CIVIL DISCOURSE
FOSTERING CIVIL DISCOURSE at the High School
“You learn how to talk about difficult issues at the Harkness table, but we wanted to push it beyond that. We wanted students to get real and engage with each other and say what they really, really feel.” Dr. Rich Milner
I
t’s easy to shy away from discussions about politics, religion, and other topics that are potentially divisive. But at the high school, Ensworth students are demanding to have those conversations and pushing for more opportunities to engage with their peers.
Since the founding of the High School, Ensworth has put an emphasis on civil discourse by incorporating the Harkness method and Seminar classes. The Harkness table is a way to bring students and teachers together to engage in face-to-face interaction. It encourages students to be an active participant in the classroom and to listen and speak with respect. Through Seminar classes, which take place around the Harkness table, students learn about a myriad of developmental and social issues and how to engage in healthy discourse with their peers. At the end of the first semester, Seminar teacher Shomari White ’13 asked his ninth-grade class to share feedback on their first Seminar class. “We got to talk about things that are relevant to what’s going on in the world, and it really helped me to understand things better,” said one student. This school year, a popular club, Project TALK, was also reinstated at the High School. Project TALK (Thinking, Action, Learning, Kindness) is a school-wide diversity initiative originally developed in 2008 by Ensworth students and Dr. Rich Milner, a Distinguished Professor of Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. It is designed to empower students to engage in difficult conversations with their peers who might have different views on important topics. “You learn how to talk about difficult issues at the Harkness table, but we wanted to push it beyond that. We wanted students to get real and engage with each other and say what they really, really feel,” says Milner. In order to do that, Milner felt it was important that the conversations were led by students instead of adults. “I really had to push in some ways that it be student-led and student-driven, but also that adults wouldn’t be in the room
4 | ENSWORTH ENSIGHTS
