for education, I just want kids, if they never can leave, right, they can still experience all of those things through grounded curriculum, grounded information that they can be able to see the world like that even though they may never get to leave their small town or different things like that. So there's a lot of pieces embe- embed- embedded into that Lindsay Lyons: That resonates. Nichelle Pinkney: Now my Joe Schmidt: dream I feel like I had so many answers, and I couldn't necessarily pick one, and I struggled for a moment. But after hearing Nichelle, I think if, what's my dream? That education is a joyful place for kids, for teachers. And that doesn't mean it's all play. That doesn't mean it's all easy. There can be joy in learning something you didn't know, doing something you couldn't do before. Um, and so I think if we can remember that or find more of that, I think s- would be my dream. And that's about, you know, as Nichelle said, finding others who are either the same as you and push your thinking or who are different than you and have a different experience and are able to push your thinking. And to find ways to look at things deeper and look at them differently, and feel like you can have those conversations and explore kind of those edges of what you know and kind of take a step into a place you haven't been before, but know that, like, if it's awesome, great. And if not, you know, there's kind of a, I can take that step back, and I'm in a s- you know, a supportive, um, community, a supportive learning environment where that growth can happen, I think would be my place, where kids are coming in to find that, and teachers feel like they can push their own learning, their own boundaries to try something new, um, and let that Like, that's a, I feel like that's a learning transfer cycle in there somewhere, right? The, the more the teachers are feeling equipped to push into new things that bring more joy to the classroom, the students are enjoying themselves more, and they're finding the joy, and they're wanting to do more, which empowers the teacher to get more into that and do more of that, and I think that would be a, a very glorious place to be. Lindsay Lyons: That's beautiful, and a great segue into what I was just gonna ask next. So usually I ask this question about mindset shifts, right? Like, what's a mindset shift required to do this work? And I am just thinking about, uh, you know, an audience member who may be engaging with this episode and have this voice in their head about all of the reasons that it might be hard to have civil discourse in their class, and you all touch on that in the book. Just wondering if you wanna bring here, like, maybe a challenge and then, like, a mindset shift, uh, that enables teachers to take on this work Joe Schmidt: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important, a mind shift. It's not always gonna go well. Like, and that has to be okay. I remember in the early years in the classroom, I just started having the, like, these type of conversations. And I don't know why. I guess maybe 'cause it brought me joy, and I saw in the students. And I remember in those first couple years multiple times, like like the things kinda, like, going off the rails, and I'm like, "Ugh, this is, this is why I'm gonna get fired, huh? Like, it's this conversation." Or it's like And it wasn't necessarily the topic, but it's just like, that didn't go. And I actually, um, I did a welcome speech at, um, the local, uh, teacher awards, um, event last night, and I talked about, you know, in the classroom tho- the feelings we have when the, the lesson plans go well, but we also know a bunch of them don't go well. And that's, that's okay. Um, and I used the quote, I don't remember who says it, that teaching is, um, now I'm paraphrasing, teaching is, like, the eternal optimistic job. It's the greatest, uh, job of optimism or show of optimism. And I think that's, like, that understanding, that permission, just 'cause something doesn't go well, that becomes then a learning experience. I learned from this yesterday, so I'm gonna change this. And I think you have to have that mindset, uh, especially, you know, educators tend to, I'll speak in a very broad scope, educators tend to be people who enjoyed school. They, they were good at school, right? Like, they went and got more. They went to college for more schooling like And understanding that if you were always, like, that A student, you might not handle a failure really well, or if a kid doesn't react the way you want, or if a kid acts inappropriately, like, that's okay. That's part of that, that growth. And I think that mindset that you're dealing with, you know, dozens of kids for, you know, 180 days or whatever a year, they're not all gonna go great, and every lesson plan is gonna be perfect. And when I taught elementary methods, I used to tell, uh, the students, like, once you get a hang of it, you'll still need to figure, like, 20% of your stuff needs to be adapted or updated or thrown out because that, I think that's that freshness, but maybe that's a little bit of the joy as well, right? You go out, you learn something new. Where does this fit? Or that didn't work really well last year. Aha, I can grow as a teacher. I can grow as a professional. I can do this more. So yeah, absolutely, that's something I felt like I tried to get across when writing the book that, yeah, no, we messed up. Like, we tried these things, and we are not here to wag the finger and say, "Just do this, it's so easy," 'cause it is not. Nichelle Pinkney: And I was gonna say, um The mindset shift, if not me, then who? That idea. So like, um, oftentimes because it's so much, we're like, "Well, I can't do that," or, or, "It's not, it's not... I don't have enough room in my, um, in my standards," or, "I don't have enough room here." And so to make that dream come true, you eventually have to come to this point of, if I don't do it, who's going to do it? And then if that person doesn't do it, then who's gonna do it? So we build this perpetual, um, circle of, well, it wasn't my turn to do it, someone else's turn. It's my turn now. I have a twin, so we often used to get growing up like, "Well, it's not my turn to make the bed." Well then the bed never got made, right? And so if, if we really want this dream of what everyone, when you ask anyone who's in education why they're there, it's always along the lines of kind of what Joe said. "I want them to love," blah, blah, blah, blah, "as much as I did," right? But if you're not there, then who? And so, um, and Joe said this one time, and I was like, "Oh my God, that's it." So if I'm not gonna be the one to help make this dream come true, then who else is? And then how, how am I gonna go about doing that? So if I'm in... I'm from a s- I'm from a small town in Texas, and so if my teachers didn't say, "This girl says she wants to go to college," if I don't put the application on her desk, then who else is gonna tell her that she can go? 