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6/23/2025 216. Responding to Emotions & Charged Comments in Schools (Inside Look at a Workshop)Read Now
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In this episode, we follow a different format and respond to clips from a workshop co-hosted by our host, Lindsay Lyons, and Dr. Eric Soto-Shed. The workshop centered on responding to student emotions in conversations about challenging topics or controversial issues.
Dr. Soto-Shed is a lecturer in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research centers on curriculum development and teacher training, with his work aiming to promote inquiry and equity in education. He also consults on school district initiatives and conducts professional development workshops for educators of all levels. Responding to Student Emotions: 5 Action Steps Dr. Soto-Shed addressed the challenges of managing diverse student emotions, especially when some are very strong (i.e., hurt, threatened, confused). He suggests following these five approaches:
These strategies can be part of your proactive planning, knowing emotions are likely to come up in certain situations. The more you think ahead about how things may be, you’ll be better prepared to manage student emotions in the classroom. Lindsay’s Debrief One additional point here is that naming emotions can be challenging for students. You may need to spend significant time building language around emotions, like a vocabulary word bank they can draw from. Another follow-up to Dr. Soto-Shed’s strategy is to have responses in place for when students do share. You may want to use “scripts” in the back of your mind to help assure students they are in a safe place. For example, you can say, “I’m not going to tell you your emotions are wrong,” or “Your feelings are real. I believe you.” Action Steps to Respond to Charged Comments Dr. Soto-Shed discussed responding to charged comments. For example, the election or other current topics may elicit strong emotional responses or comments. They could be disrespectful or inflammatory, potentially hurting other students by drawing on misconceptions or stereotypes. To address these charged comments, it’s important to do the self-work of knowing where you stand with certain issues, what biases you have, and what emotional responses may come up internally. From there, educators can always implement a pause to process or give a student time to process. You can then lead with curiosity, such as “Can you tell me a bit more? Why did you think that?” Other times, you may need to correct what’s being said and address it later on. Lindsay’s Debrief Recognizing that some charged comments need to be shut down and others can be explored, it’s important to pre-establish a classroom set of non-negotiables. For example, you may create baseline assumptions for your classroom discussions, like “everyone has the right to food, water, and shelter.” These set the standards for how you discuss charged topics and allow you as an educator to hold appropriate boundaries. If harm is done during a charged conversation, consider implementing a restorative circle that allows students to be clear on what happened and process the impact of charged words. Stay Connected You can learn more about Dr. Eric Soto-Shed’s work on his Harvard Faculty Page. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Circle Planning Template & Restorative Conference Companion with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 216 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.
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Transcript
Lindsay LyonsHost In this episode we're going to do something a little bit different. So we are pulling clips from a workshop that Dr Eric Soto-Shedd and myself did with San Francisco Unified School District on responding to student emotions in conversations about challenging topics or controversial issues. So we're going to play little clips, I'm going to respond to them and that will be our episode today. So let me tell you a little bit about whose voice you are going to hear today. 00:32 Eric Soto-Shad is a lecturer in education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His professional and research pursuits center on curriculum development and teacher training, and his work aims to promote inquiry and equity in education, particularly within K-12 history, civics and social studies classrooms. He co-leads a civics thinking project, a research initiative focused on creating innovative research-based civics assessments and curriculum. Dr Soto-Shed co chairs HGSE's foundations course, how People Learn, and instructs courses in curriculum design as well as instructional methods for history and civic education. Outside Harvard, dr Soto-Shed consults on school districts initiatives to develop and implement social studies curriculum. He conducts PD workshops for educators at all levels, including this. 01:12 One focuses on historical inquiry, teaching controversial issues and making learning accessible. He's received several grants from the Library of Congress to train educators to teach with primary sources. He also serves on the Board of Self-Evident Education, a nonprofit that uses multimedia curriculum to educate about the history of race and racism. With a 25-year career in education, dr Soto-Shud has consistently advocated for teachers and students. His roles have included founding director of Harvard's Teacher Residency Program, director of Secondary History social studies education at Brown University and teacher educator at Stanford and NYU. His work is deeply influenced by his eight-year tenure as a social studies teacher in New York City and his enduring commitment to supporting youth from underserved communities. So let's take a listen. Eric Soto-Shed 02:00 One of the things that I might be imagining that's going on for you all is you're naming the motions like different students are feeling different things, and then the same student might be feeling different things on any given day or any given moment, depending on what's happening in the world, what's happening in the class, what's happening in their own personal lives, right. And so one of the challenges of this work is that there's a range of emotions, right, and the other challenge that I think you are lifting up is some of these are really strong, like hurt, threatened, confused, right, and so how do we work with that? Okay? So, similar to how we were thinking about with us, it's important to surface. We want to kind of lay out sort of five general approaches and then dig into some opportunity to think about specific things we can do. Okay, dig into some opportunity to think about specific things we can do. Okay, so I like to think about our responding to student emotions. The five things I like to think about is first is naming the emotion. So we just had an emotional wheel, an SEL check-in. I know a lot of teachers do this kind of like normal warmup, but to give students like language, right, there's a difference between you know hurt and angry, right, and so for students to see a lot of language to name what's going on really helps, can help them articulate. Number two would be surfacing emotions, right, so we can do those with our check-ins, we can do those with other sorts of processing opportunities, and so it's an opportunity to say you know I might be sitting with something, but let me get an opportunity to say it. Oftentimes kids might be like I'm fine, I'm good. Other times it's a real opportunity for them to lift up some things that are going. That's largely for themselves, but also for you as an educator to think about okay, what am I seeing and how might I respond? 03:35 Number three in terms of that responding, in particular heavier moments, processing emotions can be really, really powerful and important, and so those can look like journals or circles. The thing that I love about journals is those can be kind of really quick to do. It's a great, it's a private way, so students might feel more comfortable sharing, and then it gives you an opportunity to teach or to follow up. One thing we'd like to say is that if you are going to ask students to journal about how they're feeling, it is important to check those journals and respond, particularly if something heavy does come up. Circles can be powerful community work and I imagine many of you do this. Some of us may not, but that's a really great opportunity to do some collective processing as well. 04:14 The fourth thing that's really important is to validate emotions right. I think that's one of the big under themes that's going to undercut our work today is that emotions aren't something we try to avoid. They kind of feel icky and creepy sometimes. Unless we're a class, we have objectives and learning goals and big questions we're trying to answer. But we're humans and we have feelings, right, and sometimes when those feelings come up, they can be like a side thing or a problem to address. And no, that's part of being human, that's something to care for. So one of the things we can do with our students is to validate like totally it makes sense that you feel that way, thank you for sharing, and let's begin to sort of think about, like, how we can engage in that, and so the um. 04:53 Fifth thing, finally is um connected to learning right part of what you're doing, particularly in your social studies class, your ethnic studies classes, your ELA classes, or as you're dealing with humans and people right and there's hurt and feeling and all of that right. And so when things come up for our students and related to the world or related to what we're learning, really it's an opportunity to say like, wow, we have some anger going on. I mean, what we're seeing in this past event or what we're seeing in this current event could really cause some anger because and so connect that feeling to the cognitive, to the intellectual, to the academic work as well um, so those are five broad approaches. Some of these, can you, uh, are used in combination and almost in not almost always but in many cases some individual follow-up is warranted. But this is something you can do with the whole class. So that's broad strokes, okay. What we want to do is now get into some specific. You can do with your planning, okay. So the biggest thing we can do not the biggest thing, an important thing we can do is that we don't need to wait for it to happen in the moment and be the sort of magician that sort of figures out what to do. 05:56 Oftentimes, again, particularly because of the content you're teaching or what's going on locally, nationally and globally, we can anticipate a range of emotions you all have done such a beautiful job of naming what you're seeing from your kids already, so we can anticipate those and plan ways to support those as they come up. Okay, and that's going to be the crux of our work today. So at the end of this session, I will share a framework where I've identified some strong negative emotions, what they might look like and some potential responses, right, but what we want you to really focus on today is your capacity to do that and give you three simple things to think about and try this out, right. So when you're thinking about your lesson or a topic that's coming up in your classroom or work that you're doing, can we anticipate the emotion, can we consider how those emotions may appear so we can see them and be aware of them, and then can we plan potential responses. And so the idea is how can we be proactive? And so, if you see this next bit we have, I want to do acknowledge that learning for justice and if you could hit the next advance, learning for Justice has a great resource that's linked here on the slide for you that you'll have access to, where they have a whole set of strategies of how to have difficult conversations, and they have a great thing that they do around anticipating emotions, and so that's a great resource, and what I think is that we can take that framework and apply it to our own work, and so that's what we're going to do right now. 07:30 So, if we can turn to the next slide, I want to give a broad example of how emotions may appear and what responses might look like, and then work through an example together, and then you can work through one on your own. So how may emotions appear? Let's take the example of anger, right? What might anger look like? It's like strong language and tone, right? Cursing, shouting, insulting. It might look like express anger at a group, right? So it's the generalization of an individual with a group. So somebody pisses me off and I hate everybody right. 08:02 Number three is it could look a lot like the non-verbals right, and so it could look like rigid posture, some facial expressions, maybe some rapid breathing, right. So that's what it could look like In terms of ways we might respond. There's a few things we could do. We could think about reflect back and validate right. So if we hear someone's using some language that sounds like angry, it sounds like you might be really angry, we can check in with the rest of the group via a live poll. If it's a response to something that's happened again, locally in your school, nationally, globally, like, ooh, I see a couple of students look angry, Let me just check in and see how everybody's doing. So you could do a quick poll with hands or sort of, if you have the technology to use the phones, but a quick poll to do a check-in. Then, once you get a sense of where folks are at all, right, you can think about, like, let's give some processing time, okay, Is this going to be? Journal with some guided reflections. What do we feel in our body? What do we need to see? Like, give some specific prompts to get kids really thinking about that. And then, finally, we can think about following up with the students Express the anger, okay. So that's a broad example of how we can do it respond to anger. And again, I want you to think about some of the strategies not only that are here that you may choose. So let's go to the next slide and I want to walk through an example of what we're going to ask you to do. So we're going to ask you to think about a moment where emotions can come up for students. The example I'm going to use is like the post-election right. So this is November 7th, right, Coming into class, I want to anticipate a range of emotions. 09:33 So I anticipate the election results might be upsetting for some of my students. Many will likely be indifferent and some will be happy, right? And so this is me thinking about, like a student group that you know I've worked with in the past, right? So if I think about that, or the likely emotions, I might see a range of emotions through facial expressions. I might see smiling and frowns. So I'm really going to be thinking about those first five minutes of class. 09:59 What am I looking for when I come into that class? And then what might my response be, right? Well, I definitely want to surface. I don't want to sort of assume and I want to give them some time to process. So I just want to say hey, how are you feeling? 