Day 2 at Hunt Middle Scool

It's Day 2 at Hunt Middle School and today my host teacher worked with students on current events. In the past I have had concerns about how to appropriately handle current event topics that involve politics. My main concern is how to approach difficult discussions when students bring up controversial subjects. For example, it's not beyond the realm of possibilities that in today's highly charged political climate, students (and parents) might have a strong reaction to certain current event conversations. In the class prior, two students chose to do their current event presentation on the NFL protests while another set of students chose to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Likewise, a third set of students chose to cover the Las Vegas shooting. Each of these news pieces had the potential to cause an issue in the classroom the same way sparks fly on social media, on television, or around the family dinner table. The NFL debate in particular has brought about some intense polarization on social media in the past few months and students are by no means ignorant of the heated debate surrounding the issue. One way to address the political climate is to bring it out into the open and talk about it in schools. Vermont state offered teachers some helpful suggestions on how to address the concerns that students bring in when they cross the threshold. The one rule that I noticed my host teacher put into practice is that students are asked to address both sides of a given issue and present all the relevant facts. With the NFL protests, these tech savvy students were able to create a detailed presentation that used real news sources and cited several opposing views from athletes, service members, people of color, etc. Following the presentation, the class was invited to have an open discussion in order to reflect on what had been said. I was surprised at how respectful and insightful the dialogue was, with students saying things like, "I'd never thought of it that way before." The students really considered ALL the opinions being offered up before making judgments. Meanwhile, the teacher stepped back and let students have a meaningful discourse without entering her own thoughts into the mix. I couldn't help but think to myself that I wish some of the adults I know could have done the same as these middle schoolers.