'Cause she was- she's a first generation. If that lady didn't say, "Here, you know, you could go to this school," where would I be? And so as a educator, as a leader even now, when I sit in meetings and I go through things and I'm like, "Well, if I'm not gonna do it, who's gonna do it? Like, who am I gonna wait for to do it?" So then let's not take that approach anymore. Let's say, "Nope, this is my opportunity to do it." Now, what does it look like? How? And then taking on, like what Joe said, it may not be perfect when I do it. But that doesn't mean I g- don't do it now, then that next person has to do it means, nope, I gotta go back to the drawing board. 'Cause we also are in a place of people are afraid to fail. So it's not my job, or somebody else has to do it but we don't know who that person is. And then what if I suck at it? Then now kids are gonna fail. And so the mindset shift I would tell them to take is what Joe just said. Hey, it may- it's not gonna be perfect, 'cause we most definitely weren't. And then the other thing is if we don't do it, then who's gonna do it? We're gonna live in a place of no one's done it, and then it's not what we expect. Lindsay Lyons: Mm. Yeah, and those conversations are out there. Like, we don't need them, like, radicalized on YouTube or something. You know? Like, there's like places that have the conversations that are not, like, safe and supportive and so school is that place. Yeah. Oh, both of those points really resonate. So now I wanna shift to kind of how we do this, and y- I mean, your book is so comprehensive. I wanted to shout out just like a few things and maybe get to some pieces that I really enjoyed and have been thinking about since reading it. So one of those I think is really, like, the purpose of discourse. Like, why have- the contentious conversation in the first place. Um, and I, I love that you had... I just wanna shout out a couple of things, though. You had this quote from, I'm gonna try to make sure I say it correctly, from the Metropolitan State University of Denver, "In dialogue, one submits one best- one's best thinking, knowing that other people's reflections will help improve it rather than destroy it." Mind-blowing, huge, loved that. And then I also really like that you shared specific talk moves. I mean, we've seen a ton of sentence frames in classes before, but these I thought were really intentional to grow the thinking. What blank said challenged my thinking because, or changed my thinking because, or confirmed my thinking because. So those are the two nuggets that are resonating in this kind of category of, like, why we have this discourse and how we kind of create that culture. Do you wanna add anything else about kind of contentious conversations or discourse more broadly like that? Joe Schmidt: I will say that quote, that first quote that you threw out there, um, reminds me of something that's in the book, and I find myself quoting us all the time, but I actually don't know where it's found in the book. I think it's early in the book. Um, but the idea that by excluding people or not having conversations, that somehow we're gonna get to the best possible idea is, uh, like that's... I don't... H- how can we think that, like, that's a thing? Yeah, there... You don't, you don't have to agree with everybody. Your idea doesn't have to win, right? Back to that idea, like, it, it's okay for me to not have this. But if you're like, "Okay, between the three of us, we have all the knowledge," and thinking that the three of us are gonna be better than the five of us, or the seven of us, or the 20 of us, or like, I... We just can't, um, ha- And I used to have a, a mentor, a professional mentor, and I did a TED-style talk for NCSS a couple years ago, and the title was None of Us Are As Smart As All Of Us. And I remember the first time Harris Payne, shout out to Harris Payne, told me that, and that resonated, right? It, like, you get into that part. So yeah, the best way to get to the best answer is to put ideas on the table, have people critique them. It's something I spend a lot of time working on with my team right now, right? Like, let's have the talk, and let's be willing to hear it, but where's the place that we're coming from, right? Are we coming from an attack? Am I trying to show Nichelle that I'm smarter than her? Am I trying to win? Again, we're back to that same thread. Or am I trying to improve Nichelle's idea? Am I willing to withdraw and be like, "I have a good idea," and then Nichelle's like, "I have one," and I'm gonna be like, "Nah, yours is way better," right? And then is she willing to maybe hear something from you, Lindsay, that makes it, even if we keep her core idea, is she willing to hear something that's a little, that makes it a little bit better? Let's take out that little part and put, put in that part. I think, again, part of that mind shift, but then part of some of those structures we put in place that are very intentional about setting up the speaking and listening and feedback components to the conversation. Uh, it will probably surprise nobody at all listening to this or anybody who definitely knows me, like, if you give me a microphone and an hour, I'll fill the hour, right? But that's, that's not the back and forth. You have to s- be able to step back and have the pauses and hear the more information and process that, which I think is, uh, um, hard for a lot of people. Nichelle Pinkney: And I think those, those frames help, like what Joe said, those frames, those same frames that you shared help because a lot of times people feel like, "Oh, I don't agree with what they said," but they can't tell you what because