10:11 If you have a lot of emotion, give me a five. If you're feeling like a very little emotion, give me like a one or a zero. If you're feeling somewhere in between, give me a two, three or four right. And then, based on that, I might have a journal or an opt-in circle of several students or three or higher right. So if I see a lot of emotion from several students, great. If not, I have a pivot plan. So it's not just one scripted plan. If it's just a couple of students, I'll say, all right, let me just do an individual check in like 10 minutes into class and see how those students are doing right. And so, again, what we're hoping that you can walk away with here and do a little bit of practice around is when you think about a topic that's coming down the pike and you've seen some emotions you can anticipate. How could you proactively plan some steps in your lesson to address them? Lindsay Lyons 10:54 Really good stuff in there and I want to kind of touch on a few points. One the naming of emotions can be really challenging, particularly for younger students but even high schoolers. I'm reminded of a time when I was running a PLC and a high school teacher was like I'm just going to invite students to kind of name whatever emotions come up from them each day or every couple of days and we're just going to chart them, we're going to put them in an index card and we're going to kind of hold on to them and see if we can just see what happens, kind of build the vocab word bank of emotions. And actually a student came up to the teacher after a couple of weeks and said you know what? I've noticed that every time you invite me to share my feeling, it is sad or depressed or some version of that, and I don't want to feel that way. So I'm actually going to take action based on this aha moment I've had, because you invited me just to name the feeling with no additional instruction. So that was really powerful. The second thing is circles are a really good place to surface emotion and stories behind emotion, and if you're unfamiliar with circles, we have a free lesson plan template that I will link in the show notes in the blog post for this episode, so you can go ahead and grab that at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 216. So feel free to grab that and start planning a circle that kind of invites students to share stories and emotions. And the third thing I'll say is that Dr Becky Kennedy she is the creator of Good Inside, which is a community and an amazing podcast and parent resource space. I've learned a lot as a parent, but I also actually think that her resources are brilliant for students as well. So, whether you're in a class setting or you're just kind of in a school and you're a leader or you're a non-classroom teacher, I think this is a really cool place to be able to respond to student emotions. And so she has these scripts, three of which I want to share here and really premised on. 12:38 I'm not going to tell you that your emotions are wrong. I'm not going to tell you you're overreacting or that I don't understand where you're coming from. And here are the three I like and you can use them in conjunction with one another, one right after the other. One your feelings are real. Two I believe you. Three I'm here, whether you want me to fix it or you want me to just listen or just be literally silent next to you. I am here. I'm here for you. Your feelings are real. I believe you. I'm here for you. 13:02 Think about something. Maybe one of these resonates. Maybe it's a different something, but think about something that you can just have in your back pocket, write it on a sticky note, just have ready to go in those moments when you're like I don't really know what to say and students are kind of having an outpouring of emotion. So that was kind of our first chunk of the workshop, where we're talking about responding to student emotions. The second chunk, we're really talking about responding to charged comments, kind of harmful comments during discussion or maybe just kind of said out loud in the hallway or in some other space in a school setting, and how do we respond to those. So let's listen in to Dr Soto Shedd. Eric Soto-Shed 13:34 So now we do want to shift to responding to charged comments. So what happens when things come up? So when we say charged comments, right, you can think about the election, but we can also think about this broadly and you know, I'd say in this moment, really in our careers as teachers, like what happens when a charged comment comes up and what do we do? So when we think about charged comments, these could look like disrespectful or inflammatory comments, potentially hurtful to other students, a misconception, a stereotype, a strong position on a very controversial issues. Right, these are all potentially have some charge where they bring some intensity to the room, and potentially emotional responses. I also want to name that. You know, I always assume kids are coming from a good place, that you know the thousands of kids that I've worked with are. Most of them are total sweethearts, but they can say some really charged things at times in their lives, right, and so what do we do with that comment once it's out in the air in our classroom? So I'd like you to take a moment and think about again the past few months this year of teaching what is a charged comment that a student has made or might make in your classroom? Okay, so let's just take a moment. We don't need to put that in the chat, we don't need to lift these up and name them publicly, but I want you to center that in your head so you can think through potentially how we might respond to that. Center that in your head so you can think through potentially how we might respond to that. Give folks about 15 seconds. If you want to give us a digital or physical thumbs up once you got your comment that you thought about, you can or like a little one in the chat. If not, we'll just give folks a brief moment to do so. I think I saw a thumbs up, a couple. Let's think about 15 more. All right, with that sort of in your mind, what we want to do is we want to maybe spend about 10 minutes or so talking through some ways to think about responding to charged comments, give some sort of different approaches and then have you take about 10 minutes again to work individually in a group to think about how you respond, and the theme here is proactively planning. 15:38 So let's think about responding to our charge comments. I kind of want to begin by naming that. There's really sort of three buckets of things that I like to think about that are really important. The first two that we put up here self-work and classroom culture are unbelievably important. I think we've already heard from some of our colleagues. I know, sarita, you've really talked about your classroom culture and how students can really know each other and can really kind of be a support but also insightful about each other. The self-work that we've done a little bit about is really important, like how comfortable are you with certain issues, what's sort of the emotional response that you might have with certain issues, how aware are our biases and the perspectives that we bring in things that we might be missing. So that is unbelievably important and maybe falls outside the scope of our little 75-minute session today. So what we want to focus on is the sort of middle part, which is really facilitation. 16:27 Moves right, recognizing self-work and classroom cultures are the foundation. What can we do that's going to push for learning, address and mitigate harm and also address some of those motions right. And so we kind of want to talk through some moves right now. So on the next slide, my colleagues Aliyah El-Amin and her colleague Kimberly Osaji really came up with these sort of different sets of moves that you can do when they call hot moments in your class I like to think about those are really charged. I'm going to highlight just a couple for today's session but you'll have a link to all of the moves for you to look at. 17:03 But when things are really charged, when something comes up in your classroom, a couple of moves you might want to do is sort of clarify misconceptions. So if somebody says you know something, that's just like you know a misconception, a stereotype, you can really just kind of directly correct that misconception. Right and related to that is sometimes, if it's really kind of inflammatory, you can pause and what you're doing is you're giving students some time to process, but you're also giving yourself as a teacher the time to process. I feel like there's, you know, silence is always like kind of a little scary, but sometimes you might need to collect yourself and so when things are really really charged, one approach is to directly correct it but also pause for a second. So if you need to collect yourself, it gives students a time to collect themselves you can do that and you're also going to interrupt the student from going further with this sort of misconception. So that's one set, the other sort of extreme, the other response that I like to lift up from this framework that my colleagues put out with when things are a little less charged, and that you might really lean into that right Like use curiosity. 18:04 Can you tell me a little bit more? What did you mean by that? Why did you think that? And here's an example, and I'm thinking about you know, sarita, you're coming around, you know leveraging the group where you could also bring in folks and Lindsay, if you can go to that next bullet to leverage the groups, to ask other students, do you want to sort of jump in here? What do you think about this? And so when I look at this and we'll come back to this it's like how much do I want to kind of stop the comment and address it to really lean towards more mitigating the harm, versus how much do we want to like probe and dig deeper to really maximize the teaching? Right, and you don't have to do one or the other, but it's just a way of thinking about some of the tension that you can kind of work with. 18:45 What I want to kind of lift up and the thing that you might want to be wrestling with when you're thinking about how to respond to the charge comment is when do you really want to lean into it as a teachable moment, use curiosity, probe and push versus when is it like wow, this is just really inflammatory and I feel like the students in the class that might be really hurt and harmed by this and I think it might be a little bit more appropriate for my initial thing to pause directly, correct, we'll talk a little bit about the end around ways you can kind of follow up the next day, but I think that's the real tension to sort of wrestle with, or an interesting tension to do that a lot of good stuff there. Lindsay LyonsHost 19:19 So, thinking about responding to charge comments, I just want to name that. A lot of it is proactive as well and we talk about this in part one of this kind of two-part series that Dr Soto shed and I did with San Francisco Unified, and we can identify things whether we're a classroom teacher or not, but easier, I think, if a classroom teacher that are kind of our baseline understandings. This comes from the baseline assumptions idea I've talked about before, which comes from Justin Dolson-Masacolo Garrett and Katie Cubano I'm sorry, justin, if I mispronounced your name and that's basically like an agreed on kind of set of non-negotiables. Example all humans have a right to food, water and shelter. Another example all humans have a right to belong right and so thinking about this idea of what is in place beforehand just as part of the school culture or class culture is really powerful. I'll also name that in addition to some of the examples that Dr Soto Shedd talked about in terms of, like, how one might respond. He talked about clarifying misconceptions. 20:15 I've also done kind of a fact checkers lesson after a class discussion. If something is not super important to correct in the moment, less harm is done. Maybe we could assign statements to groups like I overheard this in the class conversation yesterday or in another class's conversation. I need you to go ahead and find reliable sources to evaluate Is this true or false and why so, using some evidence checking. But I also think if there's harm done, you can do a restorative circle. We've talked about on the podcast before how to do these. We have resources for those and so I think I can maybe drop that in as well and give it an extra bonus here for this podcast episode. 20:50 But three key questions if you're doing a restorative circle, I would do it with the whole class. If it's at a no class discussion, everyone is impacted in some way and everyone needs to kind of collectively repair the harm. So question number one for everyone, kind of what happened? Let's get clear on the facts. Two everyone responds to this one. You're like how did you feel? I mean you can have everyone respond to all of them, but how did you feel is really important or what did you need? You'd use BASE as an acronym that I like to use for kind of basic human needs. So belonging, autonomy, survival, enjoyment, right, these are all things that people need and so you can just kind of frame, that for students, if they're having difficulty saying what they need, but how you feel, I think is an easier one to respond to. And then, how can harm be repaired? Right, how do we restore our sense of belonging in the community for everyone? Right, how do we move forward from this? 21:36 And so, as I kind of like wrap up this episode, I just want to say thank you to Dr Eric Sotoshed for putting together so much brilliance and sharing it in our workshop and then again on this podcast. I also want to name that Dr Sotoshed and I are going to continue doing work with San Francisco Unified School District where, as of the time of this recording next week we're still in May. As we record here we are going to go and work with leaders and listen to stakeholders and really gather some information about what it is that all stakeholders students, teachers, leaders are experiencing when it comes to conversations about what I call high emotion topics and think about what they would like as well, right, so we're going to learn from their experience a lot of kind of street data collection happening here, or student experience data, stakeholder experience data and, as we listen, kind of putting together these themes and ideas for action steps. We will co-plan with those stakeholders and think about the ongoing work, and I just want to name that. I think this is really critical. It is not a one and done, it is not a one workshop, and then you get the info or the framework and then you go do it and you're like good for the rest of forever. 22:41 So much of that, so many of my moments in teaching that I continuously like 15 years no, not 15 years I haven't been out of the classroom that long. Like seven years later I'm like, wow, that moment, that moment and usually it's a class idea. Here's how I would do that differently those key moments that stick with us. We're going to have those, and you're going to want to talk to somebody. So find a colleague, find an instructional coach, find a leader, find someone who you can talk through, who can kind of like coach you through the challenges that you face, and have ongoing conversations about this stuff, get ongoing feedback, have a thought partner, because I think the implementation aspect of many things that we do in PD is really critically important. 23:28 This one especially, though, because current events are always changing. Student populations are always changing. Everything about like these relational conversations is very nuanced and we need that kind of reflection, individual and collective, to be able to do right by students. We need that kind of reflection, individual and collective, to be able to do right by students, do right by kind of the class culture and school culture we're trying to build and to do all of this well. So again, freebies for this episode. You can find them at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 216. Thanks for checking in Until next time.
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5/20/2024 164. "How Should We Live Together?" Designing Deliberations with Dr. Diana Hess & Dr. Paula McAvoyRead Now
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In this episode, Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy discuss the importance of political classrooms that engage students in critical discussions about societal issues. They emphasize the necessity for educational spaces to be inclusive, allowing for diverse ideological perspectives and the cultivation of political literacy. They also share strategies for how you can prepare for and facilitate these conversations in your educational context.
Diana E. Hess is the dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and holds the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education. Dr. Hess’s research focuses on civic and democratic education. Formerly, Dr. Hess was the senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school social studies teacher, a teachers’ union president, and the associate executive director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. Paula McAvoy earned her PhD in philosophy of education in 2010 at UW-Madison’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the Director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW-Madison. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the Foothill Middle College Program in Los Altos, California. The Big Dream Both Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy share a big dream for education centered on equity and justice. Dr. McAvoy envisions accessible strategies for all students to engage in meaningful classroom discussions, while Dean Hess dreams of leveraging the diversity present in educational settings to foster conversations across differing views. As Dr. McAvoy puts it, the aim is for students to have real discussions that model democratic political equality, tolerance, and the consideration of the common good. Mindset Shifts Required Discussions are not time-fillers but intentional academic exercises with democratic aims. As Dr. McAvoy explains, students should be seen as political equals whose voices are all deserving of respect and consideration in the conversation.
