Promising Practices in Teaching Social Responsibility [1 ed.] 9780791496534, 9780791413975

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Promising Practices in Teaching Social Responsibility Page ii SUNY Series, Democracy and Education George H. Wood, Editor

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Promising Practices in Teaching Social Responsibility Sheldon Berman and Phyllis La Farge, Editors This book was developed by Educators for Social Responsibility as part of the Educating for Living in the Nuclear Age Project Funded in part by a grant from the Peace Development Fund

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Page iv Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1993 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Production by E. Moore Marketing by Theresa A. Swierzowski

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Promising practices in teaching social responsibility / Sheldon Berman and Phyllis La Farge, editors. p. cm. — (SUNY series, democracy and education) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-1397-7 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-1398-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Social learning. 2. Social values—Study and teaching (Elementary) 3. Social skills—Study and teaching (Elementary) 4. Citizenship—Study and teaching (Elementary) I. Berman, Sheldon G. II. La Farge, Phyllis. III. Series. LC192.4.P76 1993 372.83—dc20

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Dedicated to those teachers and administrators who had the insight and courage to initiate and sustain the Educating for Living in the Nuclear Age Project. Page vii

Contents

Preface

ix

Phyllis La Farge

Introduction

1

Sheldon Berman

1. Controversial Issues and Young Children: Kindergartners Try to Understand Chernobyl

13

Janice Balsam Danielson

2. Bringing Global Awareness into Elementary School Classrooms

27

Sheila Reindl

3. Cooperative Learning: Making the Transition

50

Sarah Pirtle

4. "You Need Lots of Choices": Conflict Resolution in the Elementary Grades

72

Sara Goodman and William J. Kreidler

5. Democratic Practices at the Elementary School Level: Three Portraits Clarissa Sawyer

87

6. Literature in the Classroom: Pathways to Social Responsibility

104

Barbara Beckwith

7. Educating for Multicultural Perspectives: A Doorway to the Rest of Humanity

120

Monica Andrews

8. You and I Are the Same: The Multicultural Classroom

129

Nina A. Mullen and Laurie Olsen

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9. Words, Not Weapons; Dialogue, Not Debate: Managing Conflict at the Middle- and SecondarySchool Levels

143

Anne Yeomans

10. Promising Practices in the Social Studies

163

Dennis Shirley

11. Science and Society: Teaching Social Responsibility in the Nuclear Age Beth Wilson Fultz

182

12. Math and Social Responsibility

192

Sheldon Berman

13. The Arts: Imagining a Better World

207

David M. Stuart

14. Educating for Democracy and Community: Toward the Transformation of Power in Our Schools

218

Seth Kreisberg

15. Teaching for Global Responsibility through Student Participation in the Community

236

Dale A. Bryan

Contributors

257

Topic Index

261

Index of Educational Researchers and Theorists

263

Index of Teachers, Administrators, Students, and Schools Referred to in Text

265

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Preface PHYLLIS LA FARGE The teachers whose work is described in this book are passionately committed to the task of preparing young people to be responsible citizens. Their committment is suggested by the words and phrases that recur throughout the following pages: democracy, a sense of community, a capacity for cooperation, the ability to involve oneself productively in controversy, the skill and the will to work toward the resolution of conflict. These are the goals of their work, focused not only on what the student will grow up to think and know but what he or she will be and do as a citizen. Our title suggests this emphasis on being and doing: the Greek root of the word "practice" means action, as contrasted with theory. To point this out, however, is not to imply that the teachers whose work is described here are atheoretical; there's a strong intellectual foundation to their work, based on the conviction that to take root, learning must have an experiential component. No one imagines that you can learn to read or write without actually reading and writing. In the same way young people cannot acquire the skills necessary for citizenship without practice, and that practice must be woven into the everyday work of the classroom, thus becoming a part of every student's life. The teachers portrayed here are guided not only by their convictions concerning the skills and attitudes necessary for our society to function democratically, but very immediately and concretely by the fact that today students bring the violence of the streets and the effects of disarray in their family lives into the classroom. Many teachers have learned the hard way that skills such as conflict resolution and cooperation are not something young people need only for their future as adults; they need them right now as students. In many schools these skills are essential if teachers, administrators—and students—are to create an atmosphere where learning can take place. They are not easy skills or attitudes to encourage, however, given the pressures on teachers. In many ways it would be simpler over the short term to enforce an orderly atmosphere repressively, despite the long-term educational loss. The teachers whose voices fill this book are in a real sense heroes and heroines for daring to work toward the creation of the more open, dynamic, and always fragile sense of harmony and

Page x order that grows out of the creation of democratic communities. They are heroic from another point of view as well: they are laboring against forces in the society that discourage the kind of empowerment and responsibility that they seek to encourage. If you are to grow up to act responsibly and with a sense of empowerment, someone—at least one person, preferably more—has to have been sufficiently devoted to you over a period of years so that you believe you matter, that your actions can be effective, that you can make yourself heard. We can no longer take it for granted that American children receive this sort of nurture (if we ever really could). The reasons for this are complex. In part, they are a consequence of an exaggerated pursuit of personal fulfillment by some parents during the last twenty years. Primarily, however, they derive from the fact that more children than ever before grow up in single parent homes and from the fact that male earning power has diminished considerably. As Sylvia Ann Hewlett (1991) states in her book, When the Bough Breaks , after 1973 "Earnings, adjusted for inflation started to fall and by 1987 the male wage was 19.3% below that of 1973." As a result, it takes longer hours of work and two incomes to maintain a standard of living comparable to that the same family might have enjoyed a generation ago. The society is only now beginning to appreciate the severe consequences for children: hard-pressed parents must be exceptionally energetic, self-sacrificing, and disciplined in order to set standards for their children and respond to their emotional needs in the diminished family time that remains to them—and this is all the more true of single parents. Teachers who strive to inspire a sense of responsibility and a capacity for cooperation and critical thinking skills may find in many students only a scanty base of previously acquired values, skills, and inner strengths on which to build. As

so often in our society, schools and teachers are asked to compensate for problems the origins of which lie elsewhere in the failure of other institutions in the society to support children and family life. Another factor complicates their task. A great many of the problems facing the world are so frightening and exist on such a vast scale that young people as well as adults tend to shield themselves from awareness. Although we may lack specific information about particular problems, we are inwardly aware of their seriousness, and of the bleak implications for our future and that of our children. However, in order to maintain a necessary sense of being in control, we "sequester" our awareness so that it does not "get in our way." It's hard to prove, but I believe that this "split" in awareness, which can be well developed by adolescence, contributes to the withdrawal from political participation on the part of many Americans, particularly young adults. For teachers, this carefully maintained split and an underlying bleakness of outlook

Page xi can mean that it is hard to engage students with respect to public issues. However, a focus on issues that are concretely linked to students' lives can help overcome these tendencies, together with a caring attitude that conveys the message that they are not alone, that it is possible to work together toward the solution of problems—even very great ones. In this regard, several teachers whose work is reported here describe successful projects based in their students' neighborhood or community as well as within the classroom. The teachers described here attempt to counter the drift of the culture in another way as well. Increasingly, we live in an "immaterial world full of information"—best symbolized by television. The sociologist, Richard Sennett (1991), comments about this change in his piece, "Fragments Against the Ruin": ". . . time and space have become separated dimensions, thanks to a new network of communications, new patterns of labour, new forms of political control. The importance of place has lessened; people work with, think with, and fight with others who remain physically absent" (London Times Supplement, February 8, 1991). Living in this profoundly changed world, children learn that killing can be superbly managed by computer, but they may have no involvement with their neighbors; they may see a film about the destruction of the rain forest, but have no direct knowledge of the sources of the food they eat or how it got to their table; they may see a program on genetic engineering but have little if any acquaintance with the work their parents do. I do not believe we have anything approaching a full understanding of what the consequences of these changes may be for children (or, for that matter, adults), but it is by no means clear that it will be easy to instill in them a sense of civic involvement and responsibility. It may be that given these new cultural circumstances, an experiential component in teaching—being and doing as contrasted with simply knowing—has a more important place than ever before. Practicing the skills and attitudes intrinsic to a sense of social responsibility can lessen the influence of forces distancing us from each other—our classmates, our neighbors, our enemies. The classroom, and even the school or the local community accessible to teacher or child, may seem small worlds in which to try to accomplish this task, but this is part of the point: a sense of responsiveness and responsibility that can overcome ethical and political detachment can be nurtured only through direct human relationships, and these can only develop in face-to-face settings where there is shared committment to a task. The teachers portrayed here work at the cutting edge of what is needed if our society is to remain ethically and politically alive. We

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believe that it is particularly important to document their work, rather than to let it go unknown and unsung, as is often the case with the achievements of teachers. To repeat, they are heros and heroines although that is the last way they would describe themselves. They are convinced of the importance of their work, but there is something refreshingly humble and matter-of-fact about their descriptions of their struggles and accomplishments. Perhaps this is one of the advantages of practice over theory: it is much harder to accomplish, so there is not much danger of pomposity or selfaggrandizement. And it keeps you learning.

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Introduction SHELDON BERMAN A Twentieth-Century Legacy Young people will soon be facing the difficult challenge of managing our survival. They will be responsible for preventing nuclear war, protecting an endangered environment, preventing starvation, deciding about the ethics of new technologies, ameliorating social injustice, limiting violent conflict, and managing the cultural and ideological diversity of a globally interdependent world. Although this century has had some bright moments, it gives the younger generation many examples of failure and tragedy—two world wars, several attempted genocides, the continued presence of racial injustice, torture, murder, mass starvation, and political corruption. They have seen arrogance and ignorance tolerated at a dangerous level. At an early age they learn of this legacy of brutality and pain. It seems little wonder that this generation is one that, as Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn point out, does not want to know history. Our political culture adds to this legacy with its often simplistic answers to complex problems and its antagonistic relationships. As a result students rarely see beyond the seriousness of our problems and the political conflict and stalemate that prevent us from solving them. Recently, I asked a sixth grade class, ''When you think about the way the world is today, what comes to mind?" In a matter of moments they generated a list, shocking in its astute awareness of the world and comprehensive in its coverage of the world's problems. Absent from the list were any positive achievements or inspiring trends. In the conversation that followed about the potential for change, only a few were confident that adults were doing all they could about these problems. Others saw these as challenges they would have to meet because the current generation of adults seemed incapable of dealing with them. Too many had already detached themselves. "I care about the world but I don't think it concerns me even though it does," one student said. As they get older, their perceptions of their own powerlessness increase, and even early adolescent idealism changes to a painful or macho cynicism, or simply detachment. Young people are aware of the world and feel the weight of the

Page 2 problems that they will soon be shouldering. Yet most students in the United States experience a sense of

powerlessness to have any effect on constructive social or political change. The odds of success seem overwhelming, the personal costs too high, the disappointment inevitable. The powerlessness and hopelessness today's young people experience may be causing them to withdraw from active participation in our society and focus simply on meeting their own individual desires and needs. But these young people see the problems, hear the pain, and want to have hope for the future. Yet, adults, and especially teachers, take too little time to think with young people about how to move beyond the legacy of the twentieth century. Because conceiving of how to do so touches on values and ethics, politics and power, it is controversial. We often act as if conflict and controversy will go away if we pay no attention to them. They do not. We live in an age of controversy. The greatest gift we can give our young people is to enable them to handle controversy in ways that are nonviolent and nonpolarizing, in ways that move us toward a more just and compassionate world. To move beyond perpetuating this legacy, this generation and future generations will have to come to terms with our capacity for inhumanity and passivity. Much like the German youth who have been struggling to come to terms with the Holocaust, we will each be challenged by our own cultural heritage of injustice. The Soviets will have to come to terms with the Stalin era. The South Africans will need to come to terms with apartheid. Indeed, the United States will have to come to terms with its support of repressive, undemocratic governments, its annihilation of Native Americans, its racial injustice. We all will need to come to terms with the irreparable consequences for the environment of our lack of forethought and our materialism. These issues are painful and depressing. They are often avoided in schools because they raise questions about our economic and political behavior as a nation. Yet the lessons they teach about the need to confront our own passivity and complicity, about the value of compassion and justice, and about the importance of humility and acknowledging our mistakes are the ones that move people to commit themselves to care and to participate. To overcome this twentieth century's legacy will take more than coming to terms with the past, however. It will take the development of a powerful set of skills and values in young people. They will have to be able to work cooperatively with others, to solve complex problems, to manage or resolve serious differences, and to embrace diversity. They will have to take into account the consequences of their day-to-day actions on the quality of life for future generations and to live their lives in ways that are consistent with promoting the survival of the

Page 3 planet and the enhancement of the common good. They will have to esteem and nurture the values of care, justice, openmindedness, and respect for human dignity and ecological balance. And they will have to have the courage to enter the political arena. The hope for the future, however, is in informed and responsible participation in the controversies that determine our political, cultural, and ecological future. This has been the single greatest lesson of the twentieth century. We have seen that hope in the labor movement, the civil-rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement, and the movements for democracy in the Philippines, Poland, and other countries. In every one of these movements individuals organized into action groups and made tremendous differences. But informed and responsible participation does not necessarily mean protest or political activism. Rather it means understanding that our daily actions and choices are social and political statements. These daily actions create the world as it is and as it will be. What we can come to understand is that we make a significant difference—in our relationships with friends, in our work, in raising children, in our role as consumers not by the political positions we espouse but by how we live— by the consciousness and integrity we bring to our actions and the care we take with others. Until now, however, most schools and teachers have failed to prepare students to be the informed participants our society requires.

Teaching for Informed Participation Citizenship education, often embodied in civics textbooks, is part of the curriculum of most schools. As a former social studies teacher, I know that it was a central goal of my work and of the work of my colleagues. In recent years, however, it has become clearer to me why the work in citizenship education has failed in its avowed goal of helping students develop an active, participatory relationship with society. First, efforts in citizenship education often neglect students' experiences of our political culture. The idealized picture of society presented by many of these programs hardly corresponds to the experience of society—often centering on feelings of alienation and powerlessness—that most students have internalized. Second, these programs often teach about democracy without encouraging students to experience their own power and influence, either in the classroom or in the larger world. We teach reading, writing, and math by doing them, but we teach democracy by lecture. Third, by simply presenting information about the democratic process, these citizenship education programs often fail to

Page 4 engage students in genuine, thoughtful inquiry about the various ways that an individual can make a difference in society. Finally, citizenship education has been primarily delegated to high school social studies teachers rather than being integrated into all the subject areas and grade levels, and into the fabric of school life. The current drive to develop community service programs is a move in the right direction but still insufficient to address the deeper issues behind students' nonparticipation and alienation. In general, education has paid far less attention to social responsibility and social efficacy than it has to individual competencies and goals. In part this has come from a desire for schools to be apolitical institutions. At its heart informed participation is seeing a problem that needs to be addressed or an injustice that needs rectifying and doing something about it in our daily lives or in the larger political arena. Yet we fear that when students begin to see problems clearly and to ask questions about them they will become unpatriotic rabblerousers. On the contrary, by helping students enter the political and social world, we can teach them to be thoughtful about problems and see them in all their complexity. We can teach them to be aware of propaganda and of simplistic solutions. We can teach them that one can learn from differences. But even more significant, teaching students to be aware, to question, and to enter the political arena is patriotic; it is not the patriotism of blind obedience that bolsters itself through simplistic and polarizing slogans like, "my country right or wrong, my country," but instead a patriotism dedicated to the principles of justice, compassion, and harmony. The right to question is at the core of our national heritage. It keeps us free. The quality of democracy in the United States is built upon the freedom to create change, to strive to do better both individually and as a society. Schools can never be partisan, but they can welcome the politics and controversies of the real world so that students can learn how to stand up for themselves in that world. They can help raise the level of political and social discourse so that our public decisions are made by a better prepared and more thoughtful electorate. The lack of emphasis on social responsibility has also come from a mistaken assumption that if schools focus on individual self-realization, then these self-realized graduates will help create a good society. This point of view was prevalent among many in the progressive education movement in the first part of the 1900s, and it endures today. We are seeing the same mistake in the back-to-basics and cultural literacy movements now, this time with competence replacing individual self-realization. It is evident, too, in the moral development movement which tends to focus on helping students think

Page 5 through personal and, sometimes, social dilemmas while avoiding the immediate need for moral action in the political arena. Individual self-realization, competence, and personal morality are necessary but not sufficient to help create a

more just, compassionate, and ecologically conscious society. In fact our failure to teach even basic skills and to develop moral literacy may be partially due to the lack of attention we have given to young people's relationship to the larger social and political arena and to their difficulty finding meaning and purpose beyond self-fulfillment. Social responsibility—that is, a personal investment in the well-being of others and of the planet—does not just happen. It takes intention, attention, and time. It will take redesigning the culture of schools and classrooms to one which esteems and creates empowerment, cooperation, compassion, and respect. My experience in the classroom taught me that, by the middle grades, students realize the seriousness of the world around them. They ask very clear questions about why problems exist and why people have not done more to rectify them. Often, we ignore their pleas for understanding because we have so few answers ourselves. But when we ignore their concerns or treat them lightly we communicate to them that it is not important or appropriate to care. We, in fact, communicate our own powerlessness. I have found that by exploring these issues deeply with young people they respond with care and compassion, thoughtfulness and insight. They realize that their actions make a difference, in fact how they live their daily lives makes a difference. But teaching social responsibility does not start in the middle school years. There is much groundwork to be laid in the elementary years. Teaching conflict resolution and cooperation, nurturing respect for diversity and multicultural understanding, providing experiences of community, engaging students in conversations about issues that concern them, and having students act in small ways to make a difference are all possible and necessary in the elementary classroom. Young people are sensitive to the contradictions around them. They confront us with the inconsistencies between our words and our actions. They see a world in pain and they notice when we try to ignore it. Our silence, our failure to acknowledge these challenges, has left them feeling that no one cares and, even if they do, that they are powerless to change things. Yet adults do care, and we can help students experience their ability to create positive change. This book is about some teachers who care and who are trying their best within the confines of their curriculum and school structure to help students develop a sense of social responsibility and the confidence that they can make a difference.

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The Evolution of this Book This book grew out of an effort to document some of the ways teachers teach social responsibility. In the early 1980s a group of educators committed to helping students engage in thinking about contemporary issues started Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR). Not only did they want to help address young people's concerns about the world, they wanted to help them understand that their participation mattered. They believed that young people need not feel powerless and ignorant, and simply defer to traditional political authorities or technical experts. In fact such deference undermined the basic principles of democracy. Students could learn to raise important questions, critically assess information, and make independent and thoughtful judgments. They believed that educators could play a role in the larger movement to encourage social responsibility, not through advocacy of particular positions on public issues, but through nurturing young people's investment in the welfare of others and commitment to participate in public affairs. To improve their own work, they hoped that having an organization focused on the goal of social responsibility would provide them with a network of similarly interested educators and give them the opportunity to think together about how to do this well in their classrooms. Moved first by the urgency of the threat of nuclear war and then by concerns about the environment, these educators experimented with a variety of classroom strategies. By the mid-1980s it had

become clear that social responsibility entailed much more than issues-oriented instruction. It entailed educational initiatives in the areas of social skills, thinking skills, and participation skills that could be integrated into all areas of the curriculum and at all grade levels in age-appropriate and academically challenging ways. It also became clear that social responsibility was nurtured most effectively within schools and school districts that supported these goals and were willing to take the risks of experimenting with controversy. Built upon the commitment of a group of superintendents in the Boston area and another group of superintendents in Oregon, ESR helped initiate a two-site, long-term, multidistrict collaborative project, the goal of which is to make social responsibility a core element throughout the K-12 curriculum and the school program. The project is titled "Educating for Living in the Nuclear Age" (ELNA) in order to acknowledge that we live in an age in which we have realized our capability for global destruction as well as our responsibility for ensuring its survival. The ELNA project is unique in its systemwide focus on helping students develop the understanding, skills, and commitment to make a

Page 7 difference in the world. But it is also unique in its emphasis on teacher collaboration and teacher empowerment. The project was designed to empower teachers by delegating to them decision-making authority for its direction, by providing them with opportunities to think and work with other teachers, by giving them support for experimenting with new strategies and materials, and by showcasing the innovative strategies and programs they were developing in "promising practices" conferences. Here we document some of these promising practices so that other educators can learn from our experiences. Initially the authors gathered together to hear ELNA teachers talk about their efforts and to observe them at work in their classrooms. We realized, however, that these innovations were not unique to the participants in the ELNA project and that many teachers all over the country were trying some of the same innovations. Although many of teachers described here are part of the project, the authors also reached out to other innovative teachers throughout ESR's national network so that we could present a more national perspective. Teaching social responsibility is not a static field. In fact, it is one that is in its earliest stages. The teachers whose voices you will hear and whose work you will read about are exploring new terrain, learning as they go along. Their work is always in the process of further development, just as the field itself is still developing. Their efforts, however, reveal a wealth of information about the meaning of social responsibility, the rewards and difficulties of making it real in the classroom, and the questions that remain unanswered.

