At some point in every teacher’s career, we have to deal with sensitive issues. As my school year began last week, the events in Ferguson, Missouri, filled the news outlets and became the subject of some vital conversations with my students.
Before the first class had begun, a student approached me and asked: “Have you been keeping up with what’s going on in Ferguson? Something like that happened here too.”
To be honest, Ferguson wasn’t the first thing on most of my students’ minds. From what I overheard in the pre-class chatter they were mostly thinking about summer and catching up with their friends and classmates. But once the discussion opened up in my class, one student said: “Ferguson shows me that racial tensions are still very real in America. They’re just something that we as a community don’t talk about anymore. It’s become kind of a taboo subject.”
A pupil recalled recently finding a Time magazine while cleaning out his basement. The magazine was from 2001, and the cover story was about race in America. He said the story sounded like it could have been written today: “Racial profiling is still happening, but we’re all ignoring it. I think authorities need to put more of an effort into stopping this.”
A student whose family immigrated to the US from the Sudan said: “I feel that Ferguson is a true showing of what the nation really feels about equality. Even though segregation is over and we have a black president, equality isn’t here.”
Some teachers avoid controversial topics like this, others made Ferguson the centrepiece of their first day of teaching. The question I’m often asked is how can teachers foster the kind of productive civic discussions that need to happen in classrooms. The answer is that we need to create a safe place for students that honours their voices.
There are ways to facilitate dialogue in non-threatening ways. The KWL chart is a graphic organiser in which students write what they “know” about a subject before it is studied, what they “want to know”, and then afterwards, what they “learned” through their discussion and research. One teacher I know has added an F to this protocol because he also wants to know how his students “feel” about these issues. We can use something like the KWL+F as a way to engage students.
A Gallery Stroll is another activity I use when I want to have students bring what’s important to them into classroom discussion without my forcing the conversation. On the first day of school or early in the term, have students write or draw what’s on their minds and then display their work like it’s in an art gallery.
As students stroll through the gallery of student interests and concerns, they will more naturally discuss the things that the group thinks are important. Even though my own school is a thousand miles away from Ferguson, I felt it was important to study it in the first week of school because students need to learn empathy.
As one of my student said: “Schools should do more to create a dialogue so that we can begin to curb those long-lasting prejudices.”
If we are to honour the voices of all of our students, we need to let them all speak. And if we listen to our youth, perhaps their ideas might help bring about solutions. As another student argued: “If the police force in Ferguson had more minorities, they would have a more tolerant view of that community.”
Conversations such as whether my students identified with Michael Brown and his family, whether their parents are police officers or their siblings are in the national guard, are fertile ground for finding the cure for what ails us. It’s up to us teachers to allow these spaces to flourish.
Chris Sloan teaches English and media at Judge Memorial Catholic High school in Utah