3. Scaffold the Deliberation. Invite students to share their personal stories and connections to issues before entering a more formal empirical inquiry/political deliberation conversation. This helps students develop the essential capacity of caring about how others are affected. It bridges intellectual and emotional engagement! Dean Hess explains you might ask: “How has the idea about paying for college tuition either affected someone that you know or is potentially going to affect you in the future? And so that you can share out, ‘This is where I am on this position personally,’ and that helps the discussion, because now I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not, and so everyone benefits from knowing that information and that you treat each other differently when you feel, when you first know where everyone stands personally, and so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition.” Administrative Support: Ask: “Do we want to be a place where there is good discussion? What does that discussion look like?” Then, provide access to professional development focused on facilitating those discussions. Also consider creating school or district-based (non-classroom-based) “purple spaces” for conversation. Dean Hess is doing this now with Deliberation Dinners. She says participants can take the Pew Ideology Quiz. They will be placed in one of nine groups across the ideological spectrum. Then build 12 tables of 10 students to ensure ideological diversity and also other differences (e.g., grade, stakeholder groups, demographic identities). This can help people with different points of view learn how to talk to each other about really important issues! One Step to Get Started Identify topics that reflect diversity in student perspectives. Create “purple spaces”! Tip: You can survey your students to see where their ideas lie on particular issues to see if there is a diversity of viewpoints and competing good values around an issue. You may want to use the above Pew Ideology Quiz as well. Stay Connected You can connect with this week’s guest Dean Diana Hess via email at [email protected] and Dr. Paula McAvoy via email at [email protected]. To help you think more deeply about this topic, we’re linking the Social Education journal’s special issue on “Teaching Social Studies in Polarized Times”, some of which is open source, so you can read them for free without a scholarly account. And, if you’re looking for more details on the– ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 164 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:
00:00:00Edit Hello, my name is Leah and I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. In today's episode, we are talking with Doctor Diana Hess and Doctor Paula mcavoy. Doctor Diana Hess is the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin Madison and holds the care and Falk distinguished chair of education. Doctor Hess's research focuses on civic and democratic education. Her first book Controversy in the Classroom won the exemplary research award from the National Council for Social Studies. Formerly Doctor Hess was the senior Vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school study. So social studies teacher, a teachers union president and the Associate Executive Director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Chicago Hess is finishing her ninth and final year as dean this May and will be writing a book with her colleague Lynn Gleick about the importance of deliberation of political issues in higher education. Next year, Paula mcavoy earned her phd in philosophy of Education in 2010 at UW Medicine's Department of Educational Policy Studies. TRANSCRIPT 00:01:12 Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an Associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW Medicine. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the foothill middle College program in Los Altos, California. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor Diana Hat. Doctor Paul mcelvoy. Welcome to the Time for Teacher podcast. 00:02:18Edit It's great to be here. I'm so excited to have you both here today. I want to start with an opening question that I ask everyone and feels really big, feel free to answer it. I'd love to hear from each of you in whatever way you want to respond. So I love this idea of freedom dreaming, which many folks talk about. Dr Bettina loves specifically talk about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice which I love. And so with that in mind, what is the big dream that each of you holds for education? Paula, would you like to start? I'll start, this is Paula. Um So I gave this some thought before. And um one thing that I've done since the book is Command Diana has done also is uh professional development with teachers around how to engage students in discussions of controversial political issues. And one thing that I've noticed is that at the end of, you know, I teach a variety of strategies and then teachers will often say this is so great. I'm gonna teach it to my A P students and it just breaks my heart because I want, um you know, the strategies that we talk about we're gonna talk about today are accessible to everybody. 00:03:31Edit And so, and it's just so important to give all students the opportunities to have real discussion in the classroom. And so I think that that would be my opener. Yeah. Well, ditto to that. Um you know, I've had that experience to Paul and I always find it, uh you know, really disappointing. And I also feel like it means that all the things that I had done in the PD, no one apparently was paying attention to because, you know, the, the content of the PD is the antithesis of that. Um But relatedly, um my, my dream is that we can use high quality discussion in both uh K 12. And in higher ed, increasingly, I've been doing a lot of work in Higher Ed to uh take advantage of the diversity that we have in so many settings that I think right now we are at best not taking advantage of and at worst, we're kind of actively putting barriers up that would allow students to be able to engage in meaningful conversation with people who have both similar views and very dissimilar views. 00:04:48Edit So, um that is my dream. I love both of those, those are so good and, and I love that equity and justice are really at the core of each of those responses. So I, I wanna just get right into it. I have just recently read the Political Classroom, which is published a while back, I think 2018. And I just want all the listeners and leaders and educators who listen to this to know about it as well because I think a lot of people are wondering, you know, what does it look like in practice to do this well. And so the first thing I'd love to know it and I think Paula, maybe we could start with you with this one. I think with the six possible aims of a political classroom that you list in the book. I think this is fascinating and something that I had never thought of as like a particular aim that you would have as you know, entering a classroom conversation. Do you wanna take us through those? Sure, thank you. I think I'll start before going through that list with the idea of the political classroom, which is sort of a, a complicated idea or not complicated, but it, it sounds um like maybe what you shouldn't be doing in the classroom, which is making the classroom political. 00:05:55Edit And so we intentionally use the term in the title of political classroom and we defined it as a classroom in which young people are um having opportunities to discuss questions about how we should live together. And so how should we live together is the essential question of a democratic society. Um And so, how should we live together? Questions can be everything from public policy questions to rules of the classroom, questions to, you know, et cetera. And so, um so when we talk about the political classroom, we're talking about moments in which young people are getting to have authentic and real discussion about issues about how we should live together. Um And we were primarily in the book looking at public policy questions. Um But so why do that in the first place is that's an idea that's kind of grounded in deliberative theory, which is a democratic theory. And so, and the idea that discussion and engagement across our differences is good for democracy. 00:06:58Edit And so, um we said that so a lot of people see, I think teachers can often think of treat discussion in the classroom as a little bit of a time filler rather than um this is something we're intentionally doing um for academic purposes. And so, um so we've identified six aims. So what you might sort of think about is the, why should we do this in the first place? An the answer to the question, why should we do this? So one is that when we discuss with others, we necessarily, or we should be treating them as political equals. And so it models a type of democratic political equality in the classroom that says everybody has a right to their an opinion and has should have the opportunity to discuss and contribute. Uh The second aim is that it um it promotes tolerance and tolerance. Here often means just being respectful to people who are different but political tolerance. Um And in the form of deliberation and discussion is that we should learn to have the idea that I shouldn't use the state to just get my way. 00:08:01Edit Um So I need to be taller. I need to be, I need to check myself a little bit um in the democratic process that I'm not trying to, as Danielle Allen says, um uh uh to use a winner, take all approach to democracy. Um And then we're helping young people through discussion to develop autonomy, meaning. So their develop their own ideas about how they want to live that demo um deliberation models a type of political fairness and that we model for students or encourage students to think about solutions that promote the common good. So the a deliberation is different than a debate. So you're not trying to win, but you're trying to come up with a good solution. Um then deliberation and discussion, um hopefully motivate students to become more engaged in public decision making because you've and do modeling and that you're modeling that with them in the classroom. And then last we set an aim is um helping young people develop the political literacy of understanding. 00:09:06Edit Um not just what you think about tax policy or something like that, but why tax policy has an underlying the tax policy you choose has an underlying ideological value to it. And so to help young people, I see, we see we saw in the book and continue to see a lot of teachers willing to engage issues, but they're not really wanting to touch like what is it, what is the, what, why would that position be conservative or liberal or what? So when that gets at the bigger purpose of what sort of democracy or society do you want in the first place? And so helping young people kind of engage those bigger values? Thank you so much. That's brilliant. Yeah, and, and so you can choose any combination of aims, right? You don't have to do all six or you don't have to do just one. Is that right? I mean, discussions in general a political, I mean, democratic education, I would say in general is aiming towards all of those. It doesn't mean that in every moment you get, those are all getting equal weight and attention. But you could, uh you know, a particular discussion strategy might really emphasize fairness by encouraging students to find um a point of consensus, for example. 00:10:18Edit Um But in a different strategy might not promote that as much. Hm, excellent. Thank you for, for sharing that. And then I think the next piece for me is how do you decide, right? What issue you're gonna put up for deliberation? I appreciate that you distinguish between a debate, right? And a deliberation. They are not the theme. How do we uh really select those? And so Diana, did you want to share a little bit about the framework that you have for determining how to select those issues? Sure. So I think the most important thing is to determine whether an issue is actually an issue, meaning that are there multiple and competing points of view that you want students to learn about and to literally deliberate, you know, deliberate means to weigh or to balance. And so one of the things that we explored in the book was the challenges that people often have, determining what's actually an issue. And one of the issues is about what's an issue, you know, whether something is an open issue or a more settled issue is a matter of, of great debate. 00:11:28Edit But we really took this on in the book by looking at a variety of different um criteria that teachers could use when they're trying to determine if something is uh an issue or not. And, uh, one of the things that Paul and I have done both uh together and separately in professional development is to really help, uh, teachers wrestle with that. One thing that I've came, come away with is to say the, the question about whether something is an issue or not is a question that itself is best deliberated professionally with other teachers. I think, you know, if possible, making solo decisions on that, uh oftentimes those decisions aren't, aren't quite as good. But as we know from uh what we've done in the book, we've distinguished between empirical issues and policy issues uh by empirical issues, we simply mean, this is a question that either has been or could be answered imper empirically. 00:12:35Edit So uh does uh human behavior cause climate change? You know, that that's an empirical question we argued in the book when it was when we were first writing it, which was, you know, quite some time ago that the answer to that question was yes and therefore to deliberate that question as an open question wouldn't make a lot of sense. You know, later the next generation science standards said the same thing and we both felt very good about that uh to be validated uh that way, um Policy questions are questions by definition, uh where you would have, you know, multiple and, and competing views and there's a relationship between empirical questions and policy questions. You know, and we listen to, to people deliberate, for example, whether we should have a flat tax, you know, they're often talking about, well, what effect might that have on this or on that? And it's not like we don't know anything about those. Um I think the most important thing that we talk about in the book is the need to make sure that the issues that you select are are issues that have a content win. 00:13:42Edit You know, Paula was talking before about the aims that we've laid out in the book and one of the aims is political literacy. And so we, I think generally believe that it's important for students to learn uh very important content through the discussion of political issues. And I always use that as uh something that I rely on when I'm trying to select. But I also think that the more important thing is to make sure that you've got a tension between competing good values. So, you know, good issue questions are not clearly. Well, there's a good and a bad. It's there may be two goods you're trying to achieve. So you may be trying to achieve equal opportunity and inclusion and free speech. Those are both goods. And there's a whole bunch of policy questions that bring those two goods into 10. And my favorite issues are those that help students explore tension between competing uh good values because I think those good value tensions are perennial and even if there is a resolution to a particular issue, doesn't mean that you're not gonna have issues that come up in the future that involve those same tensions. 00:14:58Edit Yeah. Oh my gosh, I am so interested in this. So I think that one of the things that you had named was like the professional judgment framework that and integrates a bunch of the things that you each have already said to make that decision for your class. Do either of you want to kind of talk a little bit about, about that piece. And I don't know if you have an example, friends of mine that's like here's how this would work or that you've seen a teacher in practice kind of work through to make a decision like that just to illuminate for folks how that might work. I can talk that one. The so part of the, the book does three things. It presents this, the findings from this very large study of high school teachers who are engaging students in discussion. Um And it also presents cases of teachers practicing in very different contexts. So we have a teacher who's in a very blue bubble, a red bubble and then kind of a suburban purple school context. And then there we found that there are these questions that teachers often struggle with one being. Should I share my views in the classroom? 00:16:00Edit For example, or which issues as we just discussed. Should I treat as controversial? And there's not really a clear cut answer to these questions. And what we found and argue in the book is that you really um that, that teachers need to be weighing what is, what, what is my school context here? What am I trying to do in the first place? And what evidence can help me um answer the uh answer this question. So for example, on a, should I share my views with the classroom? Uh We have lots that we could say about this. But the, the one way to think about it is if you in the context of my class, if I'm a liberal teacher in a conservative area, and I'm having students discuss something and they turn to me and ask, well, what do you think about this issue? So that context matters, what is, what is my identity to them? Um How are they gonna hear me if I tell my views? And then also, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to actually have them do the discussion? 00:17:03Edit Then maybe I don't need to share my views in that moment because I'm trying to nurture the discussion in that moment. And maybe I think that my views will derail it in some way. And so thinking about not just in principle, should teachers ever share their views, but what is the, that you should share your views if you think it furthers your furthers, your aims. And so um rather than thinking, you know, with the professional judgment, we're trying to not make rules for teachers or the set, the this is the answer. But to really say so, what are the things that you should be thinking about when you face difficult choices in the classroom? Yeah, I love that in, in the book that you had really focused on that as like a key thing or is it advancing discussion? Is it in the best interest of the students not? Do I want to share or not? Does it make me feel good as, as the educator? I really appreciated that very much because I think it can be so challenging to, to make that that particular choice. So the other thing, it might at times be good. Oh, sorry to interrupt. It might at times to be the right thing to do for the discussion, you know, so it's um that it might be that they really trust and like you and if you share your view, they say, oh wow, I didn't realize that that was a, I never thought of it that way before and that can be really valuable. 