The Meaning of Social Responsibility The teachers in this book vary widely in the grade levels and subject areas they teach and the types of communities in which they teach. Each takes his or her own approach to social responsibility. Each finds a different entry point and a different emphasis. Yet, there are strikingly consistent themes in their teaching. They share an understanding of what it means to teach social responsibility and what it takes to make social responsibility a central element in their curriculum. The meaning of social responsibility is multidimensional. When these teachers talk about social responsibility they first refer to it as a way of being in the world that is deeply connected to others and the environment. Being responsible goes beyond being respectful of the dignity of others. It means experiencing and appreciating our interdependence and our connectedness with others and the environment

Page 8 around us. It means having the capacity to care and respond to others in need in ways that are thoughtful and compassionate, to treat others and the environment as ends in themselves rather than means to an end. A second dimension of social responsibility that emerges from the work of these teachers is that it entails the ability to make considered and independent judgments. It entails a particular set of thinking skills. Socially responsible people are openminded and yet able to analyze and critique. They can take the perspective of others and be reflective about their own thinking and behaving. They are able to appreciate the complexity of situations and tolerate the ambiguity of not knowing the answer. They are capable of looking for root causes rather than simplistic solutions. They are aware of scapegoating, stereotyping, and propaganda. And they are able to assume responsibility for the errors and inaccuracies in their own thinking. Finally, embedded in the work of these teachers is the belief that being socially responsible means having the vision and courage to act. It is not enough to care or to be well-informed. Social responsibility means acting on one's values, living one's values. It means balancing despair, anger, or frustration with hope and commitment. It means having the imagination to visualize alternatives and new solutions. It means having a vision of the possible, a commitment to creating a more just, peaceful, and ecologically sound world, and the conviction and confidence to act in spite of the difficulties one may face. Connectedness, thoughtfulness, vision, and courage are the characteristics that these teachers are nurturing in young people. These are the elements that undergird their curriculum, their teaching methods, and even the structure of their classroom.

Making it Happen There is no one intervention that is uniquely instrumental in teaching social responsibility. It is nurtured by a combination of experiences that young people have throughout their education as well as a classroom and school culture that models it. No one teacher does it all. Each chooses what she or he sees as the most appropriate kinds of opportunities for the young people she or he is working with. The vehicle may be global education, environmental education, multicultural education, or community service. It may be such process skills as cooperation, conflict resolution, or community building. Or it may be through the choice of books or content so that issues of social responsibility are directly tied to the existing subject matter. The teachers we talked with and

Page 9 observed sometimes emphasized one approach and sometimes blended a number together. Each of the chapters explores these vehicles in some depth. Yet, across all the chapters there are some commonalities about how these teachers make social responsibility come alive for the students in their classrooms. Common to all of them is that they bring the world into the classroom or the classroom into the world in ways that are relevant to the lives of their students. In Janice Balsam Danielson's kindergarten class, morning meetings are times to encourage students' awakening awareness of the world around them, times to share thoughts and opinions about important events, and times to find small ways to contribute to others. In Elaine Messias's fifth grade class, students observe the sky, keep sky journals, and become aware of the richness and magnificence of the world they so often take for granted. In Fred Gross's sixth grade math class, students learn basic math skills by studying how numbers are used, and misused, in the political process. Ginger Crawford's seventh graders learn about world hunger but experience its local impact in a nearby homeless shelter. In Judy Bebelaar's creative writing class, high school students share the pain and joy of their diverse ethnic and racial experiences and develop a sense of connection, community, and respect for

each other. In his science classes Ted Hall weaves environmental issues, issues about the safety of nuclear technology, and other science-related social issues into the fabric of the standard science curriculum. These teachers build a relationship between the personal and the social lives of their students. They start with their students' knowledge and experiences. They pay attention to the circumstances of their students' lives and then create the bridge to the larger world. By helping students see the larger context of their lives and enter that larger context with a sense of confidence and responsibility, they empower and inspire them. For the teachers in this book classroom process is a part of the content of the classroom. They specifically use teaching methods that strengthen students' social awareness and social skills. Sometimes they directly teach students such social skills as cooperation and conflict resolution. At other times activities and lessons are organized to practice these skills while focusing on the curriculum to be covered. Jim Trierweiler's middle school science classes work in heterogeneous cooperative groups on science activities that often deal with the societal implications of scientific and technological advances. Mike Fixler's first grade classroom comes to understand conflict resolution not only through the literature they read and Mike's conflict resolution activities but through living this process in their class meetings. Lucile Burt's English classes pay special attention to taking the perspectives of others, the

Page 10 perspectives they find difficult to identify with in the literature they are reading and the perspectives that they themselves articulate. These teachers help young people develop social skills and social responsibility by presenting them with situations that demand these skills. Many of the teachers take an additional step and structure their classroom or their school in ways that model and nurture social responsibility. For Gail Whang's elementary classroom this means that the classroom becomes a healthy community where students experience interdependence and mutual support. For Keith Grove's math classes and Craig Beaulieu's social studies classes this means having democratic structures within the classroom so that students can have a voice in the decisions that govern their classroom lives. For principals Ethel Sadowsky and Len Solo, it means having schoolwide structures that encourage student participation and decision making. In these settings teachers model socially responsible behavior, and students live the concepts of social responsibility. The culture and structure of the classroom and school create an environment that supports and affirms what these teachers are trying to communicate in their curriculum and methods. The teachers in this book have successfully made social responsibility come alive through their the curriculum, teaching methods, and classroom culture, but this has not been an easy task.

Doing the Work The experience these teachers have had in changing their teaching style, in experimenting with new strategies, and in creating change within traditional settings can teach us a great deal about the demands of change. For many, making the decision to teach social responsibility called for experimention in unfamiliar areas. It meant adding onto an already demanding work load a new layer of demands, a new set of concerns to think through in preparing for each day's classes. It meant making mistakes and having efforts fall flat. It meant trying things that at first seemed strange to students as well as to colleagues. It meant having to defend taking the time from the existing curriculum to focus on process skills or to give time for student decision making. It meant teaching students skills and attitudes that might not be affirmed by the administrative or instructional climate in the school, for example, teaching creative conflict resolution skills in settings where the principal and other teachers simply used their authority to resolve differences. And it meant not seeing the fruits of their labors until much later for social responsibility is developed slowly. It is something for which we have no tests and only limited observational signposts.

Page 11 The teachers in this book talked about all these constraints and difficulties. What kept them going was the depth of their caring both about the children they taught and about the health and welfare of the planet. What comes out most clearly in their interviews is how deeply they care. They feel the pain of the violence, injustice, broken connection, and environmental degradation around them. They feel the pain in their students' lives and hear their concerns about the world they are expected to enter. They believe that this kind of teaching is critical for their students and the planet. They see an intimate relationship between the personal and the social and strive to help students develop both personal competence and social responsibility. In many ways teaching social responsibility has given their work a renewed sense of meaning. And this has given them the strength and courage to take on the demands of change. Despite the depth of their caring, many would not have been able to sustain their efforts if not for a network of other educators that encouraged and supported their work. In many of the interviews, these teachers talked about the desire for a community of educators with similar interests. Often they were exceptionally thankful for the networks—ESR, ELNA, and others—that provided this support. Some have been able to team with another teacher as they tested out new strategies. These networks enabled them to share their struggles, to learn from the experience of others, to solve problems collaboratively, and to think together about further initiatives. The connection with others and the stimulation of the exchange of ideas have been vital in sustaining and nurturing their efforts. Finally, many of these teachers talked about the critical role administrators played in either supporting or undermining their efforts. Administrative affirmation and acknowledgement were highly valued. The teachers who felt supported by their principal, superintendent, or department head felt that their task was far easier than those who were working in a climate of apathy, apprehension, or skepticism. The support these teachers asked for actually demanded little from administrators. The support they most appreciated was simply interest in and acknowledgement of their efforts, encouragement to experiment and to share their efforts with others, an openness to making mistakes, and access to materials or training. Some teachers would like to go further, however. Based on their classroom experiences, they see the potential for creating schoolwide efforts and democratic structures that support social responsibility. They would like to see administrators become more intimately involved in this work and find ways to implement social responsibility throughout the school.

Page 12 In spite of the impediments and challenges of creating change, these teachers continued to move ahead and cut a path that will make it easier for others to follow.

The Nature of this Book Just as the ELNA Project showcases promising practices through its in-service conferences, this book is a showcase for the innovative practices that teachers have found most effective. We have tried through the various chapters to address different aspects of social responsibility and different innovative practices. In order to create a readable account of the different kinds of innovations, we gave the authors a great deal of discretion in terms of style and organization. The organization and style of each chapter emerged out of the author's reading, interviews, and observations. Each chapter, therefore, is different. We do not, however, want to give the reader the impression that the book is comprehensive. Each of the chapters could have evolved into a book in its own right. Because we wanted to cover a wide range of promising practices we have had to cover as much of the terrain as we could in chapters that we hope you will find focused and concise. We also

know that in the limited space of this book we could not cover all the promising practices we wanted to. There is creative work being done in community service at the elementary level, in international telecommunications projects that further multicultural understanding, in extracurricular student leadership programs that help young people participate in current issues, in violence prevention and empathy development programs at the elementary level, in holocaust studies programs in middle and high schools. These practices and many more will have to await a second edition. This book is a beginning rather than an end point. The work reported on here is work in progress. We hope it will encourage you to find your own entry points, build on what has been done here, and then share it with others. It is through our collective experimentation and our shared wisdom that we can help this field grow. Social responsibility has been a dream of many educators inspired by the work of John Dewey and others at the beginning of the century. The educators in this book are attempting to realize that dream. We hope that what this book communicates most clearly is the power of teaching social responsibility. For those who are doing it, it has restored their sense of purpose, renewed their creativity, and reclaimed the reason they entered the profession. But more than that it is the work that we can do to help heal the planet and ourselves.

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1 Controversial Issues and Young Children: Kindergartners Try to Understand Chernobyl JANICE BALSAM DANIELSON I am a kindergarten teacher in Brookline, Massachusetts, an urban, culturally diverse suburb of Boston. The school in which I teach emphasizes the role that communication skills can play in the development of self-esteem. Students are encouraged, from their very first day in kindergarten, to express their ideas in a supportive atmosphere—notably during the morning meeting time, where the agenda is flexible, and the direction the discussions take depends upon the interests of the children in the group. When there are news events about which I believe the children are aware, I begin our morning meeting by asking my class if they heard anything on the news about which they would like to talk. Television news coverage exposes young children to frightening events and disturbing visual images. Some of the children overhear their parents discussing their concerns about these events, and they have many thoughts and strong feelings about what they hear and see. Thus, during the fall of 1985 and the winter of 1986 my students were involved in prolonged discussions about the famine in Ethiopia and the space shuttle Challenger accident. I was impressed by the intensity with which they strove to interpret the confusing things they had seen and heard in ways which would be meaningful to them and consistent with their established views of the world. Young children have difficulty conceptualizing ideas that are outside their own personal experience. The news media and television in particular bring stories and pictures of world events into the lives of young children before they have had sufficient experience to comprehend them easily. Children sense the importance of some of these events because of the amount of media attention or because of the response their parents have to the news, and they begin a quest for meaning. They try to make sense of what they have seen and heard by latching on to salient or familiar aspects and

associating these with

Page 14 events in their own experience which appear to be similar. After the meltdown of the nuclear reactor near Chernobyl in the Ukraine occurred on April 26, 1986, our morning meetings took interesting turns. I decided to tape and transcribe them because they revealed so much about the ways five-year-olds struggle to incorporate the complex information with which they are bombarded in our worldwide ''electronic village." What follows is the transcript of two days of discussion about Chernobyl. By listening carefully to what the children said I gained insight into my kindergartners' fears, misconceptions, and levels of comprehension, and I was able to address their needs more effectively. Their questions and need to talk about Chernobyl did not end with these two days but continued intermittently as they were reminded of Chernobyl by subsequent news reports of fires, and by the continued news coverage relating to the extent of the catastrophe.

Transcript of Taped Discussion J. (Teacher): Has anyone heard anything on the news yesterday that you want to talk about? Ivan: Yesterday they said that it would be cold and it isn't. J.: They said that the weather would be cold and it's kind of warm and foggy. Ben: Well, when I visited Mom and the baby, I saw lots of fire engines and I heard on the news that there was a big fire and stores were burned in Boston. And the space shuttle exploded. Raphael: There were two space ships that exploded. On one, seven men were killed and all seven men were killed and some others and one teacher and the other space ship I don't know how many men died but I do know about two very dangerous things that happened. J.: You heard that two dangerous things happened. What were they? Raphael: Well, one thing I heard on the news was that in Russia a building caught on fire and we don't know how the fire got way up there on top of that big skyscraper, you know, but I do know that it was started by a power plant. Christian: There's no such thing as a power plant. Raphael: Something was done wrong where they were putting together the power plants and a couple power plants exploded and that's how the building caught on fire. And the other thing is that I heard that a big bomb exploded somewhere in Page 15 Russia, too, and it really spread....It was so big and it spread so much places around Russia. J.: You heard that there was a fire in a power plant and you heard that a big bomb exploded

somewhere in Russia and it really spread. Can you tell me what "power plant" means? Raphael: It has lots of energy. J.: You said that something spread around Russia. What spread? Raphael: A bomb. J.: How does a bomb spread? What do you mean? Raphael: Well, you know. The bomb that goes inside the fire really spread around, like cactus. Christian: A bomb is something that has candles in it but tells when it's going to explode because when it's all three zeros it tells it's going to explode. J.: When it's all three zeros then what will explode? Christian: The candles will explode. J.: Is this something that you saw in a movie? Christian: Ahuh. Emily: I saw a movie and there are some bad guys coming and the people put a fire on their houses and they ran away with babies because the bad guys do bad stuff to them so they ran away so the bad guys can't find them any more. J.: Did you hear that on the news or was that a movie that you saw? Emily: A movie. J.: So maybe that was true or maybe that was a story someone made up. What do you think? Emily: I don't know. J.: Though some movies are true, most are stories that a person made up in his or her imagination.

Commentary In these remarks early in the discussion, several aspects of young children's thinking are apparent. Because the weather forecast is so prominent a part of American television news programs, children assume it is an important news item, and often mention it. Ben's primary interest and concern at the time of this discussion was the birth of his brother, and much of what he said related to this event. There had not been, in fact, a recent fire in Boston, but in reporting one, I believe Ben was trying to construct meaning out of what he

Page 16 heard about a fire in a large building in a place other than where he lived. Both Boston and the then USSR mean "somewhere else" to him, since he does not have a mature understanding of distance or geography. Reporting that the fire engines were near the hospital where his mother and brother were assured him that his family was protected. The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in January of the same year was a dramatic news event which the children continued to strive to understand through their play and in discussions. Ben may also have thought that "the space shuttle exploded" was the response I was hoping for, the "right answer," since it had been the focus of many previous discussions about the news. Raphael, after some embellishment of the space shuttle story, offered his understanding of Chernobyl, which was quite accurate in many respects. He understood that there was a fire high up in a building in Russia, which was caused by an explosion of more than one power plant. The explosion occurred because of a problem in the construction of the power plant. Power plant is a meaningful phrase to Raphael, something which has plenty of energy. He then says that there was another dangerous event: "a big bomb exploded in Russia, too, and it really spread." Here I believe Raphael is trying to make sense of the connection between this fire and the word "nuclear" which he undoubtedly heard on the news with reference to Chernobyl. Raphael's previous experience with the word nuclear seems to have been in the context of nuclear bombs, and so he concludes that there was a bomb which exploded and spread, and that this event was separate from the fire in the power plant. I asked him to clarify his idea about the bomb spreading and he made an analogy to a cactus, a metaphor alluding to the painful, prickly spines of a cactus in our classroom, whose slow, continuous growth we monitored. The thinking of young children is concrete and their repertoire of information is limited. When asked to put their thoughts into words, they often resort to metaphors which are related to familiar objects or to their own experience. Raphael may have been trying to understand the idea of radiation which he may have heard "spread" from Chernobyl. The media had acquainted Christian with bombs, and his images are explicit and familiar: candles and zeroes. He denied earlier in the discussion that there are power plants because there is nothing in his experience which gives him the images to visualize one, but he has a clear, if inaccurate concept of bombs, derived from cartoons and movies he has seen. Emily, too, relates this discussion to a movie she saw, and, like most five year olds, is unable to distinguish the news, or facts, from the fiction she is exposed to by the media.

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Taped Discussion Continued Rebecca: I heard that there was fire in a place and they couldn't stop it. J.: You heard that there was a fire and they couldn't stop it. Ben: It was in her house. It was in her house. Owen: That was a nuclear power plant and the firemen couldn't get close to it to put it out. Bridie: The water didn't put it out. The water didn't put it out. Afsheen: I heard that there was a school on fire. J.: I think that must be a different fire from the one that Rebecca and Owen and Bridie are talking

about. Ben: It was in her house. J.: Rebecca, was there a fire in your house? Rebecca: No. J.: Do you know where this fire was that you are talking about? Owen: No. I keep forgetting where it is. J.: Bridie, do you know where it is? Rebecca: In Russia. Kieran: In Russia. That's the place where there's the thing that blew up. J.: That's right. Somewhere in Russia there was a big fire. Owen, you said it was in a nuclear power plant. Can you tell us what a "nuclear power plant" means? Owen: I don't know. J.: Kieran, do you want to tell us your idea? Kieran: It's like, um, some kind of station that does something. J.: It's some kind of station that does something. Do you have any ideas about what it does? Kieran: I don't know. Afsheen: It's like a normal power plant but the energy is much dangerous. J.: What is a normal power plant? What does that mean? Afsheen: It has a kind of electricity. Like the kind of electricity that comes to our houses. Afsheen: Nuclear's the kind of electricity that other things use. J.: That's right. It's a different kind of electricity or power. Dona: My mother's sister called and she said she saw a fire. It was in Israel. Page 18 J.: Your aunt called and said she saw a fire in Israel. That was a fire in a different place, and it was

also very far away. Rebecca: I also heard that the fire came from some kind of medicine, I mean I think it's a kind of rod and there's fire coming out of it. Kieran: Yeah, it's kind of like a volcano. J.: Like when a volcano erupts. That's also a hard fire to put out. Yes, Kristin, you wanted to say something? Kristin: There wasn't any water there and the people didn't have any food to eat and they couldn't put out the fire. J.: You think there wasn't any water there so they couldn't use that to put out the fire. I think you are also thinking about the people in Ethiopia who don't have water so the food doesn't grow. Owen: But you know what? But there are these pumper trucks that carry their own water and they don't need fire hydrants. (Many children voiced agreement.) Afsheen: Maybe there was something in the nuclear thing that caused it to go on fire and also it was too hard for the water to put it out. J.: There was something in the "nuclear thing" that caused the fire and made it hard for the water to put it out. What does a "nuclear thing" mean? Bridie: Like a nuclear war. J.: Like a nuclear war. Bridie, what do you mean by that? Bridie: It's the same thing, it's just a different word. It happened a long time ago. Except it's in fire. It's like the people and fire are having the war instead of people and people.