they weren't listening. Um, and so that idea of that discourse, um, I am not listening to hear you, I am listening to respond. Um, or not even respond, just disagree, but I'm listening. So because I'm listening and I'm... If I'm using those frames, like in a classroom, we use those frames. Um, when I do teacher trainings with all my teachers here, we use those frames. Like, "Don't tell me I don't agree with this. What part don't you agree with?" "Well, I don't know." "Well, let's go back." Okay. Um, let's look at, um, what we have in front of us. Let's look at what was discussed. Because now we're pinpointing, um, things, and it's not breaking apart. It's not breaking it apart, but it's more or less so we can address it so that we can be on the same page. When you teach it in a classroom, it's so that we can make sure what primary and secondary sources we're utilizing are tied to and we're understanding it, right? With normal conversations that we're trying to understand in debates or in different arenas is, once again, to make sure that we have built that understanding and clarity before we say we just automatically disagree. So those frames help to be able to pinpoint and articulate what we're looking at. And I just think it also, um, I remember in the classroom, it just allowed people to take a moment, 'cause you couldn't just jump up and be like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," like you had to have to say, "I did not like... I didn't agree with this statement here because it made me think of this." And so now you're even, what, once again, building understanding for those other people that's like, "Oh," um, and how many times have you been in a conversation and someone says, "Oh, I didn't mean it like that. That's not what I meant by that statement," or, "When I said this, I was more or less referring to this component," and then it just changes. Like how you said, "Oh, well let me make sure I get that quote right," or Joe just said, "Oh, let me... Um, it's a quote. Well, now I'm paraphrasing." So like he even autocorrected so that it c- it can phrase out with that discourse to ensure that it's there. I love those two things you pointed out, 'cause I was like, "Okay, where are we going with this?" And then when you said it, I was like, "Oh, that's it." So those conver- But people don't use those type of frames. Like, they're like, um, "I heard you say," and then they just start talking or, "I think this," not making it where you had to listen. You can't just respond. You have to listen and point out where you got it from, and then add your point. So it just builds that I heard you, I understand you, this is what I think. It just allows everyone to have a voice in the space. Joe Schmidt: And I will often, like, acknowledge when doing trainings on this, like it feels a little stilted, it feels a little choppy sometime, right? I just wanna jump in and be like, "No, N- Nichelle, uh, I- I'll... I'm sorry, uh, when you said that it challenged my thinking..." C- And yeah, let's acknowledge that. But like the analogy I make is, you know, people, I think for the most part, are worried about like the boil over, the things blowing up in the classroom. And by imagining there, it's like really hard for things to boil over when you keep almost kinda chopping, like having kids get into that, right? Like even just the, "Oh, I can't believe Nichelle would say that. I have thoughts." And you're like, "Use your sentence stem." And now they have to, they have to turn their brain almost off of emotional mode, go back into this thing, look at, "Okay, um, okay, now, uh, what was the thing? Okay, um, mm, uh, okay." And it's, that's still, it might feel a little stilted, and kids get better at it, right? It's just like anything else when they practice, but I feel like it almost does intentionally bring down the temperature of a comment and helps slow things down, which I think are super important when you're dealing with some of the most contentious, um, topics Lindsay Lyons: That makes so much sense, and it, it connects to... I just read Marie Nichols' book, um, Building Better Ideas, B- Bigger Ideas maybe. And one of the things she says for, like, purposeful discourse or whatever she calls it, is that you need to have a range of ideas and diverse perspectives to grow the thinking. And what I think for me, what resonated about these three sentence frames different from others, is that it's all about growing the thinking, right? It's like, what was my initial thinking? What did that person say? To Nichelle's point, I listened really deeply, b- but then I had to come back and, to Joe's point, pause and reflect before speaking or responding, and integrate it or figure out how it fits with my initial thinking, which is, like, very purposeful and feels very distinct from, Nichelle, the one you said, like, I agree with because, or, or I agree with you or I disagree with you, just straight up. So yeah, this feels really good and, and intentional as opposed to just, like, oh, I was told I needed to use sentence starters or frames. I also was thinking in the kind of framing of questions, this is kind of my favorite part of e- all of education, I think, like discourse is, but then even more narrow, the framing. So you guys shared several examples in your book of how narrowing may actually bring down the temperature and, like, having a specific, like, policy-focused question about a factual thing that's happening in the world could actually be better for conversation than this, like, big amorphous, perhaps very intense high emotion thing. And I am really curious to just get your thoughts on, like, any tips you have for question framing, uh, around, like, what's the question we pose to students? That would be really exciting. Joe Schmidt: Yeah, Lindsay, I knew we were gonna be best friends. I tell people, like, writing questions could be like a hobby. Like anybody who wants to, like, write compell- I'll sit with you all day. I love that. Um, but there is such a difference between those big open arch compelling questions and then as you're talking about, like this narrowing down because I think what it very intentionally does is, I think so often we talk past one another. We haven't really figured out the thing we're disagreeing on. Um, and I'll give the example where this really