Raige Hollis always liked the idea of talking to classmates. In fact, he says he's "friends with everybody." So when his high school announced plans for a Mix It Up at Lunch Day, Hollis, captain of the football team and senior classman, was all in. But some of his classmates at Laconia High School in New Hampshire were less excited about sitting down to lunch with folks who were not part of their usual circles.
We must teach conflict resolution, empathy and individual responsibility to students as deliberately as we teach math and science. Schools will not get better until we do.
In my eighth-grade language arts classroom, we use discussion as a vehicle for learning, thinking, writing, posing and defending arguments, questioning and reviewing—just about everything. And as can be expected, we sometimes digress from the topic at hand.