Commentary Ben, whose own home life has been disrupted by the birth of a baby, is concerned that the safety of Rebecca's home has been threatened. Afsheen, when he says he heard about a school on fire, and Dona, when she speaks about her aunt calling from Israel, relate this event to other events that have direct and personal meaning. For these five year olds, one of the most frightening and inconceivable aspects of the Chernobyl fire was that it couldn't be extinguished. Bridie repeated, "The water didn't put it out. The water didn't put it out." The group worked to understand and solve this problem, and several possible explanations were offered to make sense of the difficulty of extinguishing the fire. Rebecca grappled with the idea of the

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fire reigniting. She used the word "medicine," by which she may have meant "chemical," and described the mechanics of this chemical fire reigniting. Kieran was able to make sense of this phenomenon by relating it to the uncontrollable fire of a volcanic eruption, something which he probably saw on television. Kristin remembered discussions we had had earlier in the year about the drought in Ethiopia, and related the difficulty of extinguishing the fire to a shortage of water. Owen claimed this as a problem because of his information about pumper trucks carrying their own water supply, information which many of the children shared since we had visited the local fire station. Afsheen, who displayed some understanding of the uniqueness of nuclear power, said, "It's like a normal power plant but the energy is much dangerous." He suggested that the cause of the fire—''Something in the nuclear thing"—differed in such a way that water didn't work. The word "nuclear" was used several times during this part of the discussion. Owen used the phrase "nuclear power plant," but was unable to define these words that he had heard and remembered. Kieran used the word "station" to clarify Owen's idea. In their play, the children often built space stations and talked about power stations that they had seen in films or on television. Afsheen had a great deal more information about power plants, and understood that nuclear power plants are similar in some ways to "normal power plants," and different in others. Bridie had heard the word nuclear before in the context of nuclear war. She made sense of the use of the word nuclear in this new context by describing the difficulty of extinguishing the fire as a warlike conflict between people and fire: "It's like the people and the fire are having the war instead of the people and the people." In saying that nuclear war happened a long time ago, she may have been referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or reassuring herself and her classmates that nuclear war is not a current danger.

Taped Discussion Continues Rebecca: I heard on the news that people tried to get close to it to see what happened but each time they had to go away because it was too hot. J.: It was too hot. People would get burned if they went too close. Afsheen: I heard on the news that a few fire fighters got hurt putting out the fire. They broke their legs. Jeylin: If you come closer, you may burn your skin and legs and break your legs. Page 20 Rebecca: I heard that two people got killed, and two thousand people got hurt. J.: That's very sad. How does it make you feel to think about that sort of thing? Rebecca: It makes me feel like I'm dead myself. Rosie: Sad. I feel sad because people got killed. Michelle: I feel sad because people get burned. They'll be killed. They get hurt. J.: Yes, it really hurts them. Ben? Ben: I feel sad because it's not right to kill somebody. Everyone has a right to live. It's not right . . .

like maybe . . . it's not right for people . . . like maybe it's too stuffed or something. Well, I feel sad about fire because people were killed. And it's still on fire, I think. J.: You feel sad because people are getting killed. And you think it's still on fire. Raphael: And part of the building they don't know how to take care of it. They are asking people from all over for them to come and try to help them. J.: Do you think there is something that we could do to help? Michelle: Send a letter. J.: What could we say in a letter? Michelle: Sorry that the people got killed. Sorry that there's so much fire there. Rebecca: We can send them a note and tell what we think about the fire and they can send us a note and tell us what's happening at the fire. J.: So we can send them a note and tell them what we think is true, and they can send us a note to tell us if those things are really true or not. What else do you think we might be able to do? Bridie: We could tell them about having a fire drill so that they know how to get out if there's another fire. And they should make sure that their fire alarm makes a loud buzz and not just a click click so they can hear it. Christian: At my house, sometimes the fireman comes. But, at my house we don't care, we just stay home. J.: Sometimes there are false alarms and the firemen may come because they don't know if it is a real fire or a false alarm. Your parents may know it isn't a real fire, but usually it's good idea to go outside even if it might be a false alarm just to be sure you are safe. Rebecca: Maybe some people were watching and they wanted to check to see if they left anything there and maybe they went back to get some things that were there. Page 21 J.: Most people know that if there's a big fire someplace, you don't worry so much about your things, you try to get people away so that they are safe. Do you think we should tell them not to go back for their things?" Rebecca: Ahuh. J.: This has been a long and serious discussion today. You've said lots of ideas and listened to each other's ideas for a long time and I think we should stop our discussion now and get back to writing the

letter tomorrow. Is that okay with you? If anyone wants to stay at meeting and talk with me about the fire in Russia for a few more minutes, please stay after the other children have gone to do other things.

Commentary The children were sympathetic to the fear, pain, sadness, and death of the people of Chernobyl. They were aware of specific dangers of fire and described the suffering of individuals in familiar images. Michelle suggested writing a letter to express their feelings of sadness, to ask for more information, to suggest future safety precautions and to warn about possible hazards. The group responded enthusiastically to this suggestion of an action that they could take. We had written a letter to the families of the victims of the Challenger accident, so this was a familiar response for them to make. It is very important for children to feel comfortable in expressing their feelings and concerns about events that they have learned about through the media, and to feel empowered to respond. One of the dangers of having a discussion about a catastrophe with a group of children is that they will be left feeling overwhelmed and fearful. It mattered to me very much that the children leave our discussion with the sense that there was something we were going to do to convey our feelings. During these discussions, however, it is often not possible to probe each child's comment for further clarification. The discussion is fast-paced, and the children are eager for their turns to speak. Listening to the tape afterwards enables me to evaluate my responses. I find opportunities to speak with individual children afterwards if I think it would be useful in order to alleviate unnecessary fears because these discussions may raise questions and anxieties in some of the children. I inform parents in a brief note, summarizing some of the points of the discussion and encourage them to ask their child if he or she wants to talk about it further.

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Taped Discussion—the Following Day Dona: It reminds me of when the space shuttle exploded and I couldn't sleep today night because I worried about it. J.: Dona said our talking about the news yesterday reminded her about the space shuttle explosion and she didn't sleep well last night because she was worried about it. Christian: She said "today night." J.: Yes, those were the words that she said, but what she meant was the night before today or last night. Dona is learning to speak English. Do you remember in September when Dona only knew a few English words? Listen to how well she is speaking English now. She can tell us her idea in English now. Afsheen: This morning my daddy let me watch the news a little bit and they said they found two of the crew members of the Challenger and they were all right. J.: They said that on the news this morning?

Afsheen: Well, sort of all right. But maybe two of them were dead. J.: It would sure be nice if some of the astronauts were all right, but it seems unlikely to me because it's been a long time since the accident. But listen to the news again, and talk to your dad about what you heard, and maybe when you come to school tomorrow you can tell us what you found out. Kieran: A long time ago on the news they said they found the right booster rocket. Jeffrey: I heard that there was a spaceship that exploded and five people were killed. J.: You heard about that? And how did you feel about that, Jeffrey? Jeffrey: Terrible. J.: Terrible. Emily: I felt terrible about the spaceship. J.: That was the Challenger that exploded a while ago? Emily: Yeah. That was the one that exploded before and the seven people were killed. I saw it on TV. It was in the news. J.: You saw it on TV. Gosh, that was a very frightening and sad thing to see, wasn't it? Do you remember that we sent a letter to the families of the astronauts to tell them that we felt very sorry about the terrible accident? (Several children acknowledged remembering.) Christina: When the spaceship exploded and then some people were killed and it went into the ocean and the people were Page 23 trying to find them but they couldn't find them because they were deep, deep, deep. Kieran: Well, there was one big hunk of the space ship that was floating except fire was still coming out of it so they were afraid to put it on board the ship. J.: Even while it was in the water there was fire still in it. Kieran: That's because it was floating on edges and the fire was coming out of the window. J.: So the fire was in a place where the water couldn't get to it. Ivan: It makes me feel like I'm dreaming a bad dream.

Owen: But it's not a dream. It's really happening. And my dad told me that the fire was spreading. Cause it started yesterday. That's what my dad told me. J.: Which fire is spreading? Owen: The nuclear power plant. J.: Do you have any feelings about that? Owen: No. J.: Do you remember where the fire is? Russia is very far away. Let's find it on the globe . . . (I showed the children the globe and many of them asked to see the location of different countries to determine how far away they were from Brookline, Massachusetts.) . . . A fire couldn't possibly spread from all the way in Russia to Brookline. Christian: Maybe the fire went on by accident like there were no people there when the fire went up and there was nobody there taking care of it and then all of a sudden there was a big fire. Rebecca: I think I know about how the fire started. Maybe they were making a fire in the fireplace and it just got bigger and bigger, and went all over the house. J.: Are you talking about the same fire you were talking about yesterday? Rebecca: Yes. J.: Remember what Afsheen said about where the fire was? Afsheen, please tell Rebecca again where the fire was. J: Yes, it is in a nuclear power plant in Russia. That is a place where there are big machines. It is not somebody's house. Wow, this has been a very serious discussion. Yesterday, many of you said that you felt sad about the people who were hurt by the fire. Some of you told me your ideas for a letter to Page 24 write to the people in Russia who live near the fire. Let's finish the letter so that we can send it to them and they can read it. Rebecca: We can make some pictures and send them and let them know that we are sad the fire happened and we hope a lot of people didn't get hurt.

Commentary

The emotional response of the group to Chernobyl was reminiscent of their response to the Challenger disaster, and they continued to need to process their thoughts about the latter. Both events involved uncontrollable explosions and fire; both were catastrophes which consumed the attention of their parents and the media. For many of the children, the Challenger explosion was more meaningful, as it contained features more familiar to young children, spaceships and space travel, and a specific, smaller number of individual victims. These seven men and women were sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, and a teacher, people with whom the children could easily identify. For several months after the Challenger accident, news reports continued on television to relate how pieces of the shuttle were recovered, and information was aired regarding the cause of the explosion. Afsheen's mistaken reporting of the safety of the two astronauts may have indicated that, like many young children, he believed that death was reversible. It may also have indicated his wish for the astronauts' safety or an attempt by his father to protect him from the ongoing sadness of the event. I responded in the way I did to allow dialogue to continue at another time if Afsheen chose. Christian was graphic in his description of the sequence of events. Kieran found plausible explanation for the fire in the floating debris, which struck Ivan as the stuff of which nightmares are made. The nightmarish fire brought Owen back to the discussion of Chernobyl and its still inextinguishable blaze. It was important at this time to help the children understand how far their homes were from the fire at Chernobyl, and to reassure them that they were not personally in danger of the spreading fire. I hoped the globe, abstract though it is, would convey a sense of distance between Chernobyl, USSR, and Brookline, U.S.A. Christian and Rebecca continued to try to make sense of how the fire started, based on their own experience with accidents and fires. Rebecca still probed this aspect of the event although the day before she had attempted to describe the chemical and mechanical processes involved in reigniting the fire. That explanation, in which she had used

Page 25 the words "medicine" and "rods," may have been too abstract and too far removed from her experience to be a meaningful, satisfying one to her. Because of the constraints of time and school schedules and my sense that many of the children in the group had said all they needed to about Chernobyl, I decided to bring the discussion to a close by returning to the letter the children had proposed the day before. By sending this letter, I hoped to help them feel empowered by contributing their ideas to solving some of the problems they perceived in Chernobyl.

Conclusion Any time I ask my kindergarten students an open-ended question I know I am taking a risk, and I know that I have little control of the direction the discussion may take. I realize that children differ in the amount of information they have at their disposal, in their interpretation and in their tolerance for sitting and participating in a group discussion. I use the opportunity of these open discussions to teach tolerance for the process of giving and clarifying information, and to teach acceptance of different points of view. One of my primary goals as a teacher is to help children gain experience and confidence in communicating their ideas and feelings. Another is to give them the experience of listening to the ideas of their peers and making the effort to understand what their friends mean. In my responses, I often repeat a child's words. I do so for several reasons. Repeating demonstrates to the speaker and the others in the group that what has been said has been heard, validating

the importance of the child's ideas. It also gives the speaker an opportunity to hear what was said and to correct or clarify any miscommunication. In this latter sense I act as an interpreter for the child. Often, in these discussions, the child is struggling to understand an event and struggling to find the words to communicate that understanding. In this situation, children often use words that they have heard used in a similar context, but for the child, the word has a different meaning. The child tries to understand the relationship between how the word is used in the two contexts. Fiveyear-old children are egocentric in their speech patterns, and may not yet understand that they have used a word in an idiosyncratic way which doesn't communicate their intended message. An example might be Raphael's use of the word "cactus" to describe the spread of nuclear radiation. In a group discussion, young children tend to direct their attention to the adult's words rather than to their peers, as this has been the primary

Page 26 model of their verbal communication at home with their parents. Often a child who wishes to speak will face the adult and speak in a soft, sometimes tentative voice; the other children in the group may not be attending at all to the speaker, perhaps assuming that the communication was meant to be between that child and the adult. By repeating each child's words clearly and audibly one makes it more likely that the other children in the group will listen and respond to the child, thus confirming the importance of her opinion and information about the world. In this age of mass communication children will continue to be exposed to issues of global importance. As this discussion demonstrates, they pick up considerable frightening information and misinformation in spite of our wish to preserve their innocence and sense of security in the world. It is important for adults to acknowledge this and allow them to give voice to their thoughts and feelings. Too many adults today feel apathetic and powerless to affect matters which have the potential to greatly influence their lives, such as nuclear proliferation and the pollution of the environment. As future citizens in a democracy children need to learn the skills they will require as adults when they are enfranchised. Communicating one's own point of view and listening to the viewpoints of others are certainly among those skills. In these discussions I do not feel that my role is primarily to teach the children facts or to give them accurate information. It is not important to me that they understand the whole "story" at the end of the discussion. What is important to me is that these very young children feel they have the right to have thoughts and opinions about important events, an opportunity to express their ideas and be listened to respectfully, and that they have the experience of being empowered to work toward solutions.

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2 Bringing Global Awareness into Elementary School Classrooms SHEILA REINDL A friend of mine, who conducts workshops for teachers in grades K through 12, says that when you ask middle school and high school teachers what they do, they say, "I teach English" or "I teach social studies" or "I teach math and science." But when you ask elementary school teachers what they do, they say, "I teach children.''

My friend's observation came to mind when I began asking elementary school teachers how they bring global awareness into their classrooms. I had expected them to tell me that they teach self-empowerment, environmental and planetary awareness, cultural diversity, and conflict resolution. I had expected to hear teachers talk about such skills as examining sources of conflict, generating alternative solutions, and understanding the ecological and social interdependence of people on the planet. And in fact, teachers did talk about these things. But as I listened to them, it seemed to me that while they do weave these concepts and skills into their work, something else is at the heart of their efforts to bring global issues into their classrooms. That something else, as the following sketches reveal, is a commitment to teaching children a depth of curiosity and caring about this world. When I say "curiosity," I mean not just intellectual curiosity but curiosity of the heart , the kind of curiosity that is the basis of intimate knowing, of love: to know the earth is to love it, and to have a stake in its protection. "Curiosity" comes from the Latin word curiosus , meaning full of care or pains; careful, inquisitive. In its modern usage, curiosity is about being eager to know, to learn, to see. It is the capacity to look and to wonder, to let oneself be surprised, touched, moved. What follows is a series of sketches of five elementary school teachers who inspire in the children they teach the care and curiosity that is the foundation for global awareness.

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Elaine Messias: Including Global Issues and Peace Issues in the Standard Curriculum In Elaine Messias's fifth grade classroom, bottles and beakers from a science demonstration sit on the counter next to the sink in one corner of the room. One wall-length bulletin board is covered with student essays about the U.S. Constitution. Another big bulletin board displays sentences students have written to demonstrate their understanding of spelling words; each sentence is mounted on orange construction paper and illustrated by a crayon drawing. Students' paintings of the sky border the top of the blackboard. In one corner of the room, near a big globe, is a manila pocket folder stuffed with paint samples—small cards with different shades and tints of a color in parallel bands—that the children have taken outdoors and held up to the sky to help them become more aware of the colors of the sky. And above the students' desks, in the middle of the room, clouds, cut from white paper, hang from the ceiling. On each side of the clouds students have written descriptions of the sky in colored markers; some have written every letter in a different color. Messias herself has always been interested in teaching about peace issues and global awareness. She remembers "an absolutely superb history teacher" she had as a high school student. "I got very turned onto world affairs and world issues because he was a member of the Quincy [Mass.] United Nations Council and was very involved in U.N. activities." Now, as a teacher herself in the fairly conservative community of Needham, Massachusetts, she feels pressure to stick to a set curriculum. "There's pressure in the curriculum to cover a certain amount of social studies and a certain amount of science and so on. So you try to weave the global issues and peace issues in."

Conflict Resolution Skills Messias finds that she can teach such skills as analyzing sources of conflict, looking at a problem from different perspectives, and generating socially responsible alternatives as a part of—and even in the service of—most subject

areas. The result is a creatively crafted curriculum that is richer and more engaging for the children than the standard curriculum alone. What is more, says Messias, her students learn to see peace issues and global issues as "all of a piece" with history, science, art, literature, and writing. Recently, her students studied U.S. History from the time of the Revolutionary War to the Westward Movement. When they were

Page 29 studying the Revolution, she asked them to outline its causes. Then she asked, "Okay, at what point in that conflict could something different have been done?" The students actually came up with their own possibilities. Working with the art teacher, they wrote about their peaceful alternatives and illustrated them to create a huge collaborative mural. They titled it "Revolutionary Peace Ideas." Messias liked the mural so much that she left it on the back bulletin board for weeks. One part of the mural that stands out in Messias' mind is the children's response to the Quartering Act, an act which resulted in the forced housing of British soldiers in the colonists' homes. "The children talked about what that might have been like for the colonists, what it would be like to have to give up your room," explains Messias." And they said, 'Well, a solution might have been if the British agreed to pay the colonists something or if they brought their own beds.' So they drew pictures of the soldiers bringing their own beds so they wouldn't have to put anyone out." Messias stresses, "We're not saying 'Would that solution work?' That's not the point. The point is that the children looked for a possibility. They brainstormed ideas. It might not have worked, but at least they were thinking of different alternatives." The students also wrote and performed skits based on their peaceful solutions; the skits helped children "bring their alternatives to life" and let them know what it would look like to carry out a peaceful resolution to a problem. Messias also asks children to be peacewatchers as they study history, to look for examples of people who actually tried peaceful solutions. For example, she says, before the Civil War, the Quakers tried to help the slaves by buying 12,000 slaves out of slavery and making it possible for them to sail to Africa and start the nation of Liberia. "There are problems with that solution, too," she points out, "but the point is that people thought of and tried alternatives to war." Her students also looked at where violence starts. "We did a lesson in sequencing, which is also a skill we use in reading. We asked, 'What happened first?' In the case of the Mexican-American War, the Americans were coming into Texas too fast. It was Mexican Territory. It's the reverse of the situation there now. We went through all of the steps of how the Mexican government put in an immigration quota, how the Americans illegally came into Texas. The first act of violence occurred when the Americans, and the Texans who were on the side of the Americans, attacked San Antonio. You say Mexican-American War, and most people say, 'Remember the Alamo.' The Alamo came after the Americans attacked San Antonio." In this lesson, Messias aimed to help the children "see where they could have made a difference." She wants them to believe that "their

Page 30 critical and creative thinking and their thoughtful approaches to problems are necessary so that we can do things differently, so that the world doesn't make the same mistakes."