resonated with me. Nate Odie, um, one of the co-founders of Thinker Analytics, first saw him, I don't know, probably a decade ago now, and he talked about, um, being a Peyton Manning fan but attending school in Massachusetts, right? During Tom Brady. And they would have these huge arguments, who is, who was the GOAT, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning? And they go, "Well, Tom Brady has more Super Bowls." "Well, Peyton Manning has more yards." I mean, this is before Brady had all the stuff. They go back and forth, and he said it dawned on him they weren't arguing W- w- who the GOAT was, the greatest of all time. They were arguing, how did you define it? The argument was, is it most Super Bowls? Is it most touchdowns? Is it most... So just by figuring out what is the thing you're actually talking about, if you have a really big question, Nichelle could say something that's true. I could say something that contradicts it and true. And then we both feel like we're doing something, but then she's like, she's like, "No, but you don't understand." And I'm like, "No, no, no, but you don't..." We're not getting anywhere. And so that narrowing down helps us to figure out, because that's what we're pulling on. We're pulling on usually a pretty clear thing, but oftentimes we envelop it in a big, vague discussion statement, which is great for crafting a unit. But when you're having a discussion, it's really hard for people to react back and forth. If it's a really big question that has 10,000 right answers, well then I don't know, how do we, how do we kind of work through that? We're just basically all saying our truths separately Nichelle Pinkney: So I think it's grounded, um, some of the, um, work that, um, I did previously with, um, Julie Stern was really around, like, the questions you asked, right? And, um, in her Learning That Transfer book, she talks about, like, um, her different model where you have to acquire what you're thinking, and then from there the, all the, the concepts that you know, and then all those things. And so when I think about strong questions, I used to think I wrote really good questions when I first started teaching, and then when I started reading her work, I was like, "They're not good questions. That's why I'm not getting the discourse that I want from it." So I started, like Joe just said, that idea of what are we talking about first, because a lot of times you- people, you ask a question and they're like, "Oh, I got an answer," right? Versus, like, breaking it up and thinking about it so that you can have that conversation. So in the book, um, we talk about just different ways to get people prepared to have discourse so that they can, though. Like, um, I work in an area where a lot of students don't have a lot of experiences. And so because they don't, before we have a lot of discourse planned within our curriculum, we are doing a lot of building of prior knowledge because I, um, some of the things the kids know currently are things that they see, um... I hate to s- uh, not that TikTok is a, you know, a bandy, but that's what they, that's where they are. TikTok or Instagram. I'm gonna go with what my, my 13-year-old, uh, 14, sorry, 14-year-old does. TikTok, Instagram, all that stuff, right? And so all of their knowledge is from that. So when first I wanna build that background knowledge so then when I ask you a question, you have knowledge of the things I'm asking to be able to give me an answer or have some actual discourse about it. And I think a lot of times, so in building that strong question, also having the things or the resources so that people can have the knowledge to be able to respond, and a knowledge that's not just centered around just their nucleus, I guess you can say, or their area where they are. Yeah, that's, that's what he said, yeah. So, like, I know more, um, he gave those examples, the football example. Me and Joe both love sports. I just wanna point that out. We do have a chat that we go back and forth about these. So if you... But if you don't know anything about those two people, you'd have to preface, like, "Okay, so Peyton Manning was, um, here between these years and these years. Here's a little background on him. Here's a little background on him." And then you get to really have the conversation. Then you bring in people who don't know sports, right? They're like, "Now I can have a conversation," or at least know what they're talking about, versus when me and Joe go together back and forth, especially during basketball season, like, "No, no, no." Like, and you're like, "What are they talking about?" But you built that background knowledge for somebody else to at least jump in so that it won't get too intense. So I think those solid questions, but then also building the, um, what do we call it, Joe? The source. Um, the primary source- I don't know what we call it, the packet, the information for them to be able to have the conversation so that they're not just going off of, um, other people's ideas and being... Yeah. Joe Schmidt: You got tech set, Michelle? Nichelle Pinkney: Yes. And we'll create that one. I was like, what is that thing called? You, you can see, if, if people can see us, my hands are like, "What is it called?" Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, 100%. And it's making me think about what a beautiful blend, like a factual-based text set is with different people's experiences and lens, which are also valuable. So I'm thinking about that exact question of like, okay, who's the GOAT? Like, I, as maybe a person who doesn't watch football as much, might think about the value of role models in general and be like, "Well, I also think your actions off the field are equally important." So like, let's l- you know, there's so many areas you can explore, and you need that factual grounding and like the stats and the, what these people did and how they live to be able to have those different lenses come in, which is so cool. Nichelle Pinkney: We do, like, um, one of the lessons, I, I did it one year at nine. I probably have it throughout every grade level. My curriculum just looks different. We do like the report cards of like, in my state, they give like standards, and in the standards, there's like people named and you're like, "How do we study these people that are not connected