September 19, 2024
Dear LREI Families,
I hope this note finds you all well as we move into the heart of the year and our routines take hold. During the day, your children are fully invested. As the school day ends, for the older students, they are joining all sorts of clubs and activities – soccer teams are playing and practicing every day, the high school play, “Shakespeare in Love” is in rehearsal, the MS and HS robotics teams are hard at work and soon our new high school speech and debate team will be as well. Afterschool for our younger children is, as always, joyful. Our days are full!
Our plates are full, as well. This is not a complaint by any means. Schools should be busy. We strive to fit a lot into a day. While we are supporting students in their exploration of the world, we are also building the skills they need to become effective explorers. While some skills are grade and discipline specific, others are more general, and all are part of the effort to prepare our students for life outside of the confines of the classroom. This is the heart of our progressive pedagogy.
We have often written and spoken about the need to focus on supporting the students’ ability to listen to each other and to share ideas in an effective and respectful manner. Our focus on fostering civil discourse in our classrooms – adults and students developing these skills – started last June and will continue throughout the year. The following examples illustrate how we are engaging in this work:
- A small group of teachers attended a training session focused on creating truly constructive dialogue in the classroom.
- Early in October, we will host another speaker who will work with parents, middle school and high school students, and faculty. Kalil Oldham, Director of Equity and Community, sent you an invitation to this parent gathering yesterday morning. This will be a time for the whole community to use discourse to deepen our understanding of challenging topics and of each other.
- Built into our plan for this training is additional time for the teachers to practice this work and to share their work with colleagues as they put it to use in classrooms. This work will continue in divisional, departmental, and full school meetings throughout the year.
These skills are essential this fall as many students, including older lower schoolers, will be involved in actively learning about the issues associated with the election. We want the children to have the skills to effectively engage with one another around these topics. Our work as teachers is to create opportunities for students to discover truths and ambiguity on their own while also ordering what they learn in a way that allows them to make sense of the world. The question for us is how we can set the conditions in our classrooms so that all students are comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas, asking questions, and disagreeing. How can we help them to have the intellectual humility to say, “I don’t understand. Can you please explain?” This can be quite hard, especially when the topic under discussion is highly charged, feels immediate, and the stakes seem high. That said, the lessons learned and the habits developed will also serve the students well in lower stakes conversations, in all academic areas, and in their less formal conversations with classmates and friends. These are skills that truly last a lifetime, if you practice them.
In this message and in many conversations, we use a number of terms interchangeably. I am not sure they are actually interchangeable. We often use the word dialogue, which the dictionary defines as something approximating, “conversation”. We speak about talking across difference, which I like as well and seems clear. Although, sometimes, it takes some dialogue to unearth the differences in our points of view. Wikipedia defines the third interchangeable term, “civil discourse”, as, “…the practice of deliberating about matters of public concern in a way that seeks to expand knowledge and promote understanding. The word “civil” relates directly to civic in the sense of being oriented toward public life, and less directly to civility, in the sense of mere politeness.” This was a surprise to me. So, while we do not want our students to be rude, we also don’t want them to be so careful as to not truly challenge each other. Maybe “civil” has taken on the “polite” connotation, which is fine, though we should consider both meanings – a respectful discourse that focuses on our shared society. I am going with this.
Teachers creating an environment where students learn the skills of true conversation, getting to the heart of the matter, grappling with differences, and doing so in a way that is both civic-minded (for the betterment of society) and civil towards each other – not afraid to disagree, though not being disagreeable. In many ways this seems obvious. For our children, again especially the older ones, they see so many models of just the opposite, of folks being disagreeable, of leaders denigrating the humanity of others, which makes our task an uphill climb. We must push back on the baseness and disagreeable disagreements our kids experience every day and demonstrate the challenging though ultimately more successful path.
I am hopeful that as students develop their discourse skills and gain confidence in the security found in classroom discussions, the discomfort they may feel during challenging conversations will turn to confidence and that the process will support them as they deepen their skills and understanding.
This work is not a one-shot-deal. We are committed to sticking with it in a more direct and consistent manner than we have done in recent years. Given the election and other issues that continue to swirl around our days, we have both opportunity and need and will take advantage of this moment as we look forward to the children’s participation and growth.
Peace,
September 22- 28 is Banned Book Week – surely a discussion where civil discourse is needed. Check out all of the resources available at bannedbooksweek.org and PEN America, as suggested by Stacy Dillon, Head librarian, Lower School & Middle School.
Jesse Karp, early childhood librarian, adds, “All readers, though children in particular, use books to explore, interpret and expand their sense of the world. Take a book away from someone and you are removing an idea, a perspective, a glimpse of another place, culture or mind, which in turn makes their world smaller, their thinking less resilient and flexible.” Jesse encourages you to get involved, have a conversation, volunteer in a library or, “Want to get involved in a quiet but effective way? Consider joining the Freedom to Read Foundation.”
And from Karyn Silverman, Head Librarian, Charlton St., “The movement to limit access to books in schools in particular preys on fear, uses false information, and is an attempt to control public education, so while Banned Books Week is about books, it’s also about education, choice, and democracy. The books that are challenged and all-too-often removed from schools are disproportionately books that center historically marginalized voices — black and brown authors and characters, queer characters — and/or nonfiction that highlights moments in history that require hard conversations.”
There are many people working to minimize the impact of book banning and limiting access to important works. Check out the Brooklyn Public Library’s Books Unbanned, a program that offers digital library cards to teens across the country, some of whom can’t find the books they need in their school libraries. “Books Unbanned is a response to an increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books from library shelves.” Maybe most importantly, read.