Current Events and the Teaching of Higher-Order Thinking Skills

Messias likes to connect the study of U.S. History and map and globe skills with current events. She brought the IranContra hearings into her social studies curriculum. Children went home and interviewed parents about the issues. They watched news broadcasts. Some children taped broadcasts and brought them in for the class. "It was outstanding," says Messias. "You teach government—this is the State Department, and this is the Cabinet and these are the President's advisers—and here are all the characters right on television. This is the Secretary of State. This is the National Security Adviser. This is the President. He makes a statement. But why? What power did he have? I had the kids talk to each other about their information. Then I had them put away their papers and give back what they remembered. I don't want them to regurgitate information; I want them to internalize what they've learned and be able to say it in their own words." Although students got very involved in the unit, Messias met with resistance from a school system administrator who was evaluating her for tenure. This administrator "was concerned that I wasn't going to get to the same page in the textbook that all the other teachers would get to and wondered why I was teaching about the Iran-Contra hearings when nobody could really figure out what they were all about anyway. "You run into that kind of thinking, and then you have to hope that you have a supportive principal." She did. Messias taught the Iran-Contra unit. She also got tenure. With that support, she responded to the administrator's challenge. "A big part of our curriculum in fifth grade is the Constitution," she says. "The Iran-Contra hearings were perfect for that. You ask, 'Did the President have the power to go against Congress? What does the Constitution say about that?'" "What children retain of events is not so important to me. I'm in the business of teaching ideas. I am committed to helping children learn that in a democracy, they have the power to make changes. They have the power, but they have to be informed. They have to read. They have to be alert."

Empowerment: How the Individual Makes a Difference At one point during the hearings, her students asked Messias, "What can we do?" "What do you want to do?" Messias responded.

Page 31 "What can we do?" "What do you think you can do?" "We can write a letter." "Okay, what shall we write?" They collaborated in writing a letter to Massachusetts Senators John Kerry and Edward Kennedy. They began by brainstorming what they might say and went on to shape the letter together. A couple of students who said they did not agree with the majority position opted not to write the letter. "That was fine," Messias says. "I said, 'I'm glad you feel comfortable about speaking up. That's part of the democratic process.' If they had wanted to write a letter about their position, we would have done that, too." Messias asked the parents' approval before anyone signed the letter. Some parents did not grant approval. One parent sent a note saying "My child may sign anything he wants to sign."

With only a little guidance and a few comments about spelling and grammar from Messias, they wrote the letter and sent it. "I told them that these people are really busy, that they get thousands of letters coming across their desks. I told them, 'We're going to write because you have something you want to say. Someone will read the letter, but we may not get a response. But we'll have done what we could do.'" About a week later, Messias got a phone call at school. "Senator Kerry's secretary from Washington was on the phone. He wanted to use the letter in the senator's campaign because it was one of the best letters he'd received. "The children were so excited," she says. "Now they know that they can write letters and that letters can have some effect."

Curiosity and Responsibility Messias emphasizes respons ibility—awareness of one's capacity to respond—throughout her curriculum, including in her science units. This year she had a local science center send her four live invertebrates. "The children wrote about them for a whole week. And then we made a huge chart and they made their own classifications. Instead of my teaching them about the scientific classification of invertebrates, which has absolutely no meaning for them, they were able to see that the two worms had lines on their back and they had heads and tails but they did not seem to have any legs, whereas a salamander does have legs. They made all kinds of connections, some of which were according to scientific classifications, without my ever having taught that. They were trusting their own observations." It's in their study of the sky, however, that Messias's students

Page 32 receive the most extended practice in awareness and responsibility. Whether they're studying U.S. History, working on language arts skills, or learning about natural science, Messias's students are always aware of the sky. On the day I visited the classroom, the children did something they frequently do: they took their sky journals from their desks, took two or three carpets samples from a stash in a cupboard, and filed out onto the lawn outside their classroom. There all of us sat on our carpets, gazed at the sky, and wrote. Later some of us gathered to listen to the entries of people who were willing to read aloud what they had written. For one boy the cloudscapes were emblems for stories of life and death and journeys. One girl, trying to describe the patterns of clouds against the blue, wrote that "the white is French-braided into the blue." "You have a wonderful description there," Messias said to her. "I was trying to think of how to describe those clouds, and I couldn't, but you really captured it." Messias responded briefly, but genuinely, to each child. Messias has been weaving "sky awareness" into her curriculum for several years now, ever since hearing about the work of Jack Borden, the founder of For Spacious Skies, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, Massachusetts. Sky awareness is a full-time job for Borden, who quit his job as a television news reporter a number of years ago. He now says, "I've dedicated myself to turning people on to the sky." He is particularly involved in helping teachers bring sky awareness into their own lives and the lives of the children they teach. Borden says that despite the fact that we live at the bottom of an ocean of air, that we breathe the sky sixteen times a minute, and that the sky is available to all of us all of the time, we tend to ignore it or see it only as a source of information or as a background or as "the heavens." "We don't think of it as an object in itself," he says. He has found that if you stop people on the street, shade their eyes so they can't see the sky, and ask them what the sky looks like at

that moment, they can't tell you. What does the sky have to do with global issues in the elementary school classroom? Borden says, "Sky-aware people see the sky. They appreciate its beauty. They then appreciate the beauty of the entire landscape, skyscape, seascape. Therefore, they wouldn't think of blemishing it. Sky-aware people don't have to be told not to throw Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes around." He finds that children readily "take to the sky" and naturally appreciate its magnificence once they begin looking up. "If kids develop a powerful relationship to nature," he says, "nature becomes a resource for them throughout their lives and something they will care about.''

Page 33 Borden encourages "a relationship to the sky —and to the earth—that is the relationship of beholding ." He says that to use the sky as a focus for teaching, "a teacher must be someone who herself sees the sky." The more he works with teachers, the more concerned he is that they find their own powerful and personal relationship to nature. He's convinced that once teachers open their own eyes and hearts to the sky, they can foster the relationship of beholding in their students and use the sky as a ''unifying element for the improvement of education." Messias would agree. In addition to using the sky as a focus for much journal and essay writing, she has collaborated with the art teacher and worked to bring the sky into the children's artwork. What she and other teachers have found is that as children become more and more aware of the sky, the skies they draw change from being a single blue band at the top of the page to a blue, gray, peach, orange, and yellow sky that fills the page. Next year, Messias hopes to weave some of the concepts of sky awareness into her science curriculum. She is impressed with the way in which sky awareness can be adapted to the whole curriculum and with its "magical" effects on children. "It's one of the few times in their day that children can be alone with their thoughts in a world that bombards them with information. After forty minutes, they're still writing." Even on cold days, children in her class have gone out and sat on the playground equipment and written with their gloves on. Messias says she will always remember one child who wrote, "When we look up at the sky, we see peace. When the sky looks down on us, it does not see peace."

Joanne Weltman: Making Connections Beginning with What is Personal Several years ago Joanne Weltman began an experiment with her fifth-grade class in Dover, Massachusetts. Weltman believes that studying global issues must be founded on a sense of respect for and connection with oneself and others. To foster connection in her classroom, she set up a daily community meeting which she and her students refer to as "Connections." At 8:45 every morning, students leave their desks and gather in a circle at one side of their large classroom. They hold hands. Weltman asks one child to "start a squeeze" that passes around their circle; the traveling squeeze reminds everyone that they are connected, that the action of each person touches everyone. Then, for about fifteen minutes, they participate in some activity that is in the service of connection.

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Establishing Trust and Acceptance from the Start Weltman has held Connections every morning for more than three years. She begins on the very first day of class. She asks the students to find someone in the class they don't know and to interview that person—about such things as what their middle name is, where their grandparents live, what their favorite book is. Then she asks the children to introduce each other to the class. "At first they aren't too sure what Connections is or what to say. They think it's a little weird.

But then they get involved, and they look forward to it."

Encouraging Kids to be Curious about Who They are Early on in the year, she has the children work on connecting to themselves and their own lives. Children make lists of things they like about themselves. They talk and write about a time they felt special. They talk about how they know when they are happy or sad or angry and how they share those feelings. The students make a time capsule, putting in items that are important to them, including a note about the biggest obstacle they have had so far in their lives and what they would like to do to overcome it. Weltman tells them they will open the bottle at the end of the year and reflect on how they are similar or different from the person who created that time capsule. Early in the fall, she takes many pictures of the children. Many snapshots stay on her desk all year. The students keep track of when their classmates' birthdays are and make birthday cards for each other. Children must do some homework before their birthdays—interviewing parents, grandparents, and other family members to find out, for example, if anyone made anything special when they were born, where their father was when they were born, what animal was in the house when they arrived home. (She used to ask children less personal questions—what songs were popular when they were born, who was President, what the headlines were, who won the World Series—until the children discovered they could get the answers from computer programs without interviewing anyone in their families.)

Expanding to What is Global The what-was-happening-when-I-was-born exercise is an effort to develop children's curiosity about themselves and their relationship to their families. From these basic connections, students broaden their perspective and go on to talk about interpersonal and social issues such as popularity, put-downs, honesty, racism, ageism, and sexism. When

Page 35 they talk about racism, they all place their arms in a circle and compare skin color among themselves. "They love to see themselves and how they fit into things," Weltman says. The day I visited the class, students were discussing a story about a woman, Kathy, who is trying to decide how to respond to a boss who has asked her to lie for him in small and large ways. After breaking down into small groups, we came back together as a large group and participated in a lively discussion. When Weltman asked whether the students thought Kathy should continue to lie, one boy, Tom, said that "they are just little dinky lies" and that he himself "wouldn't mind just having to lie a little." He said that Kathy should do what her boss said. Weltman asked, "Does anyone want to respond to what Tom has just said?" Another boy said, ''I would quit." In an effort to make clear that Connections is a time to talk with each other rather than at each other, she asked, "But what do you want to say in response to what Tom has just said?" The second boy elaborated on why he didn't think it was a good idea to lie. At one point in the discussion, Roger, a child who had not spoken much, started to talk. He challenged a classmate's argument that happiness depends on money and that even if she has to lie, Kathy should keep her job because it pays well. Other students who were eager to talk picked up on his idea and drowned him out, saying that once Kathy starts to lie, she will end up having to use bigger and bigger lies to cover up for the little lies; some children wondered whether her friends would find out and think less of her for lying. Roger was silent. "But wait," Weltman said, "Roger is saying something important here. Roger—?" "Well," Roger said, "Let's say you lie and your friends don't find out and you get real rich and have a Lamborghini and a mansion and a pool in the backyard and all your friends come over all the time. You wouldn't really have friends.

You'd have tourists." The students went on to discuss why people lie and what would happen if everyone told the truth and whether it's ever a good idea to lie. At the end of the discussion. Weltman asked them to write in their journals, as she does every day, about the themes of the day and answers to a few questions. "The journals are private," she says, "unless they choose to read from them. Children need some quiet time, time to check in with themselves." She sees herself as working to help the children know that they belong, that they are part of a community—in fact, many communities—and that they are all working together to create a classroom community in which everyone can learn. She is struck by how relieved children are when they discover in the Connections discussions that they

Page 36 are not alone in feeling overwhelmed by their schoolwork, in having felt like a nerd in the third grade, in having nightmares about being chased or falling through the air, and in feeling hurt when someone puts them down. She believes that children's connections to the world must begin with their trust that they have full and valued membership in a community. A case of scapegoating that developed one year in her class reinforced her belief in the importance of trust in the classroom. "Scapegoating," she says, "can just slip out of your hands and you really don't quite know how it happens, but it happens. I felt very bad about this incident and wanted to make sure it never happened again." She made a pledge to herself to work to create a classroom where children could feel safe and valued. "I wanted them to feel that this is a safe place, that this is their place." She has found that since she started Connections, her students are much more involved in their classroom. Without prompting or reminding from her, they take attendance, take a hot lunch count, list daily assignments on the blackboard, and keep track of whether they have overdue assignments. And, in ways that are harder to pinpoint but nevertheless feel vital to Weltman, they show more respect for each other. "Children typically don't feel they have much power," she observes. "We talked about who has power and that I have power but that they don't have individual power. I want them to know that they do have power." Early in the year, Weltman would call "foul" or "out of bounds" when she heard a child blaming or putting down another child or breaking classroom rules. "That's a foul" became part of the class's common language; the students themselves feel they have the power to recognize what is in bounds and out of bounds. Now when a scapegoating situation begins to develop, she intervenes, arranging for a small-group Connections with those involved. "This is what I'm seeing,'' she tells students. "How are you going to work this out?" Through such Connections meetings students find a way to get beyond scapegoating.

Remaining Curious about the World—Even If You're the Teacher Initially Weltman borrowed many ideas from Open Minds to Equality and Cooperative Learning, Cooperative Lives , both by Nancy Schniedewind and Ellen Davidson. But over time, she relies less on others' exercises and more on her own creativity to expand classroom activities for the children and facilitate group discussions. "As I trust kids more, I trust myself more. When I hear kids responding in a way I don't understand, I step back and ask, 'What is going on that they are responding that way?' and I set out to learn from them."

Page 37 "Above all, you have to create your own attitude," she says. For her, the attitude seems to be one of curiosity. Curiosity about oneself, about others, and about the world in which we all live. "One morning," she says, referring to the time when she was taking a summer institute in bringing global issues into the classroom, "I was making breakfast, and I

looked out my kitchen window and for the first time I looked over the tops of all the trees and realized that there's a whole world out there. I wanted to bring that attitude back to my classroom."

Sonia Goldsmith: Fostering an Appreciation for Difference Sonia Goldsmith, who teaches a combination second and third grade in Sherborn, Massachusetts, works to inspire in her students an abiding curiosity and appreciation for other cultures in the world, and in particular for Chinese culture. She teaches in what she describes as "an upper-middle-class community that is quite conservative and homogeneous and comfortable." She feels that "it's important to expose these children of economic privilege to other lifestyles and societies and cultures so that they realize that all the world is not like their tiny microcosm, nor is theirs necessarily superior in every way. Too often our children can be intolerant and uninterested in gaining any insight or knowledge into other lifestyles. It's important for them to have exposure at an early age, in the primary years, while they're still eager and open and before they develop an inflexible mindset." Goldsmith chose to teach global awareness through teaching about China partly because "China has such a remarkable history" and partly out of a personal interest. She traces her own and her husband's fascination with China to a friendship with a Chinese man. Their friend disappeared in China before the Cultural Revolution; when they did not hear from him for a long time, they assumed he was dead. But after the Cultural Revolution, the friend contacted them. That friendship has continued, and three years ago, Goldsmith and her husband went to China for a visit. Subsequently, with the many materials and experiences she brought back and with some financial support from her local district, she began teaching a unit on China.

Integrating Cultural Awareness into the Existing Curriculum She feels fortunate to have a school system and a principal that support her interest in teaching about China. But she emphasizes that teaching about a particular country does not need to compete with or interfere with the standard curriculum. Like Messias, she finds a way to teach

Page 38 toward global awareness within a standard curriculum. She uses China as a way to teach map and globe skills and as a focus for the children's writing. She collaborates with the art teacher and music teacher in having children learn ribbon dances, calligraphy, and Chinese music. Much of her focus is on comparing traditional China with modern China. For such young children, she works with the concrete, relying on visual and hands-on materials "to help the children develop a depth of interest that will spur them on to continue to learn well beyond the early grades." She takes them on field trips to Boston's Chinatown and Museum of Fine Arts. She teaches hands-on lessons in stir-frying try eating with chopsticks. She brings in filmstrips, slides, magazines (she recommends China Pictorial ), videos of televisions programs on China, objects from China, and people in the community who are originally from China. After a group discussion on the day's lesson, she typically has students break into learning teams of four children to help each other learn more about the topic of the day: for example, children collaborate in finding out how China handles the problems of feeding over one billion people in a country where only one third of the land is arable.

"If I Were a Chinese Child . . ." Learning to be Curious about Another Person's Experience

She has found that children are particularly interested to know what life is like for Chinese children. When she brings in slides of a visit she made to a Chinese classroom, her students invariably notice how scantily supplied it is. While their own classroom is chock-full of books, materials, and art supplies, the Chinese classroom is nearly bare. Chinese children sit two to a little table, and Goldsmith tells them that the teacher had a hard time finding any chalk in the building. This year Goldsmith's students put on a Chinese play called "Everybody Knows What a Dragon Looks Like." Goldsmith wrote the play herself, adapting it from a story by Jay Williams which is based on an old Chinese folktale. She wrote in a few extra characters "so that everyone could have a part." Parents helped students create costumes and build the set. At the end of the China unit, Goldsmith has the children write down all that they can remember about China. She then xeroxes the lists and gives each child a copy of the complete set. This year's list is three and a half pages long and includes such things as "it's the third largest country in the world"; "Chinese medicine uses herbs and acupuncture"; "in China there are lots of bicycles and few cars"; "in China, your last name is written before your first name"; and "the Chinese

Page 39 invented silk, firecrackers, paper, the printing press, and the magnetic compass." But Goldsmith hopes that beyond the learning facts, "children develop an appreciation for another culture, another way of life. I want children to develop an appreciation for difference and a tolerance for difference."

Eileen Drummond: Teaching about World Hunger For Eileen Drummond, who teaches fifth grade in Williamstown, Massachusetts, her own interest in ending hunger in the world had led her to develop a unit on the subject. In an effort to make her students more aware, she has created an exercise designed to show them how hunger, which is a daily catastrophe, receives so little attention in the media and in people's minds. She gives the children statistics, but doesn't tell them that the statistics are related to hunger: 35,000 were killed; 24 people died; 18 children dies. Then she asks, if this were a plane crash (or a bombing or an earthquake or another natural disaster), would this be news? What would the newspaper headline be? Would it interrupt regularly scheduled television programming? Why? What would the newsbreak be? Only then does she reveal that the statistics she had given were hunger facts:

Thirty-five thousand people die every day of hunger Twenty-four people die every minute of hunger Eighteen of those twenty-four are children The class then explores why hunger, which, in Drummond's words, "kills more people in two days than were killed by the Hiroshima bomb" goes unnoticed. The children explore where hunger exists in the world, the reasons for hunger, and the possibilities for and efforts toward ending hunger. "I am trying to develop more of a consciousness and a caring attitude. I want them to realize, while they are kids, that we could end hunger by the year 2000—I really do believe that. I feel if we don't get these kids thinking about it at an early age, chances are they're going to grow up like many of us who figure that it's out there somewhere. It's not here."

Thinking Globally and Acting Locally

"But we connect it to here, too," she says. To help the children see the problem as local, Drummond arranged for them to visit the Northern Berkshires Food Pantry in neighboring North Adams. The children brought to the pantry canned foods that they had collected at their

Page 40 school. They also visited a Congregational church that serves lunch three or four days a week to people in need. They each donated to the lunch program the 70 cents they would normally spend for lunch. Then they had lunch with the other guests from the community. However, the kitchen staff, worried about whether ten-year-olds would like the regular menu, made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which they ate with people who had come in for the regular noontime meal. "It wasn't as realistic as it could have been," Drummond said. "But it did give children a chance to see that there are real people who are in need. I wanted the kids to know that it's not just out there in Africa somewhere. It's here and people are doing something about it and they can do something about it." She said that the children were particularly struck by the fact that some of the noontime guests were families with young children. "It was hard for them to know that some children don't have enough food," Drummond says. "But it was also wonderful to see the faces of the high-chair-age kids light up when they saw all these ten-year-olds." "I wish someone had done this with me when I was a kid," says Drummond. "I had to be older to get involved with a lot of these issues of caring and responsibility. I am just trying to raise a little consciousness with these kids."

Involving the Whole School Besides teaching fifth grade, Drummond is a moving force behind a schoolwide global education program. After a year of surveying teachers to find out how they already integrate global issues into their social studies curriculum, Drummond and a colleague, Lucille Lemon, a third grade teacher, developed a K-6 social studies curriculum. The program, which emphasizes global awareness, is called "Williamstown and the World and the World and Williamstown." Working collaboratively with their colleagues, Drummond and Lemon came up with a plan to assign each grade one country and one global issue. Kindergartners study community helpers generally but no specific country, and their global issue is shelters around the world. First graders focus on France, and their global issue is saving animals. Second graders study Mexico, and their global issue is transportation and conserving energy. Third graders study Japan, and their global issue is reducing waste. Fourth graders study Massachusetts and European immigrants (Irish, Italian, Jewish, and English), and their global issue is conserving water. Fifth graders study U.S. History and Central America, and their global issue is ending hunger and poverty. Sixth graders study the Middle East, the former USSR and an African nation, and their global issue is using technology

Page 41 wisely. "We try to take a positive, active approach," says Drummond. "We say 'saving animals' instead of 'endangered species' and 'ending hunger' instead of 'hunger.'"