at all?" Like, they're just not. In lower grades, some higher grades, they may be a little more connected. And so we just do like this report card thing, and it just looks different at each grade level. Like younger grade levels, they may do emojis with smiley faces thing, but they have to determine, like you said, like if he's really, if this person's really the GOAT, it's determined by what? By, by these actions, by these actions, by these actions. Same thing with people getting in the conversations with the basketball players, you know? Like what determines if like their involvement in the community? Do we count that or do we just count what they're doing on the field or on the court? Like all these components so that we are speaking the same language about what we're talking about before we even have the discussion. So yeah. Lindsay Lyons: You know, another thing I'm thinking about too is this idea of like connecting to broader disciplinary concepts which you all brought in. I think you had listed a bunch. Okay, so I have that list here if you want me to read it, but you were saying that, you know, there's some key concepts that are really helpful to know, and I think you used the word essential even, to know when talking about contentious topics. And so things like privacy, authority, rule of law, role and size of government, alliances. Like these are just these disciplinary concepts that we have to kind of build and thread over time. And so I'm so curious to know if you have any kind of like tips or feedback for a teacher who is wanting to build those disciplinary concepts and maybe looking to, you know, current events or some sort of framing to dig into these a little bit deeper. Um, is there any sort of like, I like sometimes I like disciplinary concepts or lenses that have acronyms or are easy to remember, or like what should they consider when introducing and using and encouraging students to use the disciplinary concepts in these conversations? Nichelle Pinkney: So when, um, and I'm, I'm, I'm gonna shout her out again because that's how I got better with using concepts and using them throughout units, was when I worked, um, did some work for Julie Starn. And she's big on conceptual thinking and big on transfer thinking. And so one of the things was that first stage is all about acquiring what it means. Um, a lot of times we don't know what we don't know what it means. Um, some of the terms are just thrown out. The... and different audiences have different definitions of what those things mean. Um, I watch the news daily and I'm like, "Oh, that is not what I thought that was defined as," but we have a new definition right now. And so the first thing would be, how is it defined? Um, very old school model, but it's something that works. I, I say it's a Frayer Model, but we do different parts of the Frayer Model for kids to actually know, like when we use the term freedom, this is our, this, this concept of freedom, this is what we mean when we say freedom. This is, this is, when we use it in context in this class, this is what we're gonna use it as. Um, if I'm teaching a colonial history course, the definition of what freedom was in one point of history compared to another point of history is completely different. That's actually a good question to even drive, like, a whole course is. Like, what, how does, how has freedom evolved over time? And actually building that, those definitions of what it is. 'Cause a lot of times we don't have a common definition. Um, me and Joe both talked about, like, it's speaking the same language. Like, that is really crucial in understanding disciplinary themes and, and, um, concepts, making sure that we know how we define it in... And I almost think it's in time and perspective, 'cause a lot of times we look at a lot of issues in history from our lens right now- Um, and doesn't change the events that happened, it's just it was a different lens. Um, um, on this call currently, myself and Lindsay would've had a different lens, um, of certain issues at different times in history. But we have similar lenses now because of where we are in time and space. Um, so I used to always start off my history class, we would define time, we would define space, um, on purpose, because understanding time is, like, really huge. Um, I also used to, um, I used to teach a sociology class, and in there we would talk, we'd define race, gender, and all this. So then kids would leave out talking about, "Oh, well, that's a social construct," and teachers would be like, "What?" And we would just build these themes to, um... You can tell I have a sociology degree. Um, you can build these themes, what is class, what is gen- like, all of these things. So these themes I just think we, a lot of times we build on vocabulary that we think kids, "Oh, they don't know this, they don't know this," but we build those big concepts which are normally found in state standards or, um, when- if you teach AP courses, they give you those themes at the beginning. It... Like, all those different places, they're there to allow you to say, "We're gonna say this. Our course is framed in these themes, and we're gonna define them. And then as we go back, we're gonna... Everything we do, we're gonna go back to those themes and those, and those, um..." So just really being able to define it. I think a lot of times we don't, we just keep moving. We assume people know. Um, especially in the school system, we assume... What did I say earlier? We assume that the person before them taught them. We assume the person before them taught them. And, "Well, you should've learned that." No, let's start from the ve- very beginning. What is government? What is, what is democracy? What is republic? "Oh, we learned that in such and such grade." Okay, well let's, let's see if we all got the same definition, okay? So 'cause, or in this class, this is what we're gonna use to define it Joe Schmidt: I was sitting, I'm completely blanking, Nichelle. You blanked on text set earlier. I'm thinking about, is it GUIDE? What is the acronym that you used and said... Okay, that's what I thought it was, but I was trying to... Like, I think there's such a great in there, in the book. Uh, so I might just turn it back over to Nichelle, 'cause clearly I don't remember it well enough. I tried to think what the GUIDE