00:18:15Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping in to share this episode's Freebie an article by Paula mcavoy title discussing politics in polarized times. You can find it at the blog post for this episode, www dot Lindsay, Beth lions.com/one 64. Check it out now back to the show. Absolutely. I think that vulnerability, when you're asking students to be vulnerable, it can be a big trust builder and foundation builder with you as the educator are also willing to go there with them. I Yeah, totally. I, I think there's so, so much I could honestly talk to you guys forever about this. But one of the pieces that I'm really interested in your thoughts on and I after reading the book is that you mentioned several critiques of cele of theory and, and Sanders, I think talks about like it really advantages and privileges like the white middle class way of talking in the book. I mean, you bring in Daniel Allen's work and talking about like that emotion can't really be disentangled from the political deliberation, which I really appreciated. And, and she talks about like the, the uh revelation of what fellow citizens are worth to them in these spaces, like it really opens up that. 00:19:20Edit And so I, I was thinking about this idea of like there the value of being able to have individual stories shared, to put like a face behind an issue. But that also, so that's beautiful and right, it also sometimes positions individual students in the classroom to take on that responsibility that might have some emotional weights. And so I'm just wondering like, is that something that happens in more of like I'm thinking of like indigenous circles and community circles of like, I'm just sharing experiences versus like an actual deliberation of a policy issue and, and kind of like how do we balance that tension of the students who are potentially taking on the load of? Like this has a lot of weight for me when we talk about a particular issue and me being vulnerable enough to share my story might have a bigger emotional weight on me as the sharer than like the people around me that are benefiting from that sharing. Does that make sense, Paul? You want to start? And now China? So, so a few things. 00:20:22Edit So first, let's so Sanders, who's who you say there? Uh just to make one distinction is that she's talking about adults in deliberative spaces like juries. And so one peop one pro one issue, I, I don't know what we're to describe. One critique that gets raised about classroom deliberation is this one and we raise it in the book as a concern that some students aren't heard the same way as other students. And that makes a lot of teachers worried. Um And I think that when I, so I've been doing a couple of studies in the last year and I, and this is one thing that I've been kind of paying attention to. And one thing that you see is that classroom deliberations are deliberations among novices, first of all, and they are deliberations that are in many way, they are fabricated or they're, they're sort of attempts at deliberations. So they're not actually deciding a jury case, they're not actually deciding public policy, but it's got an educational value to it. Um And so in this way, they don't, they don't. 00:21:26Edit So when we might say in sort of, in theory, deliberation should play by these particular rules of rational exchange of ideas in practice with young people, they're naturally bringing up stories about the connecting stories to their lives. They are naturally, you know, engage, you know, they look at the materials that you provide them, but they're also, they're just bouncing it off of the their worlds, right? And that's just the way it is. Um And so what I've been playing with in the last few years is really trying to blend this idea of like, don't think of things as strictly deliberation, but you scaffold the deliberation in such a way that the first thing what I have to what I have groups do, especially if the groups don't know themselves very well is share, if we're gonna say we're gonna talk about uh should college tuition be free, for example, um Share out well, this is what among adults, but you could share it with high school students. How does the idea about paying for, you know, how does college, how is paying for college tuition, either affected someone that, you know, or potentially going to affect you in the future? 00:22:36Edit And so that you can share out this is where I am on this position personally. And that helps the discussion because now I know um I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not. And so everyone benefits from knowing that information and you, you treat each other differently when you feel when you first know where everyone stands personally. And so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition, deepening our learning, thinking about the public policy, thinking about the values and 10 and then move towards the liberation. So I think thinking of um you know that that classroom deliberation is a particular type of um you know, educational experience first and foremost, and that what we're trying to do is provide students with the skills to do that. And one of those skills is caring how other people feel about are are affected. Yeah, one of the things that I'm really interested in is the distinction between what Paula is describing, which I really like and asking students their views on the issue. 00:23:44Edit So Paula's question was how might this affect you? So you can imagine saying I am really going to be affected by free college tuition because it means I won't have to take out so much student loan. And I still might think that free college tuition is a bad policy choice, right? So, you know, I think one of the things we've that I've experienced is asking students at the beginning of a deliberation. What are your views on the policy? I don't like to do because I don't want people to take a public stand on. Here's what I think about X because my experience has been, once people do that, they don't wanna, they actually prematurely come to a position or they're not open to uh possibly changing their mind. But what Paul is talking about is helping people understand the connection between, you know, people's lives and specific issues. And quite frankly, it's not illegitimate or anti deliberative to have personal stories as part of a deliberation. 00:24:52Edit You know, one of my um most interesting deliberations that I've ever listened to was when the Senate was deliberating the Americans with Disabilities Act. And Bob Dole told the story of his wartime injury that according to at least some research had a huge effect on getting folks to support that landmark legislation who otherwise wouldn't. So, you know, every time I listen to a good deliberation, I hear someone talk about how something affects them. We just had a deliberation as part of our new program here at UW Madison called Deliberation Dinners on abortion a week ago. And one of the um students was talking about from her perspective. Now, this was not uh she was not generalizing it to everybody, but from her perspective, getting birth control was really easy now and much, much easier than it had been uh reported to be in the past. 00:25:55Edit So that was for her a reason that influenced what she thinks about abortion policy. And, you know, she told that story very authentically and it was absolutely appropriate for her to do it. So when people say, well, we don't want students telling personal stories when talking about policy issues. I'm like, well, how could you possibly have a good deliberation without hearing about how real people are affected by policy questions? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you both for sharing those specific examples as well. I think of um Doctor Shri Ridges Patrick and I had come up with uh it's a Juan Eels work we adapted to think about racial discourse. And one of the things that we talk about for generative dialogue is actually the connection of kind of the head and the heart and like the emotion and the intellectual pieces. And that often we're like overly intellectualizing when we divorce those emotional pieces from the stories from the discussions. And so I love that, that this can be that too that, that this deliberation can be that as well. You know, it also goes back to the aims that Paula was talking about at the beginning of the podcast. 00:27:03Edit You know, one of the things that we need to think about is both how do we advance our own self interest? There's nothing wrong with doing that. Um And how do we make decisions based on what might be good for a broader set of people and I've always thought of non novice or more expert decision making is when we can look outside of our own interest. And, you know, for that reason, I am always intrigued when I hear students say, well, my personal position on this is X, but I don't think the state should do why? Because I don't think the state should be telling other people what to do about X. You know, so I don't want people to think that what democratic decision making means is what is my interest and how do I best advance my own interest? I love that. You said that I just think about so many of I taught like a feminist course in high school and so many of my students would talk about abortion in that way. 00:28:07Edit Like, you know, like maybe I personally would choose acts. I think policy should be why. Like I thought it was a really interesting distinction that was, that came up a lot in that particular topic. But thank you for eliminating that for us because I think that's important to keep in mind for educators. Um One of the things that I think a as you know, leaders are supporting teachers to do this well, and teachers are kind of creating these spaces in their classrooms. I'm wondering if they're specific practices or action steps that you would suggest for either the teachers as well as the leaders who are kind of supporting teachers to create those spaces. Um and, and dealing with all of the things that are happening in the world that may um kind of impact that any, any thoughts for either group, teachers or leaders, one that I have is that I think in the diana kind of alluded to this point earlier is that it's, it would be valuable if teachers and administrators would sit down and talk about the question. What does a good discussion look like? And how should we get it? Um And I think discussion is a word that's used in, it's often misused or it's, you know, a, a person might actually be lecturing when they use the word discussion, like I'm discussing World War One. 00:29:19Edit And so we need to, I think in the public discourse, there's a lot of confusion about uh teacher talk right now versus student talk. And so what um I think if schools could sit down and think about, do we want to be a place where there is a good discussion? What kind of, what does that discussion look like? And I would say one answer is that the teach, the students should talk to each other? And um and then how do you, how do you cultivate that? And that's, that's a learned skill. People think, oh, everyone can talk, everyone can discuss. That's not, that's not the case that people need, they actually need scaffolded practice um on how to, on how to learn to have this sort of discussion. And so I think um having schools, school leaders and teachers stop and think about what is it that we actually want to do and, and how do, what and what supports do we as teachers on a school need to get that into place? Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, we often say in the discussion project that we want um students to learn how to discuss in the same way. 00:30:27Edit We want students to learn how to write and we want students to learn how to do mathematical uh thinking. We want students to learn how to discuss. And we know from, I think pretty solid research now that it's not like you are, are an innate uh discuss uh discussion is something that is can be learned and, and needs to be. But we also want people to discuss to learn. So the question to go back to how we started this, which is, well, why do this to begin with? Well, one reason to do this to begin with is because there's all sorts of things you can learn from having discussions that you're not gonna learn and you're not gonna learn as well absent them. That discussion is uh itself a really powerful pedagogical tool. And so if we care in schools about students learning, and I'm, I, I would vote for that. I always say yes to that, then we should see um discussion and deliberation as both powerful uh pedagogical tools, but back to the aims that Paula started this with, with uh really important democratic outcomes in their own. 00:31:41Edit Right? Yeah. One of the things that I had had written down too that I loved as a suggestion and just in addition to the ideas that you all just shared is that you could survey students to identify where there's diversity in the topics like perspectives on the topics that kind of a call to what you were all sharing before was making sure that you have that diversity of viewpoints. You decided as an issue, right? In context, I never would have thought of that. And I just really wanted to name that for listeners, but that's a really cool idea. And also just that you call out for leaders to make sure that teachers have that good PD so that we can build those discussion skills and students and and you need like a good facilitator to be able to help build those discussion skills and students. So making sure that teachers also have access to all of all of that PD um so that this can happen, right? So thank you for that. I think just to, to move to kind of close here, I don't want to take too much of your time. But I'm, I'm curious to know for folks who want to learn more about what you're doing now because I know you, this was an older book, this was published. 00:32:43Edit Years and years ago, I'm curious to know, you know, what are you currently working on or where can people kind of learn from you in this moment or connect with you online spaces or, or any of that? Um For me, I, um I've been working on a couple of studies that are looking at different discussion strategies. And so, um and how students differently experience them, how that affects how their views change as a result of the discussion. And so looking at um really the structure of discussion, so a lot of people imagine that the best discussion is this like beautiful seminar style with people in a circle and everyone's participating, that's, it's so hard to get that discussion in a high school in a typical high school classroom. I mean, you can build towards it for sure. Um But there's a lot of different strategies that people that and structures that people can use and those structures model how to discuss, they actually teach the how of discussion and they, they help teachers maintain norms, they make sure that students are operating from a common uh sort of starting point of a base of knowledge, you know, there's materials involved. 00:33:53Edit And so I think, um and so what I've been looking at is how do the, how do different strategies affect either what students experience in the discussion and how their views um change as a result of this, you know, different strategies that is super interesting. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to read some of that. Yeah, Paul has got a really great article in the most recent issue of social education. I'm gonna hold it up and this is an, a special issue on teaching social studies in polarized times. Um, that was, uh, guest edited by Jeremy Stoddard who's a professor here at UW Madison and I worked with him as well and I would, I think there are a number of articles in this special issue that are really great. I would call out Paula's in particular. Um I've been working on two projects. One that Paula started uh here when she was at UW Madison, the discussion project that what we actually we started together. And then another one that we just started this year called Deliberation Dinners. 00:34:57Edit Um And that was based on a project that Paula had started at North Carolina State that was called I think Democracy Dinners. Um And both of those projects uh people can find online. The Deliberation Dinners is really new. We created ideologically diverse groups of students by having them take the pew ideology quiz, which for your listeners, I would, I would encourage them to go to the pew ideology quiz and they will answer uh a bunch of questions and then they will be placed in one of nine different groups. So it's not just left or right, but it's across the ideological spectrum. And then we built 12 tables of 10 students to ensure that we had ideological diversity and also different majors, different years in schools, et cetera. And we've been doing a lot of experimentation uh and piloting of, you know, how you help students who typically don't talk with people with different points of view, learn how to do that in the context of highly authentic and uh really important uh state based issues, legalizing marijuana, increasing nuclear capacity, abortion, et cetera. 00:36:16Edit And so, uh a lot of what Paul and I learned from the political classroom that we saw naturally occurring in these purple classrooms that you read about. Um what we're trying to figure out is how is there a way to d to create purple spaces, especially purple spaces when everyone believes that everybody has the same views. And, you know, one of the things we've learned is that there's always more diversity than you think. But so we've been having a lot of fun uh on that project. Um It's, you know, and, and I also think it probably has a lot of utility for high school uh teachers and students as well. I was, I gave a keynote to the Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies Conference this past Saturday and talked about it briefly and a whole bunch of teachers came up to me and said, you know, we really want the materials, which I thought was great because, you know, that's the other thing that we've learned is that, you know, if you think you have to stay up, you know, midnight every night, writing your own materials to have good discussions, you're not gonna be uh in it for the long haul. 00:37:25Edit What a fantastic last point that you just made. Yes, like sustainability I think is really an important thing to think about. And then also just thinking about the idea of creating purple spaces and the applicability in high schools. Yeah, I love that idea even even at like a multi stakeholder group, right? Like thinking about community events where you have teachers, family members of students, students like, oh how cool would it be to like mix them all up and get that ideological diversity going? Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. Thank you both so so much. I have so appreciated both your book and this conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today. Thank you so much for the invitation. Yeah. Thank you. It was really fun. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane sapper and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 70 5% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. 00:38:29Edit If you're smiling to yourself as you listen to right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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5/6/2024 162. How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations across K-12 with Matthew R. Kay and Jennifer OrrRead Now
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In this episode Matt and Jen talk about their book, We’re Gonna Keep On Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. We discuss the need for ongoing conversations about race, and the role of effective classroom management strategies, and specific things to consider when setting up a class discussion about race. I’ve been excited for this conversation since their book was published. For my initial response to the book, check out this blog post.