Making Social Studies—and the Whole School—Come Alive In describing her social studies curriculum, Drummond says, "We wanted to bring global issues into the classroom, and we wanted to make social studies come alive." Starting in the spring, the school community planned a schoolwide International Day in which children could share with their schoolmates and parents what they had learned about the world. The entire school was turned into a fair with each class hosting an exhibit or living diorama and each class

providing performances of some kind. The second graders set up a French art museum. Third graders created an exhibit of Japanese family life, including demonstrations of calligraphy and martial arts. Fourth graders demonstrated their paper recycling project. Sixth graders served tea in an Egyptian living room and set up a Middle East summit conference. Drummond's class created their interpretations of life in a Central American village in the form of a market place. Her students also had a chance to tell their school community about hunger. During the parade that kicked off the day, children held balloons lettered "children's survival" which the fifth grade had received from Oxfam. Out of a concern for the environment, they didn't let the balloons outside the building. They let them go in the gym where they floated to the ceiling and became decorations. The fifth grade also put out barrels for the collection of canned food and money. The canned goods went to the Northern Berkshires Food Pantry, the money to Oxfam. The music teacher and the physical education teacher helped the children stage international dances and musical performances. The school called the experience "A Global Experience: All in a Day," drawing the second half of the title from a book of the same name by Mitsumasa Anno. "At first, teachers thought this was going to take too much time," Drummond said. But she told them that parents had agreed to help. "When we got into it, everyone loved it. It was an example of total integration of the whole curriculum. Everyone got involved. We all worked in building a sense of community within our whole school."

Susan Hughes: Students Taking Action Sometimes it takes some pushing to get students involved in community action projects. And sometimes they surprise teachers by insisting on involvement.

Page 42 Susan Hughes, the teacher of a combination fourth- and fifth-grade class in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was excited by the spontaneous efforts of her students this year, which led to raising $500 for a shelter for battered women and children in Cambridge.

Bringing Current Events to Life The project began with a weekly current events assignment. Each week, students brought in articles from the newspaper. One week in October, the assignment was to bring in a piece about something local. One child brought in an article about someone who was homeless in Cambridge. They talked about why people are homeless and who is homeless and what it would be like to be a child in a homeless family. "I think everybody had probably heard about homelessness, but had never though about it in Cambridge, right in their own area. Most of the children were devastated by the idea that there might be somebody who had lived near them at one point who might be homeless now." The children asked her what they could do. Hughes describes herself as someone "with a strong commitment to helping others." However, she also feels that "I don't have a lot of say in forcing my viewpoint on others." She told the children "I did agree with them that it was a very upsetting thing but that I didn't feel I could go ahead and do anything about it without them at this point. But if they wanted to think about it overnight and come in with a plan of what we might think of doing, that I'd be willing to support them in whatever way I could." The next day, the children came back and, through small group discussion, ended up forming four groups: the canned food group; the coffee can group; the Oxfam group; and the meals-on-wheels group. The Oxfam group wrote away for information on how to help hungry people in other countries. That group eventually "fizzled," Hughes said, probably

because its efforts were not as specific and local as those of the others. The other groups did not fizzle. The canned food group sponsored several food collections in the school. They made signs advertising the collections and telling people what they were for. They went around to all of the classes and announced the food drives. "It was difficult," Hughes said "to go into the eighth grade classes because they were heckled there. They persevered because the project was important to them." During the school system's annual Thanksgiving food drive, the students in the canned food group got permission from their principal to be in charge of their school's collection. The food went to the Red Cross Food Pantry which the group visited. The staff at the Food Pantry

Page 43 told them that their school had contributed the most food. The coffee can group decorated coffee cans and put them in local restaurants and stores with signs that said, "This is for the homeless and hungry people in Cambridge. Would you donate something?" They checked the collection boxes every week, kept records of how much they got from each business, and sent notices letting the businesses know how much they had received from the patrons. In December, one of the local television stations sponsored a project through which interested schools and individuals could be connected to specific shelters. Hughes contacted the station and got descriptions of two shelters that the class could sponsor. One was a shelter for alcoholics; the other was a shelter for battered women and children.

Letting Children Decide What to Do "My first instinct was to stay away from the battered women and children's shelter," Hughes says. But then I decided that I really had no right to make that decision. And I talked to the children about it. In the end they decided they wanted to help the shelter for battered women and children because there were children involved." From then on, the class's efforts all went toward their adopted shelter. The shelter gave the class a list of things they needed such as specific food items, laundry detergent, and paper goods. The canned food group made a special effort to collect these items. The coffee can group put all of its money toward the shelter. And the meals-on-wheels group made treats and valentines for a Valentine's Day party for the children at the shelter. The students were not allowed to visit the shelter or even know where it was in Cambridge, since a shelter for battered women must protect the privacy of the guests. However, shelter staff came to talk with the students and to pick up items they had collected or made. At one point the students decided they wanted to earn money by doing a sponsored activity. They asked people to sponsor them for cleaning up Cambridge Common—so much money per bag or trash collected. "We went down to the Common on a frigid day," Hughes said. "We nearly froze to death—only to find out that the Department of Public Works had been there cleaning the day before." After scrounging for trash under bushes, they managed to fill only a few bags. They then went back to their sponsors, explained about the precleaned Common, and asked them to make a donation. "These children took their responsibility very seriously," says Hughes. Then came the question of what to spend the money on. Hughes told them they could spend it on anything they wanted, as long as it

Page 44 had something to do with the shelter. They decided they wanted to purchase a swingset for the children. They researched swingsets and decided that wooden swingsets were the best.

When Teachers are Inspired by Their Students Hughes decided that she would call the swingset store to place the order. She told the salesman what the students had done and asked him if the store would give them a discount. He offered a 5 or 10 percent discount. "I am not a person who asks for things easily," says Hughes, "but their inspiration was just so strong, that I said to the man, 'Well, I was hoping you could give us a 20% discount.' And he did!" Hughes is not certain a teacher can plan or count on bringing about involvement as intense as her fourth and fifth graders.' "I'm not sure you can structure something like that. I think what you can do is to make it possible if kids wants to do it. I suppose I could have come in with a project and said, 'we are going to so this this year,' but I think that the fact they they were moved made a difference. "I see the homelessness project as something they carried. They wouldn't let me forget about it. They kept pushing. They kept asking, 'What can we do next?'"

"You Just Can't Let Them Feel Hopeless" She says that she found herself changing as she watched them. "I found myself trusting them more and more as the year went on and seeing that they could handle it, that it wasn't going to be devastating for them because they were having the opportunity to do something about it. With children you just can't let them feel hopeless. I think they can deal with almost anything as long as they know it doesn't have to be that way." Several children wrote about the experience over the year, and nearly all of them wrote about it in their end-of-the-year reflections. Hughes says that again and again the message was "You know, I didn't think something I did could really matter. Now I know that I can make a difference."

The Risks Involved in Teaching about Global Awareness Almost every teacher I talked with spoke about the fear of imposing her own viewpoints on students. But as one of them was talking about that concern, saying "I'm afraid of being too political," she

Page 45 stopped herself in midsentence and said, "But you know, everything is political. You can't get around it." I think she is right. I am reminded of George Orwell's observation that "The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." While a teacher is wise not to endorse a particular partisan viewpoint, her very way of being in the classroom models something about how we, as citizens, regard each other, and in this sense, her behavior is political. Nearly all the teachers I interviewed also mentioned what a risk it is to be teaching about the things that matter to them most. "You can feel like you're out there on a limb," one teacher said. "There's a constant, nagging self-doubt. Am I

doing the right thing? Could I be doing it better? What if it all backfires? What if it ends up being counterproductive and fostering negative feelings in the kids?" Many of them mentioned that they feel alone, that they aren't sure what their colleagues think of them or what they would think of them if they knew how they really taught. "I worry that some think I'm just some sort of a part-time dogooder yuppie who spends some time with a community project and ends up getting her picture in the paper," one teacher said. Most of them said that if they make a choice to leave something out of the curriculum because they want to focus on something they consider more important, they run the risk that when the children get to the next grade level, their colleagues will point a finger and ask why the children aren't better prepared. "I could say that the hardest thing is the zillions of hours," one teacher said, "but that probably isn't it. For me, the hardest part was the self-doubt and the risk."

Craving Dialogue and Support Nearly all of the teachers I spoke with said they long for dialogue with other teachers. As one teacher said, "I'm talking about sharing not just what one is doing, not just 'this is my classroom and this is what I do,' but sharing about who you are as a teacher. When you're trying to teach about what is global, what do you trust to inside of yourself as a teacher and as a human being? And what is hard for you about teaching this way? Is this kind of discussion important? I think it is." Another said that she thinks, "The most important thing about ESR or ELNA or any group of teachers is that people find a way to talk to each other and support each other." All of the teachers said that the communicated support of their principals made it much easier for them to experiment with new ideas and new projects.

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Empowerment of Teachers I felt the desire for dialogue and connection in all of my interviews. Every teacher was generous with her time in a very busy end-of-the-school-year season. And every teacher had plenty to say. It occurs to me that these interviews may be one of the few times in their teaching lives when someone says to them, ''I'm curious about what you're doing. Will you tell me about it?" For all the inherent risks and difficulties, teaching for global awareness is helping these teachers value their own work. Susan Hughes, talking about her students' work with the shelter, says, "If I never do anything else with kids for the rest of my life, I will feel that, in letting these kids do this, I made a contribution."

Conclusion As I noted at the outset, If I had to give a word to what I think children learn from the teachers I have described, it would be curiosity . This word subsumes the "passion," "participation," "involvement," "investment," "heart," "connection," "commitment," "community," "care," "responsibility," "relationship," "respect," and "wonder" that they also communicate as they weave concepts of global awareness into their curriculum. They model an active, living curiosity about each child, the classroom community, and the world. Again, not just intellectual curiosity—curiosity of the mind—but abiding curiosity of the heart . Edward Shapiro, a family therapist, has observed that interpersonal curiosity is a "hallmark of [a family's] psychological health" (Shapiro, p. 69). He finds that in dysfunctional families, members regard each other with "pathological certainty" and "are often extraordinarily certain that they know, understand, and can speak for the

experience of other family members without further discussion or question" (Shapiro, pp. 69–70). Shapiro's observations about "pathological certainty" suggest that when we fail to be curious about each other our relationships suffer. We become apathetic, which literally means "without pains or feeling." We do not take the pains to look, to listen, to learn. Curiosity toward oneself or toward family members, a classmate, the sky, the Chinese culture, or the plight of homeless or hungry people, is ultimately about re-specting, re-look ing, with the belief that we have more to learn from each other. Curiosity is a way of being respons ible, a re-spectful response that says, "You matter to me. I care to know how things look from where you stand."

Page 47 Learning that people can have different experiences of the very same situation is a big part of what happens developmentally for children in the elementary school years. I learn that just because I want to play house does not mean that you want to. I learn that you can tell a story from the point of view of different characters. I laugh at jokes and puns that are based on seeing things from two perspectives. I go to my friends' houses and they come to mine and we discover that different families eat dinner at different times, abide by different house rules, and have different lifestyles. It is in the late elementary school years that children's curiosity extends to wondering about other people's experience. These are the years in which I develop a close and special friendship with one peer. This best friend is a person about whom I want to know everything and whose welfare matters to me as much as my own. Curiosity, or wonder, is native to all of us, but wonder tends to get lost or dampened along the course of our lives. Yet when we can catch hold of it in ourselves—or feel heartfelt curiosity coming our way from another person—we know how transforming and healing a force it is. And we know its capacity to bring dignity and humor to our world. Alice Walker writes about how her sense of herself as a beautiful and buoyant child changed when one of her eyes was injured and blinded by a childhood accident. It is her young daughter's curiosity that made healing possible:

I am twenty-seven, and my baby daughter is almost three. Since her birth, I have worried about her discovery that her mother's eyes are different from other people's. Will she be embarrassed? I think. What will she say? Every day she watches a television program called "Big Blue Marble." It begins with a picture of the earth as it appears from the moon. It is bluish, a little battered-looking, but full of light, with whitish clouds swirling around it. . . . One day when I am putting Rebecca down for her nap, she suddenly focuses on my eye. Something inside me cringes, gets ready to try to protect myself. All children are cruel about physical difference, I know from experience, and that they don't always mean to be is another matter. I assume Rebecca will be the same. But no-o-o-o. She studies my face intently as we stand, her inside and me outside her crib. She even holds my face maternally between her dimpled little hands. Then, looking every bit as serious and lawyer-like as her father, she says, as if it may just possibly have slipped my attention: "Mommy, there's a world in your eye." . . . And then, gently, but with great interest, "Mommy, where did you get that world in your eye?" (Walker, pp. 392–393) Page 48 It seems to me that these teachers are trying to teach children that there is a world in all of our eyes, a world within each of us, a world between all of us, and a world that is all of us.

Critics of global education say that teaching curiosity is well and good but that if we only teach children to care, to wonder, and to respect, we risk failing to equip them with the intellectual and interpersonal skills they need to participate in and protect life on this planet. The teachers I spoke with made clear that we do not face an either/or choice. It is possible—even necessary—both to instruct and inspire. Is teaching for global awareness new? If it amounts to teaching children curiosity and caring right along with intellectual and social skills, isn't that just what good elementary school teachers have been doing all along? Probably so, but good teaching is rarer than we would like to think. Teachers can easily become absorbed in the day-today struggles of classroom teaching or mired in mundane maintenance and lose touch with their own capacity for good teaching. They can lose heart, that is, lose their own imperative to care. What my interviews with teachers reveal is that in focusing on global awareness, teachers are reconnecting to their caring for the world and for their students. What makes this renewed—or new—commitment possible is that teachers are creating a sense of community and communicating about their creativity . In thinking about what is global, they are finding a common language. More importantly, they are finding each other. They are talking. They are wondering. They are curious, both about their own teaching and about their colleagues' experiences. The very process of sharing and reflecting on one's work promotes a healthy curiosity and a revitalizing connection to self and others. In that generative process of connection and reflection, teachers reaffirm for themselves that this work of teaching children matters.

Bibliography Anno, Mitsumasa. All in a Day . New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1986. Educators for Social Responsibility. Perspectives: A Teaching Guide to Concepts of Peace . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Educators for Social Responsibility, 1983. Hunger Project. Ending Hunger: An Idea Whose Time Has Come . New York: Praeger, 1985. Orwell, George. "Why I Write." In The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: An Age Like This 1920–1940 , Ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1956. Page 49

Schniedewind, Nancy, and Ellen Davidson. Open Minds To Equality . Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1983. Schniedewind, Nancy, and Ellen Davidson. Cooperative Learning, Cooperative Lives: A Sourcebook for Learning Activities for Building a Peaceful World . Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown Co., 1987. Shapiro, Edward. "On Curiosity: Intrapsychic and Interpersonal Boundary Formation in

Family Life." International Journal of Family Psychiatry 3 (1982): 69–89. Walker, Alice. "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self." In In Search of Our Mother's Gardens . New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1983. Williams, Jay. Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like . New York: Four Winds Press, 1985.

Resources Boston Children's Museum, 300 Congress St., Boston, MA 02110 (617-426-6500). Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115 (617-267-9300). China Pictorial . (Jen min hua pao.) Beijing, China (Periodical). For Spacious Skies, 54 Webb Street, Lexington, MA 02173 (508-249-4323). Oxfam-America, 115 Broadway St., Boston, Massachusetts 02116 (617-482-1211). Page 50

3 Cooperative Learning: Making the Transition SARAH PIRTLE At the end of a chemistry lesson on potassium, a sixth grade student named Hank raises his hand. "You mean to tell me we're going to have a quiz next week, and I have to depend on what Geri tells me?" It is early in the school year, and Jim Trierweiler's middle school science classes in Carlisle, Massachusetts, are embarking on a year-long experiment in cooperative learning. Working in learning groups of four, Hank and his classmates will help each other prepare for the next week's quiz. "Hank is saying he's going to have to depend on someone else and he doesn't know if he likes that idea," Trierweiler says, responding descriptively to Hank's question. At age twelve, Hank probably has had limited experiences in cooperation in school, aside from group games. His antipathy to collaborating with another student is not unique; it is learned. Our culture holds up toughing it out, going it alone, and rugged individualism as qualities to admire and emulate. Since the late 1930s competition has been in the forefront of public schools.

Yet our lives are built on a foundation of vast and complex interconnectedness. We depend upon other people to obey traffic laws, build bridges safely, sell unspoiled food, and manufacture safe medicine. Hospitals, airports, and schools function with complex teamwork. Most of the world's work is done cooperatively, and when people are fired from a job, in 75 to 85 percent of the cases it is due to the individual's inability to get along with co-workers. Robert Slavin, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the field of cooperative learning, writes:

Why have human beings been so successful as a species? . . . We're intelligent—but an intelligent man or woman alone in the jungle or forest would not survive long. What has really made humans Page 51 such successful animals is our ability to apply our intelligence to cooperation with others to accomplish group goals. . . . Since schools socialize children to assume adult roles, we might expect them to emphasize cooperative activity. Yet schools are among the institutions in our society least characterized by cooperative activity.1 Awareness of our interdependence has become essential in the contemporary world. Nancy and Ted Graves, researchers and trainers in cooperative learning, write:

Ever since Colonial days, Americans have placed high value on the virtue of independence. And indeed, an important goal of our educational process is to help students acquire the skill and motivation to work independently on their academic assignments. Most classrooms are therefore set up to encourage each student to work alone, and individualized, self-paced lessons and worksheets are popular. But the Space Age has dramatically taught us . . . what simpler peoples have always known intuitively: that we are also part of a single, highly interdependent system of living organism, all of which share a single home: Spaceship Earth. Teaching our children this fundamental lesson of life has now become essential for our very survival.2 Cooperative learning has the potential to help students develop a sense of global citizenship and to foster environmental ethics and a sense of mutual responsibility. Nancy Schniedewind, professor at the State University College in New Paltz, New York and co-author with Ellen Davidson of Cooperative Learning, Cooperative Lives , is one of those emphasizing this potential. She writes, "A cooperatively structured classroom models the essence of a peaceful world. . . . Through their participation in democratic, reciprocal, caring relationships on a small scale, students can envision, and believe possible, such relations on a global scale."3 Increasingly, educators recognize the lack of training and experience in collaborative skills. This new awareness has contributed to the revived and growing interest in cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is not new. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century the distinguished educator, Francis Parker advocated cooperative learning, and in this century it was promoted by John Dewey. Research in the field of cooperative learning began in the early 1900s, but it is the key researchers of the last two decades, David and Roger Johnson, Spencer Kagan, Robert Slavin, Shlomo and Yael Sharan,

Page 52 and others, who have refined it. They, and many curriculum writers and staff developers, have helped to build the

current infrastructure of educators working in the field. This network includes researchers and teachers in elementary, secondary, and university settings who create, test, and implement cooperative learning models. A growing number of local and regional participants strengthen this network. They spur their colleagues within individual school systems to try the methods they are finding effective, and provide support.

Cooperative Learning: Essential Components When teachers establish a structure of goals for their classroom, they have three models to choose from: individualized, competitive or cooperative. Usually they employ some combination of the three, with one having central emphasis. Nancy and Ted Graves describe the differences in the three types of environments:

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In an independent goal structure (individualized learning) my success and yours are unrelated to each other.

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In a situation of negative interdependence (competition) my success is dependent on your failure, and your success is achieved through my failure.

