Suffern High School Students Build Long-Term Skills for Constructive Dialogue
The strategies students learned and cultivated in class discussion gave them the confidence to have difficult conversations in and outside of the classroom.
The Challenge
Jessica Minick teaches a Cambridge Assessment International Education® course, “Global Perspectives and Research,” at Suffern High School in which her students often engage in challenging discussions on global issues. When the class size doubled one year, these conversations grew more polarized and mediating them became significantly more difficult.
She reports, “I had 29 students that year, and usually it’s a class of 10 to 15. So it was a lot of voices, and a lot of strong voices sitting on opposite ends of the spectrum.”
Rather than limit or censor these in-class discussions, Ms. Minick sought a solution to help her students communicate more constructively with each other in this course and in dealing with these types of conversations going forward.
Why the Constructive Dialogue Institute
Ms. Minick wanted to find a solution that would build a foundation for effective discussion without targeting or alienating any particular group within her class. While exploring the Constructive Dialogue Institute's(CDI) resources, she found herself personally learning from the research-based content and found their approach to be ideologically neutral. In addition, CDI's online learning program, called Perspectives, was a convenient and accessible platform to roll out to her students.
Key Outcomes
Long-Term Impact
Even though Ms. Minick had students work through the Perspectives program in 4 weeks at the beginning of the school year, phrases, metaphors, and skills from Perspectives were brought up by the students throughout the 10-month class. At the end of the school year, students were required to create capstone portfolios, and many chose to detail their experience with Perspectives as a highlight of their personal experience.
Strategies for Understanding One Another
One of the most frequently used Perspectives concepts by the Suffern High School students was an active listening strategy designed to help better understand the viewpoints of others. Students were taking the time to paraphrase what they had just heard and ask specific questions to understand each other correctly before moving forward in conversation. They also reported that they valued being able to hear the other side and voice their own opinion in a constructive way. “I saw a lot of this re-emerge in discussions after the [Perspectives] program,” Ms. Minick said.
The dialogue strategies students learned from Perspectives and the culture cultivated from CDI's resources gave students the confidence to have meaningful conversations inside and outside of the classroom space as well. Ms. Minick stated, “Students would tell me about engaging in conversations with friends, family members, and others” using these skills.
Resetting Emotions in Charged Conversations
After completing Perspectives, the students demonstrated a greater ability to avoid highly-charged, emotional reactions in difficult conversations. Perspectives helped students to better understand their own worldviews and identify where those emotional moments can arise for them personally. In addition, Perspectives provided specific steps that students utilized to de-escalate heated conversations.
Universal Buy-In from Students
What Ms. Minick found most striking was that each student completed Perspectives saw the value in it. “I got buy-in from everybody, which I was not expecting. That’s been consistent over the years, too.”
Looking Forward
Perspectives was implemented at Suffern High School in the spring of 2018. “It has become integral to the program, and we use it every year,” Ms. Minick states. She has used CDI's tools for 5 different student cohorts of juniors and seniors so far and plans to expand its usage to a younger cohort in the sophomore class.
Try Out Perspectives
CDI's interactive, online program, Perspectives, teaches students how to engage in constructive dialogue across differing backgrounds, beliefs, and viewpoints.
The entire 8-lesson program is free for educators. You can test drive Perspectives to see how we present research-based skills in an engaging format that resonates with students.