Matthew R. Kay is a proud product of Philadelphia’s public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy (SLA). He believes that any teacher who is willing to put in the hard work of reflection can, through the practice of discrete skills, lead meaningful race conversations. Driven by this conviction, he is passionate about designing professional development that teachers find valuable. He’s also the author of Not Light, But Fire, a book I loved and also wrote a blog post about in 2020. Jennifer Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than two and a half decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She is the author of Demystifying Discussion: How to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills, K-5 and the coauthor of We’re Gonna Keep on Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a frequent mentor to new and pre-service teachers. The Big Dream(s) Jen wants teachers to be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Matt adds his dream for kids to be treated as thinking beings again—as people who can make up their own minds about things. Trust We have to trust ourselves as professionals to handle the moments that arise and trust our students to engage in these moments. And…a big part of that comes out of us knowing pedagogical moves and being prepared for whatever those moments might hold. Focusing on pedagogy: What do we do to prepare? Threading: Take the pressure off teachers to solve the world’s probl;ems in one conversation or for students to understand antiracism in one conversation. Thread conversations about race through multiple texts and units throughout the year. Formats: Give kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes (turn and talk with one partner, talk in a small group, whole class discussion). This way, different kids get the chance to speak where they’re most ready, as some feel more comfortable speaking up in different settings. Administrative Support Be encouraging, visit regularly, set up peer structures of common planning time and peer observation for all teachers (not just the teachers who are struggling, also the ones who are doing well.) Also have teachers’ backs. And teachers…make sure you tell your administrators what’s happening in your classes so they’re not surprised. Biggest Challenge? Educators may face challenges such as student misbehavior during discussions. Kids may start acting goofy when they’re uncomfortable. You can proactively support this by co-creating class agreements and having a plan for helping students deal with feeling uncomfortable—celebrate this as an opportunity for learning! One Step to Get Started Matt says start a consistent community-building activity that becomes a dependable part of the classroom routine (e.g., Good News Mondays or Journal Tuesdays). This sets the stage for trust and open dialogue, laying the groundwork for deeper, more meaningful conversations. Jen seconds this, explaining , “[do] whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong, solid classroom community, because conversation about anything doesn't work without it.” Stay Connected You can find this week’s guests online. Jen is on her website, and Matt is on his website and on Twitter. To help you learn more about this pedagogy, Matt has a curated list of great videos on his site, which we’re sharing with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 162 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:
TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Hi, my name is Leon. I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. Our two guests today are Matthew Kay and Jennifer or in this episode, Matthew Kay is a proud part of Philadelphia's public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy. He's a graduate of West Chester University and holds a master's in educational leadership with a principal certificate from the University of Pennsylvania. Jennifer. Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than 2.5 decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She's the author of demystifying Discussion, how to teach and assess academic conversation skills K through five. And the, the author of we're going to keep on talking how to lead meaningful race conversations in the elementary classroom. She's a National Board certified teacher and a frequent mentor to new and Preser teachers. I hope you enjoyed this episode back to the show, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. 00:01:11Edit I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go, Jennifer or, and Matthew K. Welcome to the Time for Teachers Podcast. Hello. So excited to have you both. I absolutely loved both of your books, Matt and, and Jen your your book with Matt. It has been incredible to think about and use as a resource in instructional coaching conversations for folks who are having discussion, particularly about like meaningful discussion, racial justice discussion, things happening in the world, discussions, books, discussions, social studies discussions, all the discussions. So I think one of the big things that I want to know from you and from all the guests we usually start with is this idea of freedom dreaming, really anchoring our conversation. 00:02:15Edit And so Doctor Bettina Love talks about this beautifully, as she says, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that in mind, I'm wondering what are the dreams that you each hold for education, for teachers, the fields? That's a really big question. Um Having just had the chance to listen to Doctor Love recently um which was such a gift. Um I feel so inspired, so motivated um so called to action by her. And I, I think having been in this profession for so long now, this is my 26th year of classroom teaching. Um I, it feels small to dream that teachers be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Um But I, I think that's where I am, sadly, just that idea that we can respect and know that teachers know what they're doing and trust that that's happening on a regular basis. Oh, that's a good one. I second that um I think uh I, my dream would be that kids are treated as thinking beings again. 00:03:28Edit Um And like as people who can make up their own minds about things. It's funny how um paradoxically all of the like anti indoctrination conversation is actually doing the, the, the indoctrinating. Like those are the folks who are kind of cutting off kids access to ideas because we feel like they can't make up their own minds. Um So we feel like we have to, you know, over guide and I think just kind of respecting kids as humans who can make up their mind, I think would be my dream. I love that so much. I was looking back at my initial reflections in 2020 when I read your first book that and I had written down the quote, there is no more effective form of intrinsic motivation than the opportunity to say something new. And I absolutely love that. And I love that this book, you all are gifting teachers with the tools and the ideas to be able to invite students to say something new and to think for themselves and create something new, which I think is, is absolutely part of my dream as well. 00:04:36Edit So I, I really appreciate that as like an anchor to this conversation and Jen to your point that treating teachers like professionals, right? We have to believe that we are, we are capable of making these decisions that are in the best interests of students. I recently had um on the podcast. It may air after this but um Diana and uh Diana hat and Paul mcavoy who talk about the political classroom and they talk about this idea of discussion. Um and, and just along those same lines of when we make decisions as educators about when to step in and when to step back from conversations, which you all talk about in the book quite a bit, they were talking about, it's fine to do whatever you need to do given all the context, but you have to have the student's best interests at heart, right? It's not about what makes me comfortable or uncomfortable or I wanna share my thoughts or not. It's like what is in the best interest of furthering students thinking for the themselves. And I, I think there's a lot of trust for teachers in that and there's a lot of both of your dreams in that. Um There's, there's so many different pieces to this work that I kind of want to name a few and then just see what grabs your attention and we could go down any of those paths. 00:05:41Edit But there's the mindset piece that I hear you all talking about a little bit um in, in your book, right? Like what's that kind of culture of student learning? And what's that um thing that we need to think about as teachers to be able to maybe shift to or, or kind of set the stage for doing this. There's also the pedagogical moves. So there's kind of the uh how do we literally format it? What are, what are the prompts we're offering students to discuss? Um how do we step in, step out? And then there's also like the the content kind of like the prompts that you so beautifully kind of create and, and very intentionally. So I like how you walk through that a lot in the book. And so in all of that kind of the mindset, the pedagogy ps the content, what do you feel like as your heart or the teacher should know about as they're kind of thinking through this stuff? What's important for you? Um I'm always gonna focus on the pedagogical move part. Um because I think um that respectfully, there's a lot of smart people tackling a lot of the other stuff. 00:06:46Edit Um She's trying to help teachers get their minds, right? Trying to help kids. She's trying to help teachers you know, get, you know, the to, to, to be in the right place. Um, uh, and my focus is always going to be like, all right. So you're in the room with 30 kids? What do you do? Like, that's always gonna be my move. Like that's always gonna be my focus because a lot of times those peop those people get ignored. Um, once teachers are at that stage, it's like now go discuss and it's like, well, I don't know, I don't know what that means. Um, and I think, you know, we're very good at being told that we need to discuss something, but sometimes the conversation ends once we're at the point of discussing. And so I'm always gonna be like, how do you make the best prompts? How do you recover from mistakes? How do you, um, those kind of things? So that's always gonna be, you know, with, with deep respect for everyone who's working on other aspects of this work. Um I kind of find it refreshing for myself to stay in my lane about like, what do you do in the classroom? 00:07:50Edit And that's, that's kind of like my thing. J are you in the same thing? I mean, all of those things are things, Matt and I have talked a lot about and spend a lot of time thinking about. Um, but I do think the part that makes, that makes the biggest difference in, in that trust piece whether it's trusting ourselves as professionals to handle these moments, whether it's trusting our students to engage in these moments. Um A big part of that comes out of us, knowing those pedagogical moves and being prepared um for, for whatever those moments might hold. Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful way to put it, right? So we can't, we can't like trust that everything's gonna work out fine if we don't have the preparation behind it and to know literally, yeah, what does it look like in the moment? So a student says this go like, what, how do you respond? Right. That's it like, and I think the fear of not having that, you know, coaching, idea preparation, whatever is what often times in my coaching relationships with teachers scares teachers away from ever engaging in it in the first place. 00:08:54Edit It's like, well, what if that happens? Right? And so I'm curious to know how, I mean, you talk about a lot of stuff in the book, what are the big pieces that you would name for teachers in terms of um having like the, the strategies, the approach that are really core to every, you know, every discussion that you kind of go in with like, OK, I have this in my head. I've set it up this way, you know, these are the keys. Um If you were talking for example to a, a teacher who's like, I wanna do this and I'm nervous um that was one of the first things that, that I learned from that in working on this was that, that is who we're talking to. Um, and that's a really important thing for, for me to hang on to like I'm not trying to convince you to do this. If you are not sold on, on engaging in these conversations, I don't want you to do it. Um It, it's too, it can be too easily fraught to push someone into it. Um I, I think a big piece of it for me and maybe it's because I work with young Children, maybe it's a general thing is that I don't want to jump into anything too quickly. 00:10:02Edit Um I want to know that I have spent the time thinking about it whether that's because it's a picture book we're gonna read or a novel we're reading together, whether that's because it's a piece of history that we're discussing. Um the deeper my thought process is and the deeper my background knowledge is the better prepared I'm gonna be for the kinds of questions and ideas that will come out from my kids. A great nothing real to add. I think that, yeah, that makes absolute sense. Iii I think also it's really important to distinguish, generate like you, you're talking about like young kids, right? And, and that, and, and myself as well, like high school is our RJ M and so it's a really different space uh in some ways and there are also these kind of core concepts that I think thread through. So Jen, one of the things that I think you were talking about in the book maybe from a space of elementary was this idea of like layering and threading. I, I can't remember if that's what you call a threading. Right. Yeah. Matt actually is probably a better person to speak to that. Oh, ok. Awesome. Because I was thinking, but this resonates so much for high schoolers. 00:11:09Edit Ok. Yeah. Can you talk us through the idea and the concept of writing? And like, I think one of the things that you say is like, if every conversation can't be the conversation that you have about race in the classroom. Yeah. It's kind of like, um, with an, you want to take the pressure off the teachers to have the massive conversation that it changes the world or their community or the school or whatever, right? You wanna make sure that they're just trying to lead a good conversation that intrigues kids and challenges them and makes them think and respects them as thinkers and that's it, like, as far as the goal is concerned. Um, and I think what helps with that is if over a series of conversations, kids see a clear connection. Um and um that's, I think just good pedagogy regardless, but also when it comes to race conversations, I think it takes on another layer of, of importance. Um So it's like, I don't have to like, they don't have to un understand all that comes with privilege from one conversation. 00:12:15Edit They can see uh sequentially developed, understanding begin to emerge. Um And over the course of a unit and then between the units, like even connecting the units to um each other, I think that um that threading just literally tying the conversations together um is an important way to take the pressure off of ourselves to do it all in one go. Like, what if a kid's absent that day? Right. Do they get to do? Did they miss all of the anti racism for the whole year? Like what if they had a, you know, they left for a basketball game. So now, you know, they don't get to talk about race anymore. II I think taking the pressure off of any one moment or they don't like that book, it's like sometimes they don't like that book. And so if all of the conversations are couched in to kill a Mockingbird and they didn't like to kill a Mockingbird, then, you know, we're missing opportunities and I think, but making sure that we take the pressure off of any one conversation to do all the work is good. 00:13:16Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping and to share this episode's Freebie. It's a collection of videos based on Matt's concept, not light but fire. You can find it at the blog post for this episode www dot Lindsay, Beth lines.com/one 62. Check it out. Now, back to the show. I love that perspective too because it's about taking the pressure off. It's about what's helpful for teachers. I entered that conversation or that that point initially thinking well, threading is a way to also communicate to students, you know, that, that this is important and we're gonna kind of, but I love the layer of like this is, this is also really helpful for teachers to be able to not have that pressure or for the students to not have that pressure because I chose to like, you know, be with my basketball team that day. Like I think it does help, you know, I think um in addition uh to making it easier on the teachers, um it helps students if they are, let's say a kid a little bit quieter. Um and um sometimes the kids are quiet just because they're quiet and that's awesome. 