is, but it's like setting the stage to get to these things, but it's that shared understanding. You know, it's that second step, like we're gonna give you some of this knowledge, but if you don't have a shared understa- you can't continue if, if nobody knows. And so I don't know, Nichelle, I don't know if you wanna go deeper into that GUIDE idea. It's one of those little things, like do this and you should be okay. Nichelle Pinkney: So this gonna make us laugh. I went through talking about it 'cause I could not remember the letters I used. You should. I was like, "Oh my God." I was like, "Well, then we're just gonna talk through the process." So yes, so what I just talked through was the guiding process. It's that idea that we, that we build this stuff, that we build it ahead of time because a lot of times... And I, when I came up with that, I, where I taught or where I spent most of my years in education, I had really strong students, they just didn't have experiences. 'Cause experiences build you to be, um, to be able to have conversations, right? Like, we're having these conversations. Who knows h- how, what type of experiences on this call, right, like, for us to have these conversations, right? From the books we read to all those different things, but we built, um, this schema of knowledge, right? And so what happens when we're talking in a K through 12 class, depending on where you are, that schema isn't built. So it's our job to build that schema. And so in a social studies class, it looks different than if I'm in a math class or anywhere or a science class, right? So I have to first of all give that information for them to be able to say, "This is what we're gonna do." So I'm gonna give you that question, I'm gonna build that understanding utilizing text sets, right? And then I'm gonna let you explore and investigate and inquire about what's in those text sets. And, and this place I always used to... I was a Post-It queen or just cut up scrap paper queen. Um, um, and that idea where you didn't have to write the questions, you didn't have to ask questions out loud, they could've been on paper. I used to move around the room and pick up the sticky notes and be like, "Oh my God, somebody asked this question about this. Well, does anyone have an answer for that?" And, and so it was gotten to a point where students wanted to ask questions because they didn't have to ask them openly, right? I never said, "Joe's table asked this question. Anybody got something?" "No, y'all, as I was walking around, I picked this up. Somebody asked this question." And very rarely did people say, "That was mine, that was mine." But you could see kids, like, put their head up like, "Oh, that was me," and then they put their head down, like, waiting for an answer, right? And so then from there, then they got to build their knowledge. Like, they get to prepare, like, what am I gonna answer, 'cause a lot of times teachers wanna have a discussion and there's no preparation. There's just no preparation. And I, me and Joe will tell you that's when the, the wheels fall off. That's when the rail... I mean, that's when it just all goes up. And letting people, like, map it out, what do I wanna talk about, what I wanna do. And then I said something in that guide that a lot of people were like, "Wait." I was like, at the end, if you have a student who's just like, "I've done all this work, I've read it, I understand it, I did all this, but, um, Ms. Pinckney, is it okay if I just sit back? I really don't wanna have the discussion. I get it. I'm just not that kid." I was like, "Oh, yep, that's fine. Uh, so what I want you to do is just sit back and just take some more notes, see if you can build upon what you think, add to what you wrote." And they didn't get a lower grade. But why didn't they do a lower grade? Because they did all this other stuff leading up to this component. So did I grow their knowledge? Yes. Did they learn new things? Yes. Did they do all... And, and it just works. Then you have some students, I had a student, he was not good at writing all the stuff down, but he did go through and read it. He did do this. He just loved the oratorical part of the course. So did he get a lower grade because of the kid who was like, "I do not wanna talk. I wanna do all this writing"? No. They probably did just the same because they did get to expand their knowledge, 'cause the whole point is to expand your knowledge, build your understanding, build your empathy for people. It is not to, like Joe said, um, not always win, like, or change somebody's mind for the rest of their lives. Like, that's not the goal. It's just to build understanding and empathy for all the people that are within our world and our community Joe Schmidt: Yeah, I think it's important, I feel myself pointing out a lot that the discourse strategies are chapter five of the book, and that's intentional, right? You shouldn't just jump into it. And I have been contacted by people who's like, "Can you come in and do this 45-minute training about how..." I'm like, "No, because I'm not just gonna demonstrate a strategy," 'cause that you- there are so many other things to do it. If you're looking at the GUIDE acronym, it's D is that day of d- like, that's the fourth step. Like, there's so much into there, and I'm glad Nichelle brought up that exit strategy, 'cause I think that's a really important part. One, because I don't want myself or to have any teacher having to try to, like, litigate the truth around, like, someone's trauma. Like, let's talk about this highly contentious thing, and if a student's like, "I don't, I don't feel comfortable," having to be like, "Oh, yeah, you, yeah, you are." Like, why? If they don't wanna do it... But then I think it pushes back to the teacher. Why are you having this discussion? Right? Does, does this fit? Did you plan on something, or did you just kind of wake up on Tuesday like, "Um, we should have this discussion," and, "Well, if that kid doesn't participate, then I don't know how to grade them," then that might not be a, a good approach, right? Have you been getting that information together? Have you been building a shared understanding? Have you had kids kind of wrestling with some of the stuff? Like, okay, well, what's your understanding of fill in the blank? Okay, well go, you know, here's a text