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In a classroom designed to promote positive interdependence (cooperative learning), students are placed in situations where my success is dependent on your success, and vice versa.4

David and Roger Johnson, leaders in the cooperative learning field, characterize positive interdependence as "We sink or swim together." Thus a cooperative goal structure exists when students perceive that they can obtain their goal if and only if the other students with whom they are linked can obtain theirs. Dee Dishon and Pat Wilson O'Leary, colleagues of the Johnsons, describe a cooperative group as one "in which two to five students are tied together by a common purpose—to complete the task and include every group member."5 Structuring and managing positive interdependence is the essence of cooperative learning. Students are linked together in a consciously designed arrangement. Instead of being reminded to cooperate, they are trained incrementally in the components of cooperation. These components include

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interactive learning in small heterogeneous groups

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positive interdependence: individual and group accountability

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explicit training in interpersonal skills

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reflection; processing how well the groups are functioning6

Dishon and O'Leary single out a fifth feature, distributed leadership. As it functions in cooperative learning, distributed leadership has been likened to a car pool where everyone takes a turn driving; there are no hitchhikers or chauffeurs. This means that no one student is appointed the leader of the group by the teacher. It is worth noting, too, that there is no agreement in the field about the basic elements listed above. Some experts in the field do not regard teaching interpersonal skills as essential because they feel that the structure impels cooperative behaviors in and of itself, and still others have different ways of articulating the features. The way in which these components combine is suggested by the work of two teachers, Pat McGiffin, School Library Media Specialist at Fort River Elementary School in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Jim Trierweiler.

Case Study: Third Graders Research Animals—Cooperatively At the Fort River School McGiffin created a month-long unit in cooperative learning based in research on animals. She started off the unit by discussing how to classify information, teaching basic note taking and organization of information first. She said:

We divided the students by various properties of shoes they were wearing—tie shoes, velcro, colors. That was the basis for them to understand how information in a short book about earthworms was organized. I read aloud the book and they noted down facts in specific categories like size, food, habitat, enemies. They shared what they heard. Then their teacher read a second book on earthworms and they filled in more information into the same categories. Next, using a cooperative learning technique called the Co-op Jigsaw model devised by Spencer Kagan, McGiffin divided the students into groups of four, and assigned each a class of animals: reptiles, birds, fish, sea mammals, insects. Each member of a group chose an animal within that classification and researched it, such as a bottlenose dolphin from the category of marine mammals. In order to promote positive interdependence, individuals reported on their animal, referring

Page 54 to the research categories taught, and then a different member of the team wrote up that same animal. As they reported their research, terms worked on listening and asking questions. For instance, one member remarked to the student researcher, "I didn't hear you say what the animal ate." Information about each animal became the basis for an animal autobiography. McGiffin described her assignment:

They had to write the information from the animal's viewpoint, telling its life-story and incorporating some kind of life and death struggle, building in the survival story so you could see what the animal is up against. And they could give words and thoughts and feelings to the animal. The children edited each other's work without adult help. If they had trouble spelling, or another problem, they asked

each other. The third graders worked on the animal unit for at least a half hour daily over the course of a month. Then they presented their animal autobiographies to each other. The next step was more complex, as McGiffin described:

They then had to construct a "new animal" composite drawing in each group, exhibiting properties of all the animals in that class. One person from each group was chosen at random to explain to the rest of the class the fictitious creature and the team process for creating it. Everyone had to be prepared to present because they didn't know who would be selected on that final day. This employed Spencer Kagan's "Co-op Co-op with numbered heads" method. "Next," reported McGiffin, "the whole class designed a play where their fictitious animals interacted together. They wrote dialogue, made animal sounds, and created costumes. They assumed the characters of the animals as much as they could. I don't know where it will end, if ever. They keep coming up with more things they want to do with these animals." Representatives from each fictitious animal group worked together on the play, using the Summit Jigsaw model. This is an advanced and complicated form of teamwork. (Most teachers begin with a less ambitious approach with everyone in the small group doing the same task.) Throughout her unit McGiffin used a variety of methods for increasing positive interdependence. These include:

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setting a mutual goal

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establishing a shared reward

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setting up shared resources such as one pencil and one answer sheet

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using "jigsawed" information—that is, information that must be shared to achieve the goal

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arranging a division of labor so that actions of one group member have to be completed before the next person can carry out his part of the work

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assigning roles for each group member.

One approach is to assign roles to each member of the group. These might include:

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Resource runner. This student gets the materials for the team and brings them to their work station.

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Time keeper. This student keeps track of how much time is left and announces time checks to the group.

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Reporter. This student reports back to the whole class about the team's work.

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Reader. This student reads the lesson or the directions aloud to the whole team.

A Case Study: Sixth Graders Cooperate in Studying Weather When Jim Trierweiler began to employ a cooperative-learning structure, he placed students in heterogeneous groups, not only with respect to their skill levels in science but with a balance of gender and ethnicity. Using the Student Team Learning model developed by Robert Slavin and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, Trierweiler composed the four-member teams of high-, average-, and low-achieving students. According to Slavin's model, the quiz scores of individuals are compared to their own base score—the average of three earlier quizzes. Points team members earn above their base scores contribute to their team's weekly score. In this way every person has an equal chance of contributing points. Hank, who, the reader will recall, objected to depending on his team member Geri, now finds his work in science linked to the latter's, and as the school year and the cooperative learning experiment progresses he will have more experience of what this connection can mean. The individual achievement of each will still be appreciated and encouraged. In fact, the motivation will be greater for them to do their best

Page 56 because Hank's high grade average will not be at Geri's expense, as is the case with a grading curve. The Slavin model is engineered so that they will both benefit from the increased achievement of their team members, and they are also motivated to help each other learn. Slavin writes:

Consider the differences between the (sports) team setting and the traditional classroom setting. In the team, one student's success helps other to achieve their goals. As a result, team members encourage and help one another. . . . In contrast, in the classroom, one student's success may make it more difficult for others to succeed by ''raising the curve" or raising the teacher's expectations of students. As a result, classmates may discourage each other's academic efforts, communicating a norm that those who strive to succeed in academics are "teacher's pets" or "nerds." Teamwork is fun, but that is not why teamwork works. Teamwork works because it creates a social and motivational environment that expects and assists maximum effort.7 Trierweiler asked groups to choose a name for themselves to build unity and group identity, and they selected the names Geomaster, California Raisins, the Fire Starters, and the Fungi. Usually with a team approach, groups choose names. However, some educators discourage the naming of teams because it can encourage competition and the names selected sometimes encourage sexism. Referring to cooperative learning groups as teams is questioned as well by some because the term "team" is usually associated with competitive games.

As the teams began work on their first lab together on electromagnetic waves, Trierweiler announced, "I'm going to watch. Any team that has its members listening will be awarded ten bonus points. Carefully, Trierweiler set up a reward that any team could attain, and he used a reward consciously to further the attainment of social skills. At the end of Trierweiler's first week of experimenting with cooperative learning, he engaged his classes in processing how the groups were working. "What is helping your team?" he asked, "Can you explain that?" "What is something you are finding annoying? What is hurting your team?" Among the problems students mentioned were put-downs, people not listening, distractions, and failure to participate. I visited Trierweiler's sixth grade class in June as they worked on their last science unit of the year. Early in the period he demonstrated basic weather instruments. This prepared the students for a final project in which each team of four would maintain their own readings of the instruments at a weather station, a task calling for positive interdependence.

Page 57 I was struck by the students' curiosity and their interesting questions. Some inquired how the anemometer stays accurate—"Doesn't the wind moving it slow it down?" There were occasional yawns and chins propped on hands, but everyone was engaged by the demonstrations. Trierweiler credits the cooperative-goal structure for his students' eagerness: "Once they get into their four teams, it's like four classes going on at the same time. I think in a more competitively oriented classroom there are probably a lot more questions, but with just one teacher and all those kids, half the time they never get recognized. Therefore, what do you do? As years go by, a kid thinks, 'I won't bother to ask this because they'll never get around to me.' It's possible that here they don't censor their questions as much." After the introduction of the weather unit, the sixth graders sat on stools at their usual places in teams of four around high black science tables. As they moved into a game that is a part of their study of weather, representatives from each of the teams distributed notebooks and reading assignments, then everyone read the first section in the textbook chapter in preparation for an oral quiz. Clearly they were familiar with the procedure. To set up the team activity, Jim presented in advance the questions he would ask in the weather game, such as, What causes wind? Why is air pressure different at the poles than at the equator? Students read silently, located the answers to the questions and then compared their answers with those of other team members. Trierweiler announced, "Be sure to discuss the questions with your team because I could ask anyone on your team the questions." As Robert Slavin has emphasized, "The team's work is not done until all team members have mastered the material being studied."8 Random selection reinforces individual accountability. When the weather game began Trierweiler called upon one team member to answer, gauging the comprehension level of the whole team. Scores on the quiz contributed to team scores for the week. Trierweiler made it clear, however, that he was not looking for a parroting of the definitions in the textbook. He pushed for an understanding of wind, and asked students to describe it in their own words, giving evidence of the kind of comprehension which is reinforced when you explain it to a team member. I watched four members of the Geomasters huddling intensely as they prepared for the weather game. One student offered his answer and the others repeated it in their own words rather than trying to memorize it. What about Hank? Had he become more comfortable with teamwork over the course of the year? As his teammates prepared for the

Page 58 weather game, Hank said, "Have you people figured it out yet?" Perhaps Trierweiler's efforts to train students to engage each other through the use of questions prompted his remark, but, truthfully, his tone was not friendly. When one girl responded to him, sharing her answer to one of the questions, he said to her, "That doesn't make a lot of sense," and when another girl tried to answer, he said, "I need more than that." I was interested to see these moments of difficulty, as I was eager to observe more than the "showcase" moments of the class, recalling what Trierweiler had said about the effort involved in setting up the new classroom norms. One member of another team, the Bazooka Boys, goaded and needled his teammates. He teased them, read aloud, leaned back in his chair, turned up the volume of noise as they were reading, as if daring them to kick him out. But they didn't. As Trierweiler commented to me, in a traditional classroom, this particular student would have been isolated by the teacher in the corner of the room. Here, he was part of the circle, a part of the community and it was up to the members of his group to respond to him. Doing so was an on-going struggle. On this occasion the other members of the Bazooka Boys called him names, and when Trierweiler heard them say, "Shut up," and "You're stupid," he subtracted five points from the team's score for the week. After he had chosen a member of each team to answer a weather question, Trierweiler noted that interest was flagging. He blew up a balloon to make the concept of air pressure more concrete. It was clear to me that he would have been an interesting teacher even if he had never departed from a lecture format. This led me during the lunch break to ask him why he had decided to structure all of his classes in a cooperative-learning format. What were the values behind his choice and continued commitment? Trierweiler responded, "I was always very successful with the lecture approach, but when I experimented just a little bit last year with the teams, the motivation of the students increased so much because they are now more personally involved. Sure, that was always my dream to be up there being a great lecturer, stimulating and motivating the kids, but that's still me doing it. When they are working in teams, as many problems as they have, it's still better because they are now personally involved in the learning process rather than being second-hand people. What it really boils down to is that you are using the strengths of everyone in the room, not just the teacher. You're using more resources. Which is why I think so many kids are turned off and they drop out of school—because their resources are never used. And they recognize that. They might not be able to verbalize the reason, but they know they don't like school.

Page 59 I could almost have written a book on the success stories last year. There were kids who were never passing anything, and when we started working in the teams, the same kids were doing A and B work. I'll never forget two boys who spent their time in science playing a kind of spitball football. When they started working in teams, they got nothing less than ninety on anything they handed in. And the only thing they were interested in when they came in the door was 'What are we going to do today? What's next?' They had a total attitude change. Last year I thought I was a pretty dynamic lecturer but there were at least seven or eight kids that I still did not reach. But the teams reached them.

Cooperative Learning: Choices and Difficulties When I asked Jim Trierweiler what he found to be the most difficult aspect of using cooperative learning, he said, "The constant maintenance. Always being alert to it. What am I always alert to? Trying to get them to understand the concepts in science. But now I have to be alert to these other things. That's hard to do. I was not trained to do that. I

was trained in science. It's not easy for me, but I realize the importance of it. Vigilance is the key word." Trierweiler described the transition to cooperative learning as a demanding, as well as rewarding, process, involving many transitions, not just one. One aspect of the cooperative-learning structure can be mastered but then there is more to learn. It is common to have problems in cooperative learning: one student taking over the group's task, complaints about group members, disruptive group members, groups getting stuck. New data show that older students, as we saw with twelve-year-old Hank, have more difficulty with cooperative learning. Patterns of peer interaction have already been heavily engrained. Making the commitment to persevere and help students through this transition, as Trierweiler and McGiffin are doing, takes a great deal of energy. Colleagues and trainers can be helpful in diagnosing problems and considering options and solutions, and a network of peer support is important to teachers trying to institute cooperative learning in their classroom. Working cooperatively among themselves, they can discuss common concerns and difficulties and report on methods that have succeeded for them. For instance, McGiffin organized a peer support group. When some members voiced concern about how to evaluate the reports of cooperative learning groups or teams, another teacher in the support

Page 60 group noted that she asks each student in her groups to write what he or she did to contribute to the group product or report. This is handed in separately from the collective final report. If there's a discrepancy between participants' efforts, she calls the group in for a conference. This approach has been developed by experts in cooperative learning but in this case an individual teacher passes it on to her peers, and her personal experience helps make it more accessible. Members of a peer support group may also visit each other's classroom. They confer beforehand to identify what the observer will look for specifically. McGiffin explains: "It may be that one teacher will say, "I'm looking at my ability to ask good questions to help kids respond to each other and not to me. I want you to see if I'm doing that"—so that's all I look at. Or once I asked another teacher to watch the way I was giving instructions to see if the kids were really understanding what I was expecting." Using this model, educators aren't evaluating or judging one another. They are offering data from their observations, looking for strengths, and helping their colleague come to his or her own conclusions. Establishing cooperative learning in a school is not an overnight process. Bill Read, Elementary Science specialist in the Lexington, Massachusetts school system comments, "Any change takes creative energy. Usually it takes three to six months before the children, the teacher and the outside observers [parents and curriculum supervisor] are firmly seeing the benefits. One strategy of ours has been to explore cooperative learning within one subject matter area first. Science has been an area where elementary school teachers have seen the potential of exploring cooperative learning." Mary Male, professor in the School of Education at San Jose State University, believes that a long-range committment is necessary to the successful establishment of a cooperative learning model in a school and recommends a minimum of three years for implementation, with only those teachers who express interest participating initially. She notes that training without on-going coaching, feedback, and systematic follow-up can be a pitfall. Problematic, too, is "mandating change from the top down, requiring that everyone implement cooperative learning on a set timetable."9

Developing Interpersonal Skills

Cooperative learning requires considerable interpersonal skills on the part of teachers—and students. I suggested earlier the difficulties created by lack of such skills in Hank and among the Bazooka Boys, one

Page 61 of the groups in Jim Trierweiler's classroom, where one student was disruptive and the others resorted to phrases like "Shut up!" to talk with him. Trierweiler handled the situation by docking the Bazooka Boys' team score for the week, and he sometimes rewarded good behavior with bonus points. The reward-and-punishment system Treweiler used is not a hallmark of cooperative learning and some educators feel that it detracts from long-term goals for intrinsic learning. How could Trierweiler have assisted students with their interpersonal skills without the use of reward points? Dee Dishon and Pat Wilson O'Leary train teachers to use methods of interaction with their students, as differentiated from teacher intervention. When members of a group complain that other students are name-calling, for example, the teacher might ask, "What have you tried so far?" and give them support in solving the problem themselves. They recommend six steps to implement when teaching social skills:

1.

Define and provide rationale for the skill

2.

Describe how to perform the skill

3.

Practice the skill

4.

Receive feedback on performance of the skill

5.

Process learnings about the skill

6.

Continue practice until the skill is automatic10

For instance, a class working on the skill, "Encourage others to talk," is asked what the skill looks like (e.g., eye contact with other group members) and what it sounds like (e.g. "What do you think?") as part of step two until a list of at least six specific behaviors is created. While the class is first learning this social skill, the teacher does objective obeservations with a checklist recording whether these behaviors are in evidence. Teams evaluate themselves, too, and compare their own responses with the findings of their teacher. Once the skill is famiiar, a new social skill is presented and the cycle is repeated. Dishon and O'Leary remind teachers to view emerging interpersonal problems in cooperative groups as signals that the skill has not been learned yet, rather than as reasons to throw up our hands and abandon the process all together. David and Roger Johnson and their sister, Edythe Johnson Holubec, emphasize in their book, Circles of Learning , that it is crucial to give students specific training in skills for group interaction. They teach students how to listen to each other, how to contribute ideas, and how to disagree without rejecting. Team members take turns observing the group.

They give the example of a student who was an incessant talker.

Page 62 When he was placed in an activity which required him to be a listener, he was able to alter his own behavior. Nancy and Ted Graves write:

When we are seeking to change an environment to make it more cooperative, and when we have limited time, these interpersonal processes need to be made explicit. . . . This can be done most effectively not by preaching, but by helping students to arrive at the insight for themselves.11 With this in mind, David Johnston, a fifth grade teacher at Walnut Street School in Brattleboro, Vermont asks the children themselves to choose their target social skill for the day. For example, a math team working on creating pictorial models to solve verbal math problems selects the skill of listening to each other. After the math period is over, David has them select a rating from #1 (poor) to #5 (awesome) according to how well they listened and then requires them to back up their rating with specific examples. In another Brattleboro classroom, language arts teachers, Ingrid Chrisco and Flo Nestor, asked their fourth and seventh grade classes, who were reading Alice in Wonderland in small groups and illustrating episodes, to answer questions such as:

•

How did you decide who would read and for how long?

•

How did you decide which episode you would illustrate?

•

How did you actually go about doing the illustration?

•

In what ways did you contribute to the group?

•

Did everyone get a chance to contribute?

Teachers Faith Jordan, Maureen Little, Patsy Mehlhop of Deerfield Valley Elementary School in Vermont assigned specific target social skills to their first, second, and third graders before they began science units structured for cooperative learning. While one day Patsy asked her class to focus on "everyone is contributing" in their teams, another day she asked them to focus on "making only positive comments to each other—no put downs," and still another day to focus on "everyone following their role."

