History Repeats: Navigating Challenging Conversations in the Classroom.
Integrating deliberation into the curriculum can create a classroom environment where students thrive as they engage in rich, challenging, and thoughtful conversations about difficult historical issues. Designed for middle and high school teachers, History Repeats: Navigating Challenging Conversations in the Classroom is an interactive online workshop developed by educators for educators. The program will be held on July 13, 20, and 27 from 6:30-8:00 pm EDT. Teachers who participate in all three will receive 4.5 clock hours of professional learning.
Participants will gain a better understanding of how students can learn about civic virtues and democratic principles and develop world-ready skills needed for working with others to address a variety of public problems. Workshop leaders will also make connections between deliberation and
national social studies standards.
Activities will include deliberative forums on the following issues:
- What should the Pueblo people do to respond to Spanish oppression in 1680, the year of the Pueblo Revolt?
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What should the Creek Indians do about internal disputes about how to respond to white settlers, which led to the Creek Indian Civil War of 1813-14?
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How should residents of Montgomery act in response to racial tensions generated by continuing discrimination in 1955, the year of the bus boycott?
Also included in the workshop will be a session on how the arts can be used to navigate challenging conversations. Storytelling videos will provide a pathway to explore an incident involving the 1934 football game between the University of Michigan and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, who insisted that Michigan had to sit out the lone African American player on their team, a talented end from Detroit named Willis Ward.
The workshop leaders have participated in a number of Kettering Foundation civic education research projects, including Historic Decisions, and some are active in the National Issues Forums Network. Their approach to teaching and learning is informed by deliberative democratic principles and by how they have applied these in their own work with students. The participating institutions and organizations include:
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Caroline Marshall Draughton Center for Arts and Humanities, Auburn University: Mark Wilson, Director
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David Mathews Center for Civic Life: Cristin Brawner, Executive Director, and Gabrielle Lamplugh, Education Director
- Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation: Clare Shubert, Director of Engagement and Programming
- National Center for Civil and Human Rights: Nicole Moore, Director of Education
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History: Abby Pfisterer, Education Specialist, and Eden Cho, Education Technologist
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Let us know what you are doing |
Do you have news or events related to the deliberative public forums work you do? We'd love to be able to share what you're doing. Please send information to Patty Dineen.
If you are planning to hold a forum or workshop, please post a few details in the Events area of the National Issues Forums (NIF) website by logging in and clicking here.
Support public deliberation
Would you like to make a difference in how people talk about public issues in our society? There are three ways to support our work: donate to the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI), the Taylor L. Willingham Legacy Fund, or the Elizabeth "Libby" Kingseed Teaching With Deliberation Memorial Award. Click below to learn more and to donate.
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About Deliberation in National Issues Forums |
National Issues Forums issue guides are designed to stimulate public deliberation, which is a way of making decisions together that is different from discussion or debate. The purpose of deliberative forums is to inform collective action. As citizens, we have to make decisions together before we can act together, whether with other citizens or through legislative bodies. Acting together is essential for addressing problems that can't be solved by one group of people or one institution. These problems have more than one cause and therefore have to be met by a number of mutually reinforcing initiatives with broad public participation.
About the National Issues Forums Institute
The National Issues Forums Institute's mission is to promote the use of public deliberation in schools, colleges, civic organizations, and religious institutions in the United States. The institute's board members are volunteers drawn from leaders in government, colleges and universities, libraries, civic organizations, the media, and medicine. For more information visit www.nifi.org.
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