set, here's some articles. Where do you see this reflected in different places? Do you see differing points of view? Can you find the, the pro and the con? Can you find the yes and the no? Can you find some trends? Like, what type of people or organizations or political parties or athlete or whatever tends to say yes and tends to say no, and can you kind of lay that out and see the bigger framework? And then how are you assessing their learning? Is it really just, well, we've got this 45-minute talk time, you ha- need to raise your hand three times? And it's like, no. Like, g- what's the reflection? I, you know, I love having the assessments for a discussion be like, "Okay, we've done this. I'm not grading you on whether you talked or how many times you talked. If I've given you a structure, if we've done a structured academic controversy, there's things you had to bring into it, and I'm kind of watching the moves. We're going from there." But then questions like, "Okay, what was the best, um, argument you heard somebody from the other side make? And why do you think that was the best one? What's the best argument your side didn't make? What is the best argument the other side didn't make that you would have," right? And this-- And I don't know if anything's AI-proof nowadays, but I, like, I don't know how you then go into AI and be like, "I just finished a 45-minute discussion. What was the best argument the other side didn't make?" Well, I mean, I guess the AI could list, well, like, were these 10 things talked about? But they're-- Like, no, that's not one. Okay, like I guess there's ways around it, but at some point you're putting almost more effort in learning into... You know, if you're like, "Well, I'm gonna put in all my notes." Great. Put in all the notes you took from the discussion into AI to like, okay, they still did some learning in there. But thinking through, like if I know how I'm getting to the discussion day, the discourse day, and I have this reflection piece not being assessed on number of times you talked. Like if you can build all that out and you understand why and where it fits, you know, that, that pre-knowledge, um, you know, I think it's a like little bit of a heat check when you're like, "Oh, well, this happened in the news. My kids want to talk about it." I'm like, "Well, does it fit in your curriculum? Do they have the background knowledge?" Because if they don't have the background knowledge, you haven't taught it, and now it seems awkward that you're gonna do this hard left into this discussion about a topic. You might be out of the sandbox. I always tell teachers like, "You do have to stay within the sandbox." Now there's, there's things in there, right? There's different ways to approach a lot of different topics. But like if all of a sudden you're like, "All right, well, before we get back to the Greeks and Romans, let's talk about this completely like..." Mm, like might not be there. And so again, that's just another way. As you're starting to build it, what are the key concepts they're gonna need to know? And if you're like, "Oh, well, we've already talked about these things," cool. You're probably working from a good place. If you're like, "Well, they're gonna need to know this," and they don't have a clue, you might want to just pause for a minute and consider if this is relevant for the class. Lindsay Lyons: That makes total sense. And just to kind of synthesize what you were both saying is just thinking about, like, the quiet listener who is, you know, silent for the entire duration, but doing all of the thinking work. I think that that person, in addition, Joe, to some of the questions that you said, like, "What's the best argument that the other side made or didn't make?" Like, I think also they could just be a really good synthesizer. Usually the listeners are such good synthesizers. Like, oh, here are the two, to your, your point about themes or trends, like, here are the two trends in conversation, and here's the main point of disagreement. And actually, you guys agree about these things. Like, there's so much value there that we just forget about when we're trying to go to assess. It's like, oh, that kid, that kid could summarize the whole thing for us. Um, so I could talk to you guys all day long, and I'm recognizing that our time is limited, so, um, I'm going to do kind of like a lightning round of final questions if that works for you. And we'll do kind of like one thing that you would either encourage the audience to do once they end the episode, like a good starter step for kind of teaching in this way, or just like a key idea you want them to hang onto. Either approach Joe Schmidt: I would say a first step, um, when I do trainings on this is to ask people to find something you're gonna be teaching in the next two, three, four weeks, something coming up, something that maybe gives you a little bit of the butterflies 'cause you're like, "Oh, this didn't go well last year," or, "I'm nervous that it might go like..." Because... And start thinking about it now. Like, grab that topic. What's the question you want kids to wrestle with? What would they need to know in order to wrestle with that, right, to build that base? Where is it fitting? And let's make sure our instruction fits it. What are the resources you want them to give? As Nichelle was saying earlier, right, that text set. You wanna help kind of bring it into a spot. We're reading these primary sources. We're reading these news articles. I used to tell my students, like, I would give them these handouts, and I'd say, "You have to point at it." And if you can't point at what you're referencing, then, right... And I don't want you saying, "Well, I saw this TikTok video," or, "I saw..." I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. We have... I built you this text set. You are pulling from this or you are quoting," like one of those C3s, "Well, what I heard Lindsay say is this," and that you need to tie it to that. So then start to think about that longer term plan. Like, I wanna do that topic better. I want them to think about it this way. I need to teach them these concepts, and here's the diverse multi-viewpoint set I want them to wrestle with. So then that almost becomes like, well, on, on the Monday then I need to pose this question and see where they're