Cooperative Learning and Social Responsibility Research on the effectiveness of cooperative learning is extensive and impressive. Robert Slavin reports that in the thirty-five studies

Page 63

made of his Student Team Learning model between 1977 and 1980, 83 percent of the students participating "gained significantly more in achievement than did students in traditionally taught classes studying the same subject." This gain is true for elementary and secondary schools, including urban, suburban, and rural communities. It extends through the range of subjects—mathematics, language arts, social studies, and reading. The studies show that high, average, and low achievers gain equally.12 David and Roger Johnson cite comparable results from 122 studies on cooperative learning made between 1924 and 1980. In addition to higher achievement, studies show:

•

increased retention

•

greater use of higher levels of reasoning

•

increased perspective-taking

•

greater intrinsic motivation

•

more positive heterogeneous relationships

•

better attitudes toward school

•

better attitudes toward teacher

•

higher self-esteem —greater social support

•

more positive psychological adjustment

•

more on-task behavior

•

greater collaborative skills13

Trierweiler notes that improved achievement is just one aspect of why teachers are drawn to cooperative learning. He points out that some teachers say this switch has prevented them from dropping out of the teaching profession, and comments, "I know teachers who use cooperative learning teams for the effect on peer relationships alone." In this respect cooperative learning can be effective in linking diverse students and, more generally, in resolving conflicts. Trierweiler first became motivated to employ cooperative learning methods after attending a workshop given by Fay Roupp, a math teacher in a Boston suburb where students are bused in from the inner city. Roupp felt that cooperative learning would be a means for students with differences of class, race, and ethnicity to work together on an equal footing and thereby establish friendships. Trierweiler comments:

You can put kids in a class but that doesn't mean they're going to relate to each other. When does a student have a chance to relate to another kid? If I'm up lecturing, and that kid is relating to someone else, he's in trouble. I'm scolding him. Now even teams that are having interpersonal problems, like the Bazooka Boys, Page 64 are teams engaged in finding the solutions themselves. They are the ones now who have to face the question, How do you handle it when you don't get along? William Kreidler clarifies this dynamic relationship between work on cooperative learning and work on classroom conflicts. He writes:

Many people believe that "good" cooperation involves having as few conflicts as possible, and avoiding or smoothing over those that arise. In fact, good cooperative learning experiences give students the tools to embrace and use productively the conflicts that arise as the group struggles to work together.14 Experiences in cooperative learning are significant because they help young people develop a consciousness of the group. When the focus of the lesson is not only on the achievement of a task but on furthering mutual regard, cooperative learning aids students in the development of their social self. This development, especially insofar as it leads to an empathetic understanding of the point of view and needs of others, is vital to living productively in the contemporary world and contributing to solving its problems. David and Roger Johnson point out:

Being able to perform technical skills such as reading, speaking, listening, writing, computing, problem solving are valuable but of little use if the person cannot apply those skills in cooperative interaction with other people in career, family, and community settings.15 It is not enough that we learn about the problems of the contemporary world—widespread pollution, racism, global hunger, ozone depletion, and the preservation of rain forests—in purely factual or intellectual terms. Our learning has to be wedded to an ability to interact creatively to solve the problems in the world. To attain this goal educational process and content must be intertwined. HOW young people learn matters as much as WHAT they learn because the process of learning is part of the message they receive. Even while they work to master lists of spelling words or memorize the qualities of potassium, they are forming mental maps of how humans relate to each other. If their education gives them a mental map of relationships that stresses the importance of cooperation, then it can be truly transformative in ways that extend far beyond the classroom. Nancy Schniedewind, a long-time proponent of cooperative learning, writes:

Page 65 Cooperative learning is more than a pedagogical tool, more than an approach to classroom management . . . our classrooms can thus become experiential laboratories for the builders of our collective future.16 It is possible to experiment with cooperative learning lessons without asking bigger questions. Cooperative learning can be used for a portion of the day without developing a sense of a caring classroom community that functions throughout the entire day, without questioning the relevance of curriculum in a broader manner, and without raising questions of democracy and justice in our society at large. Nancy Schniedewind and Mara Sapon-Shevin, another experienced

practititioner of cooperative learning, write:

Thinking about and implementing cooperative learning can provide us a wonderful opportunity: as we think more carefully about the reward structures of classrooms, we can also step back and look at the functions of schooling that we accept as givens. . . . Simply because a lesson is implemented cooperatively does not assure its value. Using cooperative techniques to have students cover the same boring, inconsequential, or biased material or to have them "get through" worksheets with more efficiency doesn't demonstrate the approach's full potential for changing what goes on in schools. Rather let us use this time of restructuring the ways in which we teach to examine what we teach as well.17 Schniedewind and Sapon-Shevin point to the danger of using cooperative learning lessons with no more than a narrow, short-term goal of classroom efficiency in mind. They urge that experiments with cooperative learning be allied to an examination of the need for transformative change—in the curriculum, the structure of the school, and the society. In their curriculum materials, Nancy Schniedewind and Ellen Davidson provide activities for teachers that study cooperation at community and global levels. For example, in one jigsaw activity, "The Oceans: Our Common Heritage," group members must take into account the diverging viewpoints of nations—wealthy and poor, landlocked and ocean-bordering—as they design an international agreement on ocean use. In another, students recreate the origins of the international postal service as it transitioned from its unreliable condition in 1877 to the Universal Postal Union which still exists today. By integrating cooperative pedagogy with curriculum, they develop greater student awareness of the potential for cooperation in our lives.18

Page 66 When a school makes a full transition to cooperative learning structures, it needs to look more deeply at all the choices made in the school. Nancy and Ted Graves note:

Our most difficult task has been to get across to teachers and school staff the complete shift in perspective and attitude required for creating an environment supportive of cooperative learning.19 It is not just a matter of using a cooperative goal structure for one month or in one subject area. It requires looking at the mixture of messages throughout the whole building. In cross-cultural research the Graves compared the structural features of natural cooperative environments with those of the conventional Western classroom and found that they contrasted in every major respect. They conclude:

To make the cooperative behavior that we wish children to learn both meaningful and consistently motivating, we must shift as many of these environmental parameters as possible.20 These include a shift to practical, ''real work" tasks, intrinsic rewards, central meeting places, and tangible community recognition. Contemplating the use of cooperative goal structures ultimately requires educators to address important value choices. We come up against the question of which survival skills we are teaching—survival of the individual in the marketplace or survival of the larger community. At present most schools replicate the hierarchical power relationships of our society and thereby train students to participate in a hierarchical setting—yet we sorely need competency in cooperation to survive as a species.

Nancy Schneidewind and Mara Sapon-Shevin articulate the levels they feel that educators need to explore in order to realize the potential of cooperative learning. Some of the questions they raise include:

•

Do I see cooperative learning as a tool to better manage my classes and retain my authority? Or is it a process through which my students can learn to take greater responsibility and in which power is increasingly shared with them?

•

To what extent do I use cooperative learning without addressing the pervasive competition in schools and society? Do I help students connect their experience working collaboratively with heightened critical consciousness about effects of competition and cooperation on ourselves, others, and society?21

Page 67 22 With every new report of environmental degradation, with weapons' spending continuing while widespread hunger rocks the globe, we know that our survival as a species depends on our ability to cooperate, yet we need help at every level in making the transition. The field of cooperative learning has the potential to offer key assistance in this social transition, provided that it continues to ask the deeper questions. Albert Einstein wrote that the task of every human life is to become progressively aware of the unity of all life. In a letter to a friend, Einstein described his model for human relationships.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the "universe," a part limited in time and space. He [sic] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. In cooperative learning, young people move beyond this prison of the separate self and experience themselves to be valued community members. They have their personal resources used and respected. They make decisions and feel empowered. In this way cooperative learning provides a learning ground for young people to widen their circle of compassion. Experiences in cooperative learning take on significance, then, not only because they have proven in research to be more productive and efficient ways to learn, but because they develop friendships among diverse types of students, and allow young people to develop a consciousness of being part of a group. These experiences are the building blocks of health, the cellular repair for the global family tree. Cooperative learning promotes the very skills most needed for a flourishing world society. Given this potential, the wealth of knowledge available about cooperative learning is an underutilized national resource. We look to teachers, researchers, trainers and students alike to help each other bring the gifts of cooperative learning to fruition.

Notes

1. Robert E. Slavin, Synthesis of Research on Cooperative Learning (Alexandria, Va.: Research Information Service, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1981, 655). Page 68

2. Nancy Graves, and Theodore D. Graves. "The Power of Positive Interdependence." In What is Cooperative Learning? Cooperative College of California, 136 Liberty Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060. 3. Nancy Schniedewind, "Cooperative Learning and World Peace," in Cooperation in Education: International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education . IASCE/CACIE Newsletter, Vol. 9, No. 5 (November/December, 1988), 21. 4. D.W. Johnson, Learning Together and Alone (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975, 7); also N. and T. Graves, "The Power of Positive Interdependence," in What is Cooperative Learning? ; and Martin Deutch, "A Theory of Cooperation and Competition." In What is Cooperative Learning? 5. Dee Dishon, Cooperative Strategies in the Classroom . Alexandria, Va.: Dee Dishon Speaking, 1988, 2). 6. Nancy Graves, and T. D. Graves, "Basic Elements of Cooperative Learning." In What is Cooperative Learning? Part One. 7. R. E. Slavin, Using Student Team Learning . 3d ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universtity, The Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools, 1986, 5). 8. Slavin, ibid. 9. Mary Male, "Cooperative Learning and Staff Development," in Cooperation in Education: International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education . IASCE/CACIE Newsletter, Vol. 5, No. 1 (May, 1989), 4–5. 10. Dee Dishon, and Pat Wilson O'Leary, A Guidebook for Cooperative Learning (Holmes Beach, Florida: Learning Publication, Inc., 1984, 42–43). 11. Nancy Graves, and T. D. Graves. "Creating a Cooperative Learning Environment: An Ecological Approach." In Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to Learn (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1985, 412).

12. R.E. Slavin, "Using Student Team Learning," p. 5. 13. D. W. Johnson, and R.T. Johnson, Structuring Cooperative Learning: Lesson Plans for Teachers (New Brighton, Minn.: Interaction Book Co., 1984,.5). 14. See William Kreidler's chapter in this volume, pp. 000-000. These remarks are from an earlier draft. 15. D. W. Johnson, R. T. Johnson, and E. J. Holubec, Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom (Edina, Minn.: Interaction Book Company, 1986). 16. Nancy Schniedewind, "Cooperative Learning and World Peace," in Cooperation in Education: International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education. IASCE/CACIE Newslatter, Vol. 9, No. 5 (November/December, 1988), 63–64. Page 69

17. Mara Sapon-Shevin and Nancy Schniedewind. "Selling Cooperative Learning Without Selling It Short," Educational Leadership: December 1989/January 1990, 63–64). 18. Nancy Schniedewind and Ellen Davidson, Cooperative Learning, Cooperative Lives (Dubuque, Iowa: W. C. Brown, 1987). 19. N. Graves, and T.D. Graves, Creating a Cooperative Learning Environment , 410). 20. Ibid. 21. Mara Sapon-Shevin and Nancy Schniedewind, "If Cooperative Learning's the Answer, What are the Questions?" Unpublished article, 26–27). 22. Einstein's letter appeared in the New York Times , March 29, 1972, as quoted in America Without Violence by Michael Nagler (Covelo, CA: Island Press, 1982, 11).

Bibliography Bernagozzi, Tom (1988). "One Teacher's Approach," Learning 88, February. Burns, Marilyn (1981). "Groups of Four: Solving the Management Problem in Learning," September, 1981.

Dishon, D. and O'Leary, P. W. (1984). A Guidebook for Cooperative Learning . Cooperation Unlimited. P.O. Box 68, Portage, MI 49081. Glasser, William (1986). Control Theory in the Classroom . Harper and Row. Graves, Nancy and Ted (1988). Getting There Together: A Sourcebook and Desktop Guide for Creating a Cooperative Classroom. Cooperative College of California, 136 Liberty Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060. ———. (1987). What is Cooperative Learning?: Tips for Teachers and Trainers. Cooperative College of California. ———, editors. International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education Newsletter. 136 Liberty Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060. Johnson, D. W., and Johnson, R. T. (1984). Structuring Cooperative Learning: Lesson Plans for Teachers. New Brighton, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., and Holubec, E. J. (1986). Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom . Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W. and Johnson, R. T. (1987). Learning Together and Alone: Cooperative, Competitive, and Individualistic Learning (2nd Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. Page 70

Kohn, Alfie (1986). No Context: The Case Against Competition . Boston: Houghton Mifflin. McGiffin, Pat (1989). The School Library Media Specialist as Resource Person: A Descriptive Study. (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts School of Education unpublished doctoral dissertation). Pat McGiffin, Fort River School, Amherst, Massachusetts, 01002. Saphier, Jon and Gower, Robert (1987). The Skillful Teacher . Carlisle, MA: Research for Better Teaching, Inc. 56 Bellows Hill Road, Carlisle, MA 01741. Sapon-Shevin, Mara and Schniedewind, Nancy. "Selling Cooperative Learning Without Selling It Short," Educational Leadership: December 1989/January 1990.

Schniedewind, Nancy and Davidson, Ellen (1987). Cooperative Learning, Cooperative Lives . Dubuque, Iowa: William C. Brown Company. Distributed by Circle Books, 30 Walnut Stret, Somerville, Mass. 02143. Slavin, Robert, "Synthesis of Research on Cooperative Learning," Research Information Service. ———. (1986). Using Student Team Learning (3rd ed.). Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University. ———. (1986). "Learning Together," American Educator. Slavin, Robert, Sharan, Shlomo, Kagan, Spencer, Lazarowitz, Rachel Hertz, Webb, Clark, and Schmuck, Richard, editors (1985). Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to Learn . New York and London: Plenum Press. Smith, Roy (1987). "A Teacher's Views on Cooperative Learning," in Phi Delta Kappan, May 1987. Trierweiler, James (unpublished). Cooperative Learning: A Handbook for Teachers. Contact: 43 East Plain Street, Wayland, MA 01778, or the Carlisle, MA school system. For more information about publications and training workshops, contact:

The International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education (IASCE). Nancy and Ted Graves. 136 Liberty St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060. The Center for Social Organization of Schools, The Johns Hopkins University, 3505 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218 (301) 338-7570. The Cooperative Learning Center, 202 Pattee Hall, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 (612) 624-7031. Page 71

Other Guides to Cooperative Learning: Aronson, E., et al. (1978). The Jigsaw Classroom . Sage Publications, 275 Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. Cohen, Elizabeth. Designing Groupwork , (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986).

Curran, Lorna. Cooperative Learning Lessons for Little Ones: Literature-Based Language Arts and Social Studies . (for K-2) Resources for Teachers. 27134 Paseo Espada #202, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675. Davidson, Neil (editor). Cooperative Learning in Mathematics: A Handbook for Teachers . Addison-Wesley, Jacob Way, Reading, MA 01867, 1989. (An IASCEsponsored handbook of 409 pages) Kagan, Spencer (1985). Cooperative Learning Resources for Teachers . 27134 Paseo Espada #202, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675. Madden, N. A., Slavin, R. E. and Stevens, R. J. (1985). Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition . Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools, John Hopkins University. Male, Mary and Anderson, Mary (eds). Fitting In: Cooperative Learning in the Mainstream Classroom . (San Francisco: Majo Press, 1989) Educational Apple-cations, 125 Sylvar, Santa Cruz, 95060. Slavin, R. E., Leavey, M. and Madden, N. A. (1986). Team Accelerated InstructionMathematics . Mastery Education Corporation, 85 Main Street, Watertown, MA 02172. Smith, Ann, Helming, Elsie, and Mabrey, Jennifer Team Up: Activities for Cooperative Learning, K-6 . (1990) National Educational Service, P.O. Box 8, Bloomington, IN 47402. Stone, Jeanne M. Cooperative Learning and Language Arts: A Multi-structural Approach . (1989) Resources for Teachers, 27134 Paseo Espada #202, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675. Page 72

4 "You Need Lots of Choices": Conflict Resolution in the Elementary Grades SARA GOODMAN WILLIAM J. KREIDLER

Mike Fixler's fourth grade American History class in Elbridge, New York, has reached the Civil War. Mike has asked his students to imagine that they have been transported by time machine to 1860 to deal with the controversy created by a proposed tariff on imports that the Northern states hope to impose. "This tariff caused a real conflict,' says Fixler. "The North wanted it and the South didn't—they wanted to buy and sell with England. Who can think of a solution to this problem?" "Flip a coin," suggests Josh. "Heads there's a high tariff, tails there's a low one." Fixler writes down this suggestion. Annie raises her hand. "The North and South could go and talk about it." Jerry adds, "They could have a debate where they talk about it and listen to reasons." "They could have a vote," says Christina. Fixler, who has recorded all of these contributions on the board, says, "One part of the problem seems to be that the North really needs this tariff. Why would they need it?" "They were greedy," says Deborah. "They wanted to keep their factories in business," says David. "All right then," Fixler says. "What could be done to keep their factories in business and still satisfy the South?" "The North could raise their prices," says Andrew. Fixler adds this suggestion to the list. "What might the consequences have been if they flipped a coin? Would they have reached a win-win resolution or a win-lose?" he asks. The class decides coin flipping leads to win-lose. They move on to the next possibility: talking it out. This, they agree, has potential for win-win. "But they might start arguing and then start fighting and then they'd end up with win-lose or lose-lose," notes Phillip.

Page 73 The class continues to discuss the possible consequences of each suggestion, and finally decides that a nationwide vote would be the best possible solution. This is not, Fixler notes, a win-win resolution since one side will not be satisfied. But the class is firm. This is the best solution under the circumstances.

Conflict Resolution: A Goal for Teachers Mike Fixler is not just teaching American History. He is also teaching conflict resolution, which he believes is a necessary and useful skill for his students. "Dealing with the subject of conflict is very motivating for students," he says. "I've found that presenting them with conflicts—personal, historical and global—that need to be resolved is meaningful and compelling to kids. They know a lot about conflict and have an enormous amount of personal experience that they are eager to share and examine."

Mike Fixler is one of several teachers with whom we talked who are doing innovative and important work teaching their students about conflict and its resolution. We talked with four teachers in particular: Mike is a fourth grade teacher at the Elbridge Elementary School in Elbridge, New York. An experienced first grade teacher, Mike was teaching for the first time at the fourth grade level when we talked with him. Eric Lilequist has been a fifth grade teacher for twenty years at the Aldo Leopold School in Madison, Wisconsin. Lisa Raffel is a fourth grade teacher at the Loma Vista School in Vallejo, California. Gail Whang is a seventeen-year teaching veteran. Gail has been teaching a third/fourth grade combination classroom at the Hawthorne School in Oakland, California, for five years. All four teachers acknowledge that teaching conflict resolution necessitates a commitment of time. This was time well spent, however. As Mike Fixler explained, "In contrast to teaching fractions or doing multiplication or arithmetic calculations—where an enormous amount of time is spent on skills kids will actually use very little in their lives—they will face conflict thoughout their lives. I'd rather see them do worksheets on conflict situations than multiplication problems." These four teachers agree that conflict resolution education helps young people acquire the skills and understandings they need to deal with conflict more effectively and productively, and they agree in their conception of what conflict resolution education consists of. It is based

Page 74 on the concept that conflict is not inherently bad or negative but an essential aspect of life with the potential for being used either constructively or destructively. "One of my goals is for the children not to be scared of conflict," said Lisa Raffel, a goal that was echoed by all the teachers. Mike Fixler added, "Conflicts are a natural and important part of life. But, of course, conflict can be a scary thing. By becoming more familiar with it, it's less scary." Each of the teachers had other specific goals as well. "I want to help kids solve their problems in non-physically violent ways, to lessen the amount of fighting," said Eric Lilequist. "It's not conflict that we're trying to minimize, it's physical violence. Some degree of conflict is quite healthy. It's the manner in which you resolve that conflict that becomes the critical thing. To try and make the conflict resolution experience a learning experience that kids can apply to the next conflict they get into, that's the goal." Gail Whang stressed that teaching about conflict is part of her overall commitment to nurturing a sense of community in her classroom. She believes, "that creating an atmosphere in the classroom where students feel safe to express their feelings and deal with their interpersonal conflicts builds their self-esteem, encourages cross-cultural understanding and ultimately promotes academic achievement." In addition, all the teachers had a vision of how learning to deal with conflict more effectively at the interpersonal level could lead to a more peaceful world. Lisa Raffel says, "I want the kids to live more peacefully with each other. And I want them to make connections with the conflicts that are all around them. I wouldn't draw an immediate parallel with war and say, 'Look, when you fight, it's just like two countries going to war.' But I do want them to see the connections, through history and the social situation in America today, to see that the conflicts in their own lives are, in some ways, connected to the world around them."