00:14:22Edit They can be quiet. I have no problem with that, but sometimes the kids quiet because they're a little bit nervous about participating. Um which means if a conversation is again a one shot deal, then they miss their shot, right? But if you are having the conversation or different versions of it the next day and then the next day as you work your way through a book or as you read multiple um young adult books or children's books or as you like, if they, if there is a connected tissue, then they might have been nervous on Monday, but they might be less nervous on Wednesday and, and by next Monday they might be ready to put their hand up, you know, and I think that's another advantage to it. I love that. You said that because it, it makes me want to ask about the, the formats that a discussion can take, right? So for the quiet kid, I love that you're also saying the threading is kind of the support the scaffold for that student to enter the conversation and feel comfort and for the kid who is just quiet or who communicates best verbally or I mean, non verbally, right? I'm wondering, you, you all talked about this a little bit in the book um of those different formats that it could take um and the different supports that we could offer students particularly like I was thinking of the one example too of like the nuances of young kids because I, I didn't teach young kids. 00:15:37Edit So I was fascinated by your point about um listening patiently and like having the strategies to hold on to a thought for a young kid. And I also was like, I as an adult could use that, right? I think our high schoolers can also use a version of that, right? Because there's those kids who are talking so much because they don't want to forget what they have to say. So they're interrupting someone because they're so excited. So considering all the different styles and learning styles and um engagement styles of students in a room, what are those considerations? Like? What's the consideration for the kid who talks a lot? What's the consideration for the kid who's, you know, more a small group kid or, or a kid who is just a little hesitant to, to share verbally any cops on that? Oh, so many thoughts Lindsay. But I think one of the things that you just got at that is so huge is that while there are differences between having, engaging in these conversations with young kids and with high school kids, so much of it carries through. I mean, when Matt's first book came out in 2018 but not light a fire was out. I read it and it was such a support for me, even though in 2018 I was teaching third graders, maybe, um, maybe for kindergartners. 00:16:45Edit I mean, definitely not older kids. Um, but the kinds of strategies that Matt talked about were things that I could kind of take on too because it, we as teachers are teachers across the ages and kids are kids. And so while there are certain things we have to think carefully about, there's a lot that carries through, um, when it comes to kind of the different kinds of kids in a group, I, I think there's some really easy things to keep in mind. One of which is giving kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes. So having kids turn and talk with one partner, having kids turned in a small group, having kids talk in the whole class. There's benefits and drawbacks to each kind of group size. But one of the benefits is that different kids get their voices heard or get the chance to speak up or feel more comfortable speaking up um in, in different groups. I'm also curious, I, I'm envisioning, you know, a a leader coming in to see your classes and thinking about all the dynamics of leader observation, leader, support or lack of support. 00:17:49Edit Um I'm curious to know, I think there's a lot of leaders who listen to this podcast, not just teachers. And so for leaders, how can leaders best support teachers who are doing this work? Like what's the, what, what's kind of your dream, whether whether you're experiencing it now or not? Like I, I think it would be really cool to uh tell leaders how they can either advocate support or um observe in a way that's actually really helpful and um supportive when we're doing this work. I mean, I have an excellent administrator who is very supportive. Um And so I think being encouraging is something that is sounds super simple and some people find ways to make that really complicated, like, like saying, thank you. That's another thing that admin like some people like the teacher did something and they didn't have to. So say thank you, like, you would think that that's a, like a, a some people make that way harder than, than it should be. 00:18:51Edit Um But I think beyond the encouraging, there's also um having consistent observation and clear structures. Um um And what I mean by that is like, and I know, look, admins have way too much on their plate. And so I'm not like there's a reason that most admin who's worth any salt would definitely want be love to spend all of their time in classrooms, observing teachers and doing other. So and the reason they're not is not because they're choosing not to. So this actually might even go a level above admins to be honest. Um A lot of this conversation is if you want to support admins, supporting teachers, you have to free up admins so that they can support teachers. Um um because, you know, if you're only being seen twice a year, um you know, or, you know, it's hard for a teacher to feel as supported. Um But also I understand why they can only be seen once or twice a year from someone from the administration team because they're busy, they're doing all sorts of other things. 00:20:01Edit Um But absent that I think setting up peer structures, um common planning time and those kind of things so that if the admin can't, you know, you know, it's not just the admin is doing the observations, the colleagues are doing observations and folks, you know, and they're given time to unpack what they see. Um um But I think just having consistency around that somehow we've got to find a way for teachers to have consistent observations with clear structures. I think that's the part that looks like so many di different things, but there has to be a consistency there. Um um That is often not the case. It makes me think of your threading idea, right? Of just like it can't be the one time that you come in. Like the whole idea is like we're learning and growing. So an admin who comes in in October and then comes back in November is like, oh wow, I can see the, I see that you've gotten better with this thing. Well, here's the thing that also this, this might be a little awkward to say, but like like average developing and good teachers need love too. 00:21:09Edit Like if that makes sense, like a lot of times the folks, the the the teachers who get as much uh to get consistent eyes on their practice are the teachers who are in a moment where they're struggling big time. Like those are the people who get teacher coaches, those are the people who have admins constantly. Those are the people who have all these structures set up to support them. But folks who are like their classroom is not burning down like they're like, cool, keep with the not burning down and it, it's, it's great and your test score, you know what I mean? Your test scores are fine. You're not always sending kiss at office, you know, like you're, um, and I feel like sometimes, you know, the average developing teacher of which we are all that person, like where we're like, we're just trying to get better. Um, they need, you know, they, they also need consistency and the teachers who are like nailing it like the Jens and Mats of the world also need, you know what I mean? Like we have a certain level of confidence and we're veterans at this and stuff like that, but I benefit, you know, I was just at dinner with Jen and I was picking ideas around just say, oh, I could do this like it's cool for us. 00:22:20Edit We benefit from having conversations about what we do and that happens. So rare, structurally with veteran teachers, they're like, you're, you know, you're not just not burning down, you're doing well. So godspeed like, like, and we are kind of left out of the conversation about, you know, how to get better. So, yeah, I think we, we find our own ways to do it because it is, we find our own way. It's not a systemic structural thing happening for us. I think that's a really good point. I would also add in thinking about how leaders can support in this work. I'm gonna totally support everything. Matt just said and add on the idea that in some places, at least doing this work can be risky. And so the more the leaders know what's happening in those classrooms and understand why it's happening and can have those teachers backs. That's gonna be huge. Matt and I are both lucky to be in places where that's not really a problem. Um, but that is not true for many, many teachers and to add off of what Jen said, um um, also not putting our admins in places where having our, where we're having our back is, is, is, is, is it isn't a fair thing to ask. 00:23:36Edit Like, like we, the communication has to go both ways. Hey, Edmund, I'm doing this, you know, this is what's going on, this is what might happen is, do I have any spots that I'm missing things? Do I have anything? I'm gonna need your, like, we have to stop surprising Edmunds too. Um I, that I've had that uncomfortable conversation with my boss a couple of times when I was younger and did that kind of stuff. It was kind of like, and he's like, oh, so I got your back but don't ever do that again. Like, don't ever like you need to, I'm getting parent like you knew parents was about to email me because you're reading that book, like you trying to read like if, if you're trying to read fun home with ninth graders. I need to know about it. Like you're trying to read, like, like you knew better than that. Like, you need to, like, we need to talk this through so we can figure out. And I think, and I, that landed with me, it said don't put me in a position where I have to cover for you and I'll know what I'm talking about because I don't help either one of us. So, um, yeah, that's a really good point. 00:24:40Edit I had, I have never heard someone actually articulate that end of it. That is beautiful. I'm so glad you said that I got fussed at. So I it got clear. He said, don't, don't do that to me again. Well, if we're going to ask our admin to have our backs, then the slightest thing we can do is make sure that they are not blindsided by it. They are ready, they are prepared. I think there, there are, I think this is really a point that you bring about in terms of like, um, I think j you use the word risk and, and just this idea of like parent phone calls or, and like all the things right that are happening in people's heads. I have a lot of thoughts about that, right? Like who's, whose family voices occupy our heads in the first is number one. So that's problematic, right? Who we're planning for on that. But I also think, you know, this idea of challenges is a big one, particularly for leaders who might want to kind of nurture and foster this in their teachers or teachers who are like, really excited about this. Um or the teachers who are like, you know, I'm, I'm um I'm ready and I kind of on the fence. I haven't started yet, but I'm, I'm ready to, to kind of get that, which is your target audience. I think, you know, what, what is the biggest challenge that you've had as educators or you've heard other educators share with you maybe as a result of the book and, and how have you helped like, work through it or help them work through it? 00:25:56Edit I haven't encountered, oh, no, go, go, go. I think just owning my privileged teaching where I teach, like I haven't faced as many, you know, issues from like, you know, racist parents and stuff like that. That's, that's not necessarily the demographic that I'm working with. Um um you know, I had the, the occasional blip but that's not a consistent, you know, thing. So I was gonna own that like, I have, you know, I, I have my ideas but that's not my lived experience. But um I think we don't talk as much as we probably should about student misbehavior. Like I think sometimes during conversations because a lot of times kids are coming from classrooms that are not that dialogic. And so it feels to them, like, free time. Like, they don't have an idea, they don't have the conceptual, like we are still working, we're just working through talking. They're like, we're just talking so I can do whatever I want. And I think that's part of what scares a lot of teachers away from having conversations because when, when you're doing other, you know, other activities, um, e everyone must be writing, everyone's filling out this sheet. 00:27:00Edit Everyone is re, you know what I mean? But when you're having a discussion sometimes, um, frankly, a lot of the biggest things and I don't, we didn't even write about this to be honest, but it's kids acting up. Um, and I think that in, in, in, in high school it's something I've seen, um, how well being dialogic has to connect with someone's basic classroom management, toolkit. Um, it's, it's, it's a, it's actually a really big issue and a lot of times, um, it's one thing that I'm constantly reminded of every year when I'm a student teacher because I have control of my classroom. Like I'm the alpha of my classroom. I do my, like I'm old school with many aspects of my, like, it's mine, y'all are just passing through. That's how I operate. Um, which means I can have all these open loose conversations because with the snap, I feel like I can, like, bring them back and bring like there's no, you know, I don't feel like I'm wrestling because I'm the alpha in the classroom. 00:28:04Edit But sometimes, um, student teachers come into the room and they're on some, like, I get student teachers from Penn and some other place and they're getting like this super progressive, like, like student voice centered, you know, and so they come in and they're like having trouble saying, like, stop talking, like, they have trouble with that. They're like, guys, this guy, they make a lot of, and they're, and I think conversations about leading class discussions have to also include discipline and structures of discipline and like, and having the confidence to assert yourself in the space. Um, and I think that's, most of my problems have been, like, internal, like, around that. Um, and, and I don't, it's not as much of a problem for me anymore. Uh, but seeing young teachers, I see, um, or not young, uh, uh, new, new teachers. It's, it's like that is a big and I think it's probably one of the biggest reasons why teachers don't. 00:29:04Edit They're like, once I start having conversations they, they start acting up and so I don't wanna do that anymore. Yeah, I think that's true at all levels too. Um, although if we did a better job of it earlier, it probably wouldn't be as big a problem by the time they get to you Matt. But I don't know, kids are gonna do it ma, to participate in class conversations more frequently. Um, I think another piece of that same problem. And this, I see more by upper elementary is that when conversations get difficult or uncomfortable, um, kids start to get goofy as a way of dealing with their discomfort. And so similarly, you, as the teacher have to be prepared both to address that in the moment, but also to support those kids in their discomfort because they're not doing it to be difficult, they're doing it because they don't know how to function in that in that moment. Um And so how do you help them while also making sure that that doesn't completely throw the conversation off the rails? I love that. You both just named that I am fascinated by that. So I think, yeah, one just thought for listeners who are like, you know, what if I do have those challenges? 