at, and Tuesday give them that background knowledge, and Wednesday give them that text set with the time to explore on it, and Thursday we're gonna have the activity, and Friday we're gonna do the... Oh, okay. Well, now that fits into a something where you're starting to think about I pulled it from my curriculum, it's doing these alignments, I'm reading these key things, I know these concepts, and starting to go for that. So if you just, I would say, start from there. What's the thing you're like, "I don't know about this," think through that lens. Nichelle Pinkney: So, and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna piggyback on Joe's 'cause I would've said the same thing, like picking a topic. Especially it's at the... You're close to the end of the school year. You listen to this and you're like, "Well, how can I do this?" What Joe just talked about is building their empathy muscle, like, uh, helping them to become good at inquiry. So like, you're like, at the end of this, "Oh no, I haven't done any real discourse all year." And if you took my words at the beginning, Nichelle said, "If not me, then who?" I just made it then who 'cause I didn't do it this year. Um, I'm gonna tell you to go to chapter four where we use some of those Joe's favorite ones. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Something super, super non-content based, but it teaches students the process of how to think through and answer and have conversations with people, so build their empathetic muscles. And so that would be the first step 'cause we're, we're in May. You're almost at the end. Don't go... Well, I don't want you to go and do something crazy. Do something small first, then go to the next one. So use some of those examples with... There's multiples in the book on those little, um, uh, safe, but I call them silly questions that you could do. Um, um, which superpower would you want more, to be able to see the future or, I don't know, fly or do... Like, those things, and then have students... Like, and then give them the text set on, like, what does it mean to see the future? Like, what does that mean? Like, you know, little things like that that build up and you're showing them what I would do with this silly topic, and then go into the, the topic that you're already like, "Ah, I don't know about," so then they understand the process. Joe Schmidt: And if you're listening to this early in the school year, right, if this is late summer like that, this is how you start, right? You don't start with those highly contentious. You practice these things. So students, if you're like, "We're gonna do a philosophical chairs," you have to get the muscle memory of the process down. 'Cause if they're still like, "When do I raise my hand? How do I step forward?" And you introduce emotion, the emotion will override that part. It needs to flow. They need to, "I know how to do this quick and easy," and stuff like that. Um, there are text sets. There have been multiple state Supreme Court rulings regarding is a hot dog a sandwich, or like, is it... Like, you can go read those. But Nichelle, actually my newest one that I'm struggling with is does a straw have one hole or two? And people always say two, but I was like, "Well, that's only 'cause like, if it's long enough," right? If it was just a, a piece of paper and I put a hole in it, people wouldn't say there's multiple holes. So i- does the straw have one hole or two, and does it matter? What if it's like, a, a half-inch straw? What if it's a three-foot straw? Nichelle Pinkney: What is it- Absolutely. You can even use it in d- like to cross, cross-curricular and be like, "Well, well in math, what do they tell you when you're looking at a three-dimensional thing? Is that still the same hole, or is it different because it's on a..." Oh, my eyes have been widened. Lindsay Lyons: This is my absolute dream jam brainstorming of questions. Thank you for this. And finally- Nichelle Pinkney: We do this all the time when we get together. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, I think we're gonna have to book another call just for this. Um, what, where can our audience learn more about each of you as we wrap up? They're gonna wanna be in touch and get your book and all the things, so where can they go? Nichelle Pinkney: So, Joe Schmidt: um- Nichelle Pinkney: I'm- Oh, I'm sorry, Joe. Joe Schmidt: Okay. I'm active on social media. I'm @MadisonTeacher, um, and my website is, uh, Joe Schmidt, joeschmidtsocialstudies.com, all one word. Um, and I have a, a newer book out, The Social Studies Field Guide, and that's, um, socialstudiesfieldguide.com as well. Nichelle Pinkney: Um, and so I am active on the Twitter still. Um, and so it's, um, and I'll give it to you as well, Lindsay, but MsNikki_P, and I do a, a lot of stuff on there. And then I, um, have my up and coming website, so super excited. It's actually my name, .com, so it's really excited, um, to just do different things. And then I'm just gonna throw a plug. I am the current, uh, president of the Texas Social Studies Leader Association, um, which is an affiliate of one of, that Joe did not add. He's gonna have to go back and add. And so if you really wanna hang out with me or see me soon, I will be at all the Texas Social Studies conferences, and at the national conference in Chicago with Joe Schmidt: s- And yes, I neglected to say I'm the incoming president for the National Council for the Social Studies starting July 1st, 2026. And so I will be leading our conference in Chicago December 4 through 6. Come join more than 5,000 social studies loving friends. If you're a social studies, uh, lover and advocate, Nichelle and I will be there. Find us both. We'll take a picture with you. We'll get you, we'll go viral on social media with all sorts of civil discourse selfies. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, I will be joining you all. This sounds amazing. I'm really excited for NCSS. And congratulations to both of you in these awesome leadership positions. Oh my gosh, Nichelle and Joe, this has been such a absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today. Joe Schmidt: Awesome. Thank you for having us, Lindsay. Nichelle Pinkney: Thank you, Lindsay.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
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