DISCUSSION IN AN AGE OF DISTRACTION:
Helping teachers engage today’s students in deep conversation By Katherine Burd, English teacher, The Chapin School (NY); and Liza Garonzik, founder, R.E.A.L. Discussion, & a former English teacher, The Westminster Schools (GA)
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tudent-led discussions are harder than they used to be. Adults cite wellpublicized reasons for changes in student engagement. We blame video games and TikTok; lack of civil discourse in families and in government; fake news and news feeds. We bemoan age-old teenage tendencies toward extremes — belligerence and antipathy, sarcasm and generosity — but what really catches our attention are the newer behaviors: heightened anxiety, restless distraction, and polarizing self-righteousness. When faced with these new concerns, even experienced teachers struggle to facilitate classroom discussion that equitably engages all students in the essential task of
24 Intrepid
forging new understandings from separate perspectives. Why? We argue that for the first time in generations, expecting a group of children to converse on a single subject, in-person and for a sustained period of time, means asking them to do something entirely new. By now, the student-led discussion is old technology in independent schools. Even as they are incubators for best practices in education, independent schools, and especially Humanities departments, have employed student-led discussion and models like Harkness, Socratic seminars, and the Fishbowl for decades. The discussion itself is a tradition well-rooted in research: from Parker Palmer and Grant Wiggins
The OESIS Network Innovation Quarterly
March 2020