00:30:10Edit One uh I think co creating class agreements is always really helpful for me. So just to be able to have that shared accountability is something I think that you, you guys talk about in the book, just like with this idea of um we are a community, these are community agreements, we are communally agreeing to them. So, you know, me being able to say like we need to stop talking is because we said we would stop talking when one person is talking, right? And so to be able to anchor in that I think is important and it also love this idea of um this idea of like this discomfort and being in discomfort and how do we exist in discomfort as this thing? We need to help students experience to grow. And so I think it's intrinsic to this, to conversations about race. So that what we're talking about today is your book. It's I think also just, you know, this could be extrapolated into many spaces and many growth spaces in education is a place where growth spaces are happening all the time. I think about so many adults who struggle and who make a joke to kind of avoid the conversation, right? Who, who are avoiding in some way where that behavior shows up and you're like this is happening in this second grade class D what is going on like that? 00:31:15Edit We haven't figured it out as adults. So I think that's a huge, huge area of practice and and just kind of like acknowledgment for teachers. But also I'm thinking about leaders who are dealing with staff members who may be feeling the same way about conversations about race or current events or things that are connected to race, right? Like in teacher spaces, like in the the hallway or in the teacher lounge or you know, whatever the space is, I think there's, there's so much um that educators at all levels can do to just address it, bring it up and, and have people feeling like it's good to be in discomfort. It's not, that's where we go my, my husband is a college professor and his, like, go to phrase with his students is I want you to be uncomfortable but not frozen because that's where we learn. Like, if you're too uncomfortable it's over. But if you're too comfortable then you're not growing. I think I wrote down the quote from this latest book. I think Matt, you had written it at your Children are gonna be loved, listened to and developmentally appropriately challenged. It's like, yep, that's, that's it. 00:32:19Edit Right. That's the combo. So in closing, I'm thinking about, you know, the educator who's listening to this, getting ready to maybe enter their school day or prep the lesson for tomorrow. What is like one thing that they could do tomorrow or in the next 24 hours that might be a nice, like starting point or, or refining point to something um, that they could do maybe building on something they already do as typical teacher practice or entering the space fresh if they are in. No, that's fine if they're entering the space fresh. I think the answer is a little bit different. Um My thing would be to find a consistent, um, community building activity that matches their personality and matches the, that meets the kids where they are. Um, and something that they can commit to. Um, like for me, it's like good news, Mondays. We do. We're rocking with that every Monday. It's gotten to the, I'm trying to add journal Tuesdays and I always kind of fall off. 00:33:27Edit I have some classes, I'm, but, but I've decided I'm fighting that fight. Like this is a fight, I'm fighting. I will continue to do that. And, you know, SSR Friday and I mean, and, and, and I'm trying to like, and, um, um, I, I think it's the things that you can when things get crazy and you have all these things to do and it's State Testing Day and it's this, that this, that and there's an assembly and all the things that happen are what, what is the thing that you are going to? I'm even going to sacrifice something else for this. We will do this and I think having one is better than having 10. Um And I think as far as community building, so I think if you're starting off, it would be that and if you're in the middle of a year or something like that, it would be um uh testing something like that while being fair to yourself, knowing that it's the middle of the year, there are systems, the kids are used for something else and not overanalyzing how well it worked because I'm, there's a couple of things like I'm trying out a new way of doing SSR, but I told the kids openly as I'm trying to decide this is about next year for me. 00:34:37Edit You are guinea pigs right now. This is about next year for me. Um but I'm trying to see. I'm testing out some structures um to see if it works. But I think specifically with community building and getting to know your kids or any of that stuff that you see Jen or I wrote about with safe space. Like, hopefully I made it clear that there's nothing special about good news or high grade compliments or, or, or the burning five minutes. Like those are things that, you know, half of them I took from Zach Chase, half of them I took myself and it, it's one of those, those activities aren't special. It's the committing to it every week that's special. And so whatever it is that you do, um, find that thing, um, that would be my biggest. And so the teach, so the kids know you for that thing that in the, like you're known for in this class we gonna do this. Um, and they can depend on it. I think that's the hard part with all of those, like crunchy granola, touchy, feely, emotion stuff is that we don't stick with it. 00:35:39Edit Like, but there's gotta be like something that's kind of like we, we're going to do it every Monday. Yeah, I would definitely second that because I don't care what the conversations you're having are, they don't happen. Well, without that, you could be discussing multiplication strategies and you're not gonna have good classroom conversations unless you have that classroom community. Um, and I think Matt hit on the hardest part of that for many teachers is that you have to carve out the time for it and we all feel crunched on time. And so we feel like, but I don't have time for that yet. You don't have time to not do it. Like not doing it costs you in the long run. But that's a really hard thing to begin to truly understand. Um, but that, yeah, that whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong solid classroom community because conversation about anything doesn't work without it. I love those. Those are excellent. I think as a final question, I'm just curious to know where you would want folks to follow up with you if they want to kind of follow you on social media, I'll link to the book in the show notes. Um Other places that you would want to connect with people, all of my socials are some version of Matt RK. 00:36:46Edit So if you look it up, you'll see um and uh uh website, not light.com. Um So check that out. Pick me up. Yeah, Matt and I have both been around long enough to just have our names. So everywhere for me is Gen or um including Gen or.com. Um Yeah, I think it's a sign of how old we are. I'm in the same boat, so we're all, we're all there. Awesome. Thank you both. So, so much. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Thanks Lindsay. Thanks for the invite. If you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapper and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. 00:37:58Edit Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, I’m sharing ideas for how you might approach conversations about the violence in Gaza within your schools and classrooms. Many adults have told me they do not feel equipped enough to facilitate or engage in this conversation, however world events are happening and impacting adults and youth. At a minimum we should make space for students to share their emotional responses and experiences related to this trauma.
And as Michelle MiJung Kim wrote, “Even if you don’t understand the full history, you can draw on your knowledge of power dynamics, characteristics of white supremacy and colonialism, and the use of dehumanizing narratives to justify ethnic cleansing. Even when emotions are running high, you have the skills to create big enough containers to hold and validate people’s grief and fear, while guiding people to challenge the conditions that create violence. You know how to connect the dots to explain how all of us are implicated in this humanitarian and moral crisis.” Note: This episode was recorded on October 31, 2023. What’s happening? First, some historical context: Between 1947-1949, known as the Nakba, an estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including in dozens of massacres, and an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in a capturing of historic Palestine to create the state of Israel ("What’s the Israel-Palestine conflict about? A simple guide"). In the last 16 years, Israel’s occupation of Palestine has created the largest “open air prison” in the world, with Palestinians being banned from travel, including to the West Bank, despite it being widely acknowledged they are both part of a “single territorial unit.” This is clearly not the only context. For more details, you can reference the first link in this paragraph. Most recently (as of this episode), on October 7, 2023, the Palestinian armed group Hamas killed 1,400 people in Israel, many of whom were civilians. Since then, more than 8,000 people have died in Gaza—many of whom were women and children—as a result of Israeli attacks. (Note: This is data as of October 29, 2023.) Additionally, Israel has blockaded Gaza, cutting off critical supplies. In the last several days, Israel has cut off cell phone and internet access for residents of Gaza. Access to health care and clean water are concerns for many, including the estimated 50,000 pregnant women and girls in Gaza. Israel has denied visas to UN officials following a comment that Hamas attacks “didn’t happen in a vacuum.” How do we talk about these events with students (and adults)? Step 1: Establish discussion agreements that center the dignity and humanity of ALL people. A specific clarification of agreements for this conversation might be: antisemitism and Islamophobia will not be tolerated. And critiquing actions of a nation, group, or leader are not antisemitic or Islamophobic. We should be able to critically analyze a government's decisions. This is not the same as expressing racism towards a group of people for who they are. Step 2: Invite folx to share their emotions, and if helpful, personal stories and experiences. (Just speaking from the “I” here.) Step 3: Invite inquiry: What do we want to know or learn more about? What specific questions do we have? Step 4: Level-set on researched facts, and analyze sources and context for power dynamics. Step 5: Practice criticality (Muhammad, 2020) with support. I like to use questions adapted from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model: What do you think about the power and equity at play here? How are individuals or groups disrupting oppression? How might you/we? If you are a social studies teacher, you may want to pull in a resource you’ve used. For example, the Genocide Education Project’s Stages of Genocide resource is one that could help students think through the relevance of the term genocide in relation to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. It would be particularly helpful to examine the Holocaust genocide case study in relation to the previous idea but also to provide the additional context of the Holocaust to deepen analysis. If you are practiced in using a gendered or feminist lens, for example, you may investigate the interplay of militaristic violence and intimate partner violence. The example in this academic paper by Dr. Simona Sharoni is one that illuminates these parallels. Final Tip We cannot have conversations about challenging, high-emotion topics without the grounding in our collective acknowledgement of each person’s humanity. We don’t need to push particularly traumatized individuals to talk about this in classroom spaces when this could be further traumatizing. We also don’t want to avoid conversations about hard things because we don’t feel equipped. We can build our capacity to talk about hard things. We can seek to learn information we don’t yet have. We can enter conversations humbly, and ready to acknowledge our mistakes, while centering justice and human dignity. As an example of how to set a foundation to build up to harder conversations about current events, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda series with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 144 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 here. TRANSCRIPT I'm educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go for this episode. I want to address how we talk about the violence in Gaza in our schools, in our communities. So I'll be sharing ideas for how you might approach conversations about the violence in Gaza within classrooms within your school communities, even as adults. So we're taking both a student and adult lens here. Now, the context is that many adults have told me they do not feel equipped enough to facilitate or engage in this conversation. However, world events are happening and impacting adults and youth and at a minimum, we should make space for students and adults to share their emotional responses and experiences related to this trauma. 00:01:11 I'll give you some more in the episode for reference. This episode was recorded on October 31st 2023. So the specifics of the context, the events happening will be slightly outdated as of the airing, which will be in January 2024. So how do we talk about the violence in Gaza in our schools? I think what's a really important thing to note and the context for I think having this conversation specifically within the realm of the so called DE I World is a, a comment on linkedin which I reposted from Michelle Mizon Kim and she wrote an extended post, but I will just share a clip of it briefly quote. Even if you don't understand the full history, you can draw on your knowledge of power dynamics, characteristics of white supremacy and colonialism and the use of dehumanizing narratives to justify ethnic cleansing. Even when emotions are running high, you have the skills to create big enough containers to hold and validate people's grief and fear while guiding people to challenge the conditions that create violence, you know how to connect the dots to explain how all of us are implicated in this humanitarian and moral crisis. 00:02:17 Again, the quote is far longer. I've linked to it in the blog post which you can access at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 44. I'll be sharing that link again because throughout this episode, there are many references that I have linked within the blog post. It's one of the most heavily linked for a lot of reasons. There are a lot of resources I want to direct you to. There are also a lot of facts that I want to make sure I'm citing. So all of the the links to those are are in here. So let's start with the grounding of what's happening because I think one of the major things that many adults have told me is like, I don't feel comfortable navigating this conversation, even with another adult because I don't feel fully informed. And of course, that means that I don't feel comfortable navigating this conversation with Children and educating and facilitating the conversation with Children where I am responsible for the factual understanding of those kids, right? And so I think part of this work is skill based in, in building the capacity for having the discussions about anything, right? And I talk about that a lot on the podcast. The other piece is for each specific instance, you know, we as educators, as adults, as people, we don't have to have all the answers to everything. 00:03:26 We don't have to be experts in every single content area as current events come up by definition, they're current, right? They're they're ever changing. We don't always have all of the information at hand. And so I think part of that is being able to say I don't have all the answers as an adult, as your teacher, right? So when we're in a context of students, but even as we're adult adult conversing, right, in a staff conversation or something we can say, uh you know, based on what I know, here's the thought. So I just wanna level set again. This is based on a recording of, uh this is the recording date here is October 31st 2023 due to reduction processes and all the things. This will not actually air until the beginning of January of 2024. So I I get that there is, you know, a two month lag here in terms of up to date data. So I'm just gonna share what feels relevant in this moment and what is hopefully still relevant to you in the future? First, the historical context. There's so, so much of it and I've linked to more of it here, but I, I am not an expert on all of the facts. So I will just share what I feel like is relevant to contextualize for our conversation today. 00:04:29 So between 1947 and 1948 during which Israel identified itself as a nation and was created as a nation. Um This period of time to the Palestinian people is known as the nwa of the catastrophe in Arabic. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including dozens of massacres and an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in the capturing of historic Palestine to create the state of Israel. There is a link to a much longer and more in depth guide if you would like more context. Now, in the last 16 years, specifically Israel's occupation of Palestine has created the largest open air prison in the world. With Palestinians being banned from travel, including to the West Bank. Despite it being widely acknowledged, they are part of a single territorial unit by international nations and organizations. Now again, clearly, this is not the only context for more details. Please dive into these links. Um I I do not purport to be a a scholar of um Palestine or Israel most recently as of the airing of this episode or as of the sorry recording of this episode on October 7th 2023 the Palestinian armed group Hamas killed 1400 people in Israel, many of whom were civilians. 00:05:44 Since then, more than 8000 people have died in Gaza, many of whom were women and Children. As a result of Israeli attacks, specifically, I want to name these are attacks by the Israeli military Israel government. So additionally, Israel has blockaded Gaza cutting off critical supplies in the last several days. As of this recording, Israel has cut off cell phone and internet access for residents of Gaza access to health care and clean water are concerns for many many people but including as they often take a feminist lens in these things, an estimated 50,000 women and girls who are currently pregnant and living in Gaza Israel recently in, in the last week or so has denied visas to un officials following a comment that Hamas attacks didn't happen in a vacuum. And that's, that's quotes around, didn't happen in a vacuum. So recognizing the context there. So these are all of the facts that are circulating in my head. These are the things that I am thinking about and of course, this is steeped with emotion, additional context. I don't, I don't have the space or the knowledge to get into. 00:06:50 But what I do know is that students and adults are going to need to process this in some way. So for some of them, they can process this with their families. For some of them, they're processing individually internally um with friend groups, with peers, some are trying to, you know, look to the internet and, and finding people that they follow on social media and what they say and they're repeating that creating, you know, perhaps a container that may not be the most fruitful for generative discussion about emotional events. And so with that understanding, here's what I would suggest and it, it is parallel to many other times I've recorded episodes like this and recorded episodes that are both generic and specific. I know a few years ago I was recording, how do we talk uh with white students about the attacks on the Capitol, right? That that happened in early January as well. So this is kind of reminiscent of of a lot of the structure that I would use in talking about a lot of current events. The first step is to establish discussion agreements that center the dignity and humanity of all people. So this is critical if you don't have this, you can't engage in this discussion, right? 00:07:55 And which is why I think social media is a really challenging place to have discussions like this. We don't have that shared connection. We don't have that co created community. We don't have clear agreements that we all have consented to um enact or, or abide by, right? This is the unique difference that we have in communities of care, communities of educational environments, of friend groups, of, of families, places where we can center the dignity and humanity of all people. And we can specifically agree to that through consensus and we can specifically core how that looks for us. What does it look like in practice? What do we do to call each other to account when that is not happening, we have a unique space in classrooms and school communities to do this work. And so I think if it's not happening in their friend groups and family groups or it's happening, but it's not happening in a way that centers the dignity and humanity of all people, here's even more reason that we do it here, we do it in our spaces in schools and educational communities whose whole point is to learn and to think critically and to have um disc course with folks, right? 00:09:00 And then hopefully, ideally, students and adults take that and bring it into their own spaces of discourse with families and friends and loved ones. Now, I would want to specifically clarify an agreement or create an agreement for this particular conversation about Palestine because we want to say very clearly that anti-semitism and Islamophobia will not be tolerated, right? We are never tolerating racism that violates the inherent centering of dignity and humanity of all people. It just goes against the core principle that we're developing agreements around, right? So obviously, that's not tolerated. And at the same time, we can critique actions of a nation group or leader because that in and of itself is not anti Semitic or Islamophobic. So we should be able to critically analyze a government's decisions, for example. And it is not the same as expressing racism toward a group of people for who they are, right, for their identity and the identity group they belong to, right? So these are not the same step two invite folks to share their emotions and if it's helpful, personal stories and experiences, again, I think really important that it's personal here, that it is speaking from the eye that it is not. 00:10:13 Here's my opinion on this or here is um you know, this like fourth hand account that I saw on social media and I'm completely divorced um from in terms of like my own personal connections, like I just don't think that's the time or place for this. I think there might be a time or place for that at some point. But initially, we want to start again to see the humanity in each of us to see the humanity of the folks in the room in the conversation, what emotions are they experiencing? And again, it can, it can stop at just the emotion at this point, right? You don't have to share stories that's up to you and your facilitation. It's also up to the community in terms of what they're willing to hear, able to hear the next step. I think after we've done this, after we've acknowledged, you know, the agreements, the emotions in the space, potentially personal um stories or, or experiences that resonate with them in that moment. Step three is to invite inquiry. So notice we haven't even like gotten to like a complete factual like, you know, like here is exactly what's going on in all the things. Yeah, I do think there is a degree of factual grounding just to enter the conversation. 00:11:18 But that could literally be like a headline or um a, a still image of like a, a website, a news website or something, right? Like just to say like here's what's going on in the world in like snapshots and like headshots, like maybe a visual like that is not traumatizing. But like, I think we don't need to get to all the granularity of the facts just yet. Because again, all of these first initial layers and steps are to make sure that beyond anything else, we are practicing again and again, that centering of humanity and human dignity across the board across our group. So in step three, inviting inquiry, what we want to do is ask questions like what do we want to know about? What more might we want to learn about as a class or you as an individual? Right? Even again, thinking about doing this as a staff PD two for adults to grapple with this to then maybe go talk to students about it, maybe not, but I think adults need practice with this as well. What specific questions do we have? So we're listing all of those out and then we as a class collective or maybe a group, each, each student group or each adult group chooses a question and kind of like goes on, you know, an academic research journey, right? 00:12:28 We pursue inquiry just like we would pursue inquiry in anything in a historical way, right? And about a historical event, we want step four then to be that we're kind of level setting on the research facts we're sharing out, we're also analyzing sources, we have a critical lens we're specifically thinking about the context, right? Nothing, nothing does exist without context. So every kind of thing we're, we're kind of putting together, right? Some of the questions they overlap and help us contextualize like, oh, this group found that, well, I found this in, in my group. So, you know, let's contextualize it all. Let's look at the specific power dynamics, right? If we're censoring justice, we are looking at power dynamics, we are putting on a critical lens. And I think that's step five, right? We're gonna elevate and and further practice criticality, which is a phrase that Doctor Goldie Muhammad uses in her book Cultivating Genius and her Hill model of curriculum development and pedagogy, right? And I think there are supports that go with this and I've talked about these before, but I'll, I'll just talk a little bit about what I would do in this scenario. I I like to use questions that are adapted from Doctor Mohammed's Hill model. 00:13:31 So she has one on criticality that is mostly for people who are creating curriculum. So as you develop this lesson, how do you center criticality, that kind of thing, specific questions that I would pose to a group of students or adults for conversation around a current event would be adaptations from now. So for example, what do you think about the power and equity at play here? Right? Who holds the power where lies in equity? Those kinds of questions? Also, we don't want to just analyze inequity. We don't want to just sit in the injustice, right? I think I've, I've heard this from like anecdotally from people in my classes. I've heard it from colleagues who know the work that I do. I've, you know, seen it um in, in, in terms of research studies, it is also critically important that we do the second part of Doctor Mohammed's criticality question as well where we're talking about disrupting oppression. So also naming, you know, how are individuals or groups disrupting oppression right now? And how might you as an individual, how might we as a collective group disrupt oppression right now? 00:14:35 So we're not all just steeped in the injustice. Yes, we are. But we also can name agency in what folks are doing, acknowledge that work and then what we can do. So we don't have to um we, we can, right, create the space for the emotion and then we can also create a path forward if you were a social studies teacher. So these next couple of recommendations for step four where we're really like practicing that criticality. Like you might bring in some different resources depending on what your class is familiar with what you've used before. I always like to leverage things that you've used before and be able to use that as a lens. So for example, if you're a social studies teacher, you may want to pull in a resource you've used like the Genocide Education project. I know has a lot of grants. So you might use their stages of genocide resource packet that's helping students think through the relevance of the term genocide in relation to Israel's attack on Gaza. So you might actually go through the stages and be like, do we see these? Right, how do we see these? Um if you're practicing in uh like an el a class or social studies class or some other class using a gendered or feminist lens. 00:15:37 For example, you may investigate the interplay of militaristic violence and intimate partner violence. There's an a powerful example from Doctor Simona Cirone, who was one of my uh feminist teachers in college. She wrote an academic paper that kind of illuminates these parallels really well and I'll link that again in the blog post. Um One more time that blog post for listeners is Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 44. Now, as I'm kind of wrapping up, we've, we've said a lot, there's been a lot. This is an emotionally heavy episode. I do want to name the final kind of takeaways I think for this particular conversation about the violence in Gaza. But also any current event, anytime we're talking about an event or series of events that are unfolding in the world that are impacting us that are carrying with them high emotions and long historical contexts that we as individual educators may or may not fully um be aware of all of those things are, are important to name and consider and, and build around, right? 00:16:40 But II, I wanna say these final things to, to kind of leave us, we cannot have conversations about challenging high emotion topics without the grounding in our collective acknowledgment of each person's humanity. We don't need to push particularly traumatized individuals to talk about this in classroom spaces when this could be further traumatizing. This also includes things like using visuals or videos um or even sounds right that are emotionally traumatizing. We have folks at different, in different emotional spaces. And I think that's another value of inviting folks to share their emotions. Of course, every everything, every share opportunity is an opportunity. And so it's not mandatory, but I think inviting that emotion share out helps us as facilitators of these conversations to know where exactly everyone is. Um And how, how like emotionally raw um some folks are and, and, and I think that makes, helps us make decisions accordingly. Um We also don't want to avoid conversations about hard things because we don't feel equipped, we can build our capacity to talk about hard things. 00:17:45 We can seek to learn information. We don't yet have, we can enter conversations humbly and ready to acknowledge our mistakes while censoring justice and human dignity. And if we can do those things, that is my freedom dream for all classrooms, for all educational spaces, for all staff meetings and team meetings amongst adults, this is my hope for all families. This is my hope for all friend groups, right? This is it, this is the generative dialogue that is at the heart of making sense of our world is at the heart of expressing our humanity and seeing the humanity in others. This is the heart of restorative justice, peace building. This is at the heart of why I went into education, right? Because I wanted to build a better world. And I think youth are the the place and educators who are lifelong learners and committed to the journey of being better, always and creating co creating better futures with our youth. This is where that dream is most possible and most likely to flourish. 00:18:54 If you have these conversations, please reach out to me and let me know how they go. If you have additional recommendations or things that you've tried that have worked well in terms of having this conversation, please reach out if you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan. Talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I show you how to embark on a policy change:
Lindsay considers the moments leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol and what she decided to talk about with her white teachers teaching mostly white students after realizing it was an important learning opportunity. What happened that day On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, the United States experienced a domestic terrorist attack on its government for the first time in history. An angry mob composed of thousands of white supremacists stormed up the U.S. Capitol and passed Capitol police officers with ease. A dozen of the men from the mob made it into the building These rioters occupied, vandalized, and looted parts of the building for several hours. The events of this day led to much damage, disorder, and stress about how to handle the situation and all those responsible. In the weeks leading up to the attack, there were multiple social media groups and far right organizations that discussed plans to occupy the Capitol after a tweet by President Trump urged his supporters to gather on the 6th for a rally and protest. On the morning of January 6th, Trump provoked everyone there to march to the Capitol and fight to disrupt Congress’s certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election. It took hours for the national guard and extra officers to clear everyone out and yet all the members of Congress still came back together at the end of the night to do what they had set out to do. Creating options for our students Lindsay was in the middle of a virtual teacher training when news of the insurrection broke out. Everyone took a 10 minute pause to catch their breath and do whatever they needed for their own wellbeing before reconvening. Once they came back together, there was an unstructured talk where they could talk about what it was they were feeling. And once that had passed, they moved on towards ideas for students and their curriculum. She knew that what was happening needed to be at the front of their session, so they adjusted the workshop to incorporate a discussion about how to talk to the group's classes of mostly white students, specifically about the attack on the capitol. Bringing up heavy or difficult content is something that many teachers are used to at this point given all that has happened last year alone. Lindsay published an article for BetterLesson about talking to students about the U.S. presidential election in November. We've talked about this on a previous episode of the podcast. Many educators had some helpful advice on how to have these conversations. One educator that spoke said that students should get enough space to process their thoughts and emotions. They might talk it out with someone, journal, step outside, or just have some quiet time. Discussions are an option that many like to use because it gives students the chance to express their internal emotions and gives teachers the chance to sit in the “listening” position and consider their student’s frustrations and thoughts. Any discussions that come up should have a reminder of some agreements for engagement preceding them in order to make sure there are opportunities for everyone to be heard and validated. In these discussions, it’s also important to center dignity. “I love Donna Hicks’s book” Dignity”, [as] another great source.. to really center dignity in everything that we do and discuss in our class and name that a person's humanity, either in our class or beyond our class, it's not up for debate in our conversations or disagreements.” Sudden events like this one are important to include in your classroom because of the large effect they have on your students and their communities but some teachers don’t feel like they can just pause their curriculum with the fast pace it’s set at. Almost everything is planned out for the year way in advance. One of the ways a teacher can make it easier on themselves is to adopt a flexible curriculum already based around racial and social justice. This ensures that these important issues that come up have a place in your class and schedule. Another thing you can do is help white students develop antiracist identities within this justice-forward curriculum. It’s important for white students to see examples of white folx as co-conspirators advancing racial justice. If they don't see racism as their issue or they don't see examples of how to challenge it, white students may avoid talking about or acting against white supremacy. Curriculum can also give students space to take action within the class. Examples include:
And lastly, remember to deconstruct and analyze the event itself. As educators, we have to take what we’re seeing on screen and in the news and help students make sense of what it all means. Take all this surface level information and help them figure out how white supremacy is present. Why did it happen? What allowed for this event to happen? How would it have been different if these people did not have white-skin privilege (i.e., advantage)? To recap these points: 1. Give students enough space to process their emotions 2. Design your curriculum with foundations in social justice 3. Help white students develop antiracist white identities 4. Analyze the event itself If there’s one takeaway from this conversation it’s this: “The question that I came to ask myself every day to address this question for my own practice is this: what does it do to my humanity if I don't teach for justice, and is my humanity a price I'm willing to pay?” To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. You can follow Lindsay on LinkedIn and Instagram. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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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
January 2026
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