Conflict Resolution Skills Development Lisa Raffel says her school serves ". . . a community slightly in trouble. Several students in the school have parents in jail or parents who have abandoned their partners and children. It is also a transient community. During the year, four students left and six new students entered my class. The school population is very diverse. There are twenty different language groups including students from the Philipines, Mexico, Central America, East India, Algeria, Guam, Egypt and

Page 75 several countries in Southeast Asia. Sixty percent of the students score below the national average on standardized tests and 20% receive money from the federal program, Aid for Families with Dependent Children." Raffel says she teaches about conflict because ". . . the reality is that conflict is all around us. I can always make connections to what is happening in their lives. In their world—the world of my students—they're in trouble. It's a hard life." At the beginning of the school year Raffel selects activities intended to develop students' abilities to express their feelings. These activities are culled from a range of published curriculum materials, children's storybooks, and her own imagination. Raffel wants her students to learn to label their own feelings, to recognize different feelings in someone else, to become comfortable expressing their feelings, and to increase their vocabulary of feeling words. "As the year progresses I try to shift some of the responsibility for managing the class off of myself and to share it with my students. I devote a lot of class time to teaching specific communication skills. Then I use the conflicts that arise in class as a chance for students to practice their new skills. I tell them, 'You have power. You have a choice. We will get along in here as you want us to. Don't bring the piddly stuff to me. You can solve it yourself.'" "It took me several years of trying to use cooperative learning techniques and being frustrated with how poorly the kids worked together before I realized I had to break everything down into smaller pieces and teach specific social skills. Now when my students have trouble working together in cooperative groups I take this as a signal that they need more practice with conflict resolution. So instead of avoiding the activities that cause them problems I look closely at what they are doing and saying during their conflicts. These observations are my 'needs assessment. . . .' Next I find an activity in a book or I design one myself that gives them practice with the area that is giving them trouble, such as listening to one another or sharing materials or encouraging someone who is having difficulty with an assignment. By the end of the school year it's clear to me that they have gotten much better at working together." Gail Whang teaches in a year-round inner-city school in Oakland, California. There are over 1,000 students in the school. Most of them are poor. Many are recent immigrants to this country from Central America and Southeast Asia. Forty percent are Hispanic, 20 percent are African American, 20 percent are Cambodian, and another 18 percent are from three different parts of Laos and speak different languages—Laotian, Hmong, and Mien. There are some Caucasian students, and others from

Page 76 Samoa, the South Pacific and the Philipines. The school has self-contained bilingual classes and an English-as-aSecond-Language program. Like Lisa Raffel, Whang places a strong emphasis on skills development in her classroom. She describes one example

of a typical lesson that is based on ''whole language or "process writing." "To begin I discuss the word 'guilty' with my students to describe its meaning. Then they each write a story that illustrates a situation where someone feels guilty. Finally they combine these stories into a classroom book. We do this same activity with many different words so that students have more words than just 'happy' and 'mad' to describe how they are feeling. As the year goes on, one positive outcome of this emphasis on building a feeling vocabulary is that the kids' stories become more interesting and rich because they begin to incorporate these words into all of their writing. So much of teaching conflict resolution is language development—both oral and written—and fits easily into the language arts curriculum." Another skill that many students need to learn is the ability to listen attentively to one another. "It took me a long time to realize that I actually had to teach students how to do this," Raffel said. "Then I found out that this skill is often referred to as 'active listening' and there are lots of ways to help students practice it." Both Raffel and Whang use activities that help students learn to attend fully to the person to whom they are listening, restating back what he or she has just said, and making encouraging comments or asking clarifying questions that do not derail the thoughts of the speaker. These skills become increasingly important when students begin to solve their own conflicts with other students. Raffel and Whang have two interconnected goals for teaching about conflict resolution: to help children take responsibility for their own actions and to help them express their needs clearly to others. "People are adept at blaming others for the conflicts they find themselves in," explains Whang. "You bumped into me. That's why I hit you. You're not helping me. That's why I'm not doing my work." These kinds of statements are called 'you' messages. They cloud the role of the speaker in a conflict and blame the other person, usually making the other person defensive. Another way to express these ideas is to give what is called an 'I' message. 'I felt scared when you bumped into me.' 'I need help to do my work.' Learning to give 'I' messages is another essential part of conflict resolution education. Children see quite quickly that 'I' messages get a very different response from the person they are in conflict with. A clearly stated 'I' message often becomes a first important step toward resolving a conflict. "In fact," says Whang, "by the end of the year my students were using 'I' messages

Page 77 as a way to resolve their conflicts. Once the two disputants could state their conflict in terms of 'I' messages, the conflict was as good as resolved." "Early in the year," Whang continues, "I launch a campaign to stamp out name-calling since that is one big way conflicts start between children. Once my students know how to state 'I' messages I make a bulletin board with them. Each student writes down on a circle of paper a name he or she doesn't like to be called. Then they trace the shape of their outstretched hand on another piece of paper and cut it out. On the hand they write an 'I' mesage, stating how they feel when they are called by this name: 'I feel embarrassed when someone calls me fatso.' By creating this bulletin board students identify something specific that bothers them, practice giving 'I' messages and communicate important information to their classmates. From then on, whenever someone calls someone else a name it doesn't take much for them to realize it wasn't a helpful thing to do." These fundamental communication skills greatly enhance the basic problem solving that is the heart of all conflict resolution. The actual problem-solving steps are quite simple:

1.

Define the problem.

2.

Generate alternatives.

3.

Choose a solution.

It is important that the two disputants define the problem in their own words, from their own point of view. Hearing each other's point of view may be hard but with practice they can learn to shift from defining the conflict in terms of what the other person did to them or should now do for them to resolve the conflict to what they themselves did and can do. In the second step, alternatives are brainstormed without evaluating them. This is the creative step. Each disputant concentrates on what he or she can do now and in the future to resolve the conflict. Finally the two need to choose a solution that they both think fits the problem and make a plan of how they will implement it. Teaching this problem-solving process can take place in many situations. It is best to begin with hypothetical conflicts so students can concentrate on learning each of the steps. Raffel and Whang use extensive role-playing to teach problem solving to their whole class. Once students have mastered the guidelines and the problem-solving steps, they are ready to start dealing with their own emotion-filled conflicts. When something has occurred that affects the classroom community, class meetings are a good forum for problem solving. Mike Fixler's fourth grade students persisted in saying "I hate you!" to each other.

Page 78 Fixler called a class meeting to discuss the problem, beginning by describing the problem as he saw it. "It seems to me that the problem is that one person comes up to another and says, 'I hate you,' or a couple of people come up and tell someone 'We hate you.' Think about a time this happened to you or you heard about it happening to someone, or you saw it happen to some else. How do you think the person who is the 'hater' feels? How do you think the person who is 'hated' feels? Turn to the person next to you and talk about how each person feels." This discussion of feelings helps students refine the definition of the problem through an increased understanding of its emotional content. After a few minutes of discussion in pairs, Fixler brought the class back together to exchange impressions. "The person who's hated would feel hurt and upset," was the general consensus. Opinions were diverse as to what the hater might feel. "He might feel mad," said Jared. "Or they might feel good because they hurt the other person," said Christina. "They could feel a lot of different things depending on why they hate the other person," Michael suggested. "Then what can you do when someone tells you he hates you?" Fixler asked. "I think there's another problem," said Jeff. "What rules can we have to keep hating from going on?" "Good point," said Fixler. "Let's talk first though about how to respond to someone who hates you. Then we'll talk

about rules." The class brainstormed a list of possible responses:

•

Tell the person to stop

•

Just ignore him if he says something to you —Tell him to mind his own business

•

Tell him to pick on someone else

•

Say, "Treat me like you'd want to be treated"

•

Walk away from him

After the class finished with this list, they discussed the responses they had brainstormed and their possible consequences but none was very appealing or satisfying to the group. Fixler encouraged them to generate some more ideas. Finally, the group hit upon an idea borrowed from Charlotte Zolotow's The Hating Book , in which one character goes to visit the character who says "I hate you." The class decided that asking someone why he

Page 79 hates you is sometimes a good way to handle this problem. "This way," Annie said, "you can get to the bottom of it." "Nothing's going to work all the time," said Jennifer. "You need lots of choices because you have to decide what's the best one to use. It's different each time." Fixler commented later that this meeting was built on a base of skills such as communicating clearly, active listening, identifying feelings, and problem solving. "This was a tough problem, one that resists an easy solution. I doubt that we would be able to have had this successful a meeting without the skill background. Even so, we just scratched the surface. In a few months, when they have more experience, they will be able to explore this problem in more depth. But we made a good start in improving the climate of the classroom community."

Building a Sense of Community in the Classroom and the School All four teachers emphasized the importance of seeing the classroom, and even the school, as a community. This community is defined somewhat differently by all four teachers, but several themes recurred in our discussions with all of them. First, the classroom or school as a community forms a "context of caring" in which conflict resolution can take place and is facilitated. In the classroom or school community, adults care for children and express their feelings of caring both in words and actions. Similarly, children express caring for adults and each other. Second, in addition to caring, several other qualities are present in the classroom community. Cooperation, communication, appropriate expression of feelings, and appreciation for diversity are among the most commonly named. Third, there is a conscious effort on the part of the people in the school to teach students the skills needed for the above. Children may need to be

taught how to act in a caring manner, how to cooperate, how to express such feelings as anger and frustration in an appropriate manner, etc. Establishing a sense of community in the classroom is not random or accidental. It takes planning, deliberation, and teaching. But the result is not just an enhanced conflict resolution program, but also an enhanced learning environment. Gail Whang proudly described the Hawthorne School as an "island of excellence in the midst of an otherwise troubled school system." The school is governed by a management team composed of teachers, administrators, and support staff. New programs come before this team and then are brought to the whole faculty. In this way new initiatives

Page 80 have the endorsement of the whole faculty and tend to be adopted throughout the school. The conflict resolution program is one of many schoolwide programs that began with strong grassroots support among the teachers at Hawthorne. Another schoolwide program, closely linked to conflict resolution in that it tries to prevent conflicts before they start, is called "Tribes." The Tribes program focuses on building a supportive classroom environment, nurturing students' selfesteem and generally helping children feel safe in school so that they will be more inclined to speak out and feel better about coming to school. In each classroom in Whang's school, students meet every day in a morning circle. In these meetings they have a chance to express their feelings about what is happening in their lives, both inside and outside school. Participants in these morning meetings abide by the rules established by the program—and, in fact, continue to do so throughout the school day: no put-downs, anyone has the right to pass, appreciate other people, and use "I" messages. Students also sit and work in support groups of five or six students or "Tribes." Each group has its own name. Throughout the year they do structured activities that reinforce the themes of the program. Whang said, "The net effect of all this attention to how students feel about themselves and each other is marvelous. These kids are now better attuned to put-downs. Someone only needs to roll their eyes when someone else says something and that person realizes what they have said and apologizes. "The kids also do a lot of validating, encouraging and appreciating other people. It's incredible how far appreciation goes when it's from their peers. It's your job to do that as the teacher but when their friends do it, it's so much more meaningful."

Dealing with Conflict as it Occurs—Seizing Teachable Moments Eric Lilequist emphasizes the links between the problems children deal with outside of school and the conflicts they have with other students in school. He said, "With young children like this you can see a clear and direct line from the stress involved in their home lives to how they act in school. They bring it all to school with them. These kids come from families that are under a tremendous amount of stress so the reasons that provoke a particular fight are in a sense irrelevant to the decision to go violent. These situations make for powerful learning moments."

Page 81 Lilequist's goal is to help children solve their problems in nonviolent ways. He wants to lessen the amount of fighting and to get them to take responsibility not only for themselves but for one another, to work cooperatively rather than competitively and to try and work toward a sense of family in the classroom. He wants them to feel that they are all in this together and that they all need to try and make the classroom as good a place to be as possible.

He makes conflict a part of his curriculum by seizing the teachable moments that students' real-life conflicts provide. When students have a fight—either on the playground or in the classroom—Lilequist has the whole class discuss what happened. In the discussion Lilequist tries to ". . . make each one of those situations a learning experience for everybody in the class. We often talk about what went on, what we say, how it could have been handled differently, and what other alternatives there were given the situation. Understand that it's not conflict that we're trying to minimize, it's physical violence. You've got to realize that they are children. They're not going to be stars at doing this. Sometimes they will fail. That doesn't mean that the goals are wrong."

Curriculum Connections The infusion of conflict resolution principles into the standard curriculum is one of the most interesting facets of these teachers' work. Mike Fixler's innovative history lesson described earlier is one example, bringing the problem-solving techniques his students apply to interpersonal problems to a historical question. This helps bring history to life for students; they see that it describes people's struggles with choices as real as those they face in their own life and it helps them to identify with the concerns and feelings of people in another time. In addition, in order to discuss such "What might have happened if . . . ?" questions, students must understand what forces led up to a particular historical situation. By thinking about possible alternatives to what happened in history, they are learning more about what actually occurred. Lilequist uses much the same approach by incorporating current events into his social studies program. He says, "Every week every kid is responsible for coming to class prepared to report about a current event. . . . You get a lot of stuff brought in by the kids about situations that are occurring in the world—some of which are very unpleasant and violent—but I don't make current events a time of gore. I talk to them about the violence in the world and relate that to the violence in their own lives. They are beginning to have strong opinions about these issues by fifth grade. We talk about what could have been done in the

Page 82 situation: What are the possibilities? Who was affected if the situation became violent? What if innocent persons were caught up in this? We often talk about the 'genie of violence being released from the bottle.' Once it's released, you can't control it. Lots of times situations that occur in school exemplify that quite readily." Like Fixler and Lilequist, Gail Whang also builds conflict resolution concepts into her curriculum, and this is easily accomplished with the literature-based, whole language program for teaching reading and writing her school uses. Fiction presents many opportunities for discussing issues pertaining to conflict resolution. "My students read novels in small literature study circles," she said. "Their ability to understand and analyze conflicts and the atmosphere of trust that we have created together in the classroom flows over into their understanding of literature. I ask them to identify the central problem or conflict in a story and to tell how that problem is resolved by the end of the book." Connecting conflict resolution themes to literature can take many forms, such as identifying the various points of view on a fictional conflict (How is the way character A sees it different from the way character B sees it?), applying the principles of problem solving to a fictional conflict (What are other ways the main character could have solved the problem?), or having students relate experiences with similar conflicts (Did you ever have a conflict like this one? What did you do?). Sometimes the connection to conflict resolution is much more subtle than these examples. For instance, students may increase their understanding of and appreciation for another culture—and sometimes of a fellow student's background as well. This has occurred in Whang's classroom. "Last spring," she said, "a group read a book called Stone Fox in which a grandfather owes $500 to the bank for his

farm. He doesn't have the money so he anticipates losing the farm. His grandson vows to win the money in a dog-sled race. As the boy and the dog near the finish line, the dog dies. A Native American who was racing neck and neck with them stops and carries the dog over the finish line. At the end of the book the boy kneels down and talks to the dog, even though the dog is supposedly dead. "My students were confused by the ending of the book. They weren't sure if the dog was really dead or not. Then a boy who is from the island of Tonga said that after his own mother died he kept hearing her talk to him. He said that his father had explained that in the Tongan culture they believe that you can still communicate with people after their body dies. The other students listened to what he said and then thanked him for telling such a personal story. 'We're all here if you ever want to talk about it some more,' they told him." In this case, a curriculum topic related to conflict resolution in

Page 83 several ways: a child related his experience and feelings to a fictional situation, the group gained insight into another culture, and the experience reinforced the sense of community. These are all important aspects of Whang's approach to teaching conflict resolution skills.

School-Wide Mediation Programs Of all the developments in conflict resolution education over the past few years, schoolwide mediation programs have received the most attention. Both Whang and Raffel initiated conflict managers programs at their schools using the program and training materials developed by Community Boards in San Francisco. This schoolwide mediation program trains students to be conflict managers on the school playground during recess. When students get into arguments a pair of conflict managers approaches them and helps them resolve their conflict. Both Raffel and Whang report that the program has greatly reduced the amount of fighting on the playground, and their principals say that there are virtually no referrals to the office during recess when student mediators are on duty. Because Raffel and Whang both knew that widespread acceptance of the conflict managers program among the faculty was essential for its success, they presented the idea to the entire school faculty after they got initial approval from their principals. Once the teachers were interested they held an assembly for all the students to kick off the program. At the assembly teachers role-played typical student conflicts and showed how the conflict managers would conduct a mediation session. After the assembly students chose a few of their classmates to participate in the training. Teachers helped their students make sure that their choices represented a balance of gender, race, and behaviorial type. It was important that the group of conflict managers included some of the "bullies" in the school as well as the more "wellbehaved" kids. The mediators-to-be (approximately fifteen in each school chosen from grades 3 through 6) participated in five hours of training over five days. The students and the pair of teacher-coordinators working with them were released from their regular classes to do the training. This included intensive work in active listening, "I" messages and learning the problem-solving steps—and considerable role playing. Once the students had learned the basics they worked on more difficult situations that the student mediators might encounter on the playground. Raffel explained that the students had different styles of presenting the mediation steps to potential disputants. Some repeated them in a rote way. Others put the steps into their own words. This

Page 84 was sometimes confusing for their partners. They also needed to talk about what to do when the partner did all the talking.

After the initial training was completed, the students began their real work out on the playground. They always worked in pairs and were identified by the bright orange conflict manager t-shirts that they wore while they were on duty. Once a week they came together for a meeting to improve their skills and talk about any problems they were having. Raffel said these sessions were interesting to facilitate because the students' questions became very sophisticated as they began to appreciate the subtleties of working with their peers. It took some time for them to understand that their role was to help the disputants find their own solution to the problem, rather than solve it for them. Their hardest task was helping people find solutions that would really work without telling them what to do. A student said, "A teacher might tell two friends who are fighting, 'Don't ever touch him again,' but that would never work. He's your friend so of course you're going to touch him. So what can you do?" Together the group of conflict managers developed three criteria for a good solution: it is specific, it is possible and both sides have a part to do. Other issues that came up in their weekly meetings included how to respond to a bad resolution and how to ask a question that doesn't put the disputant on the defensive. Toward the end of the school year the conflict managers in both Raffel's and Whang's schools began to complain because they said students were not having enough conflicts, so it was becoming boring for them during recess! Both Raffel and Whang said the experience of being a conflict manager matured students and increased their sense of responsibility. Whang, who now gives workshops for other teachers in conflict resolution and setting up mediation programs, always brings some students with her to these workshops so that teachers can learn firsthand what the students do. She says that the students take enormous pride in demonstrating their skills to adults. Teachers often ask the student conflict managers, "Do you ever use the techniques you've learned outside of school?" A Cambodian girl told a story that is typical of student replies. "One night my parents were having a fight about who should cook dinner. They both work and they were both tired and neither of them wanted to do it. So I said, 'I'm a conflict manager at my school. I think I can help you. These are the rules: no interruptions, no name-calling, be as honest as you can and agree to solve the problem. Do you agree to the rules?' So we figured out a cooking schedule and we kids said we would help, too." At Raffel's school the conflict managers program has given students who are not as strong academically a chance to shine. She says the

Page 85 managers who have been bullies for years have gained insights into their own behavior. They understand what they have done wrong and can articulate the situation themselves. One of the criticisms of student mediation programs is that they create an elite group of students in the school. Raffel believes that the conflict managers do have a special status in the school. "Many more students want to be conflict managers than the program has room for right now," she said, "But I think it's great that the program has become a way of rewarding students for truly helping the school and their classmates." She also emphasized that the program works best when the entire school is involved in conflict resolution work in the classroom as well. That way everyone gets the opportunity to be a mediator. "Remember," she said, "that the goal here is not to create a cadre of "mini-teachers" who wield power over their fellow students but to empower the disputants to solve their problems themselves.''

Conclusions What distinguishes good teaching about conflict and related concerns at the elementary level? In talking with and observing these four teachers, several answers to this question emerged.

First, in the work of these teachers conflict resolution education takes place at several levels. One level is classroom management. How teachers resolve conflicts, how they structure their classrooms, what interactions they encourage or discourage, what they permit students to talk about or not talk about in class teach pupils something about conflict and conflict resolution. The next level is training in which students receive direct instruction in conflict resolution skills. Finally, there is the level of curriculum, where conflict resolution concepts are incorporated into the standard curriculum. Second, all of these teachers recognize that it takes young people time to learn new ways of thinking about and handling conflict. Conflict resolution education must be given enough time in the school day to be adequately addressed. Third, conflict resolution education cannot be divorced from other conflict-related issues, such as dealing with ethnic diversity and racism, learning to cooperate, and understanding societal conflicts. Fourth, conflict resolution education works best in a context of a caring classroom community that incorporates all of the above principles. Finally, a schoolwide approach to conflict resolution education is the most effective, but only if all the staff members understand and support what is being taught and why.

Page 86 It is clear that conflict resolution education cannot be a "quick fix." It takes thoughtful planning and careful implementation but when that happens, it is clear that teachers consider it worth the effort. Mike Fixler noted, "There is an amazing thing that happens. You work at this stuff with the kids, and you work at it. Then one day some kids come up to you and report how they had a conflict and resolved it on their own. They're so proud. It's really thrilling when that happens. That's when you realize this work is really making a difference."

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5 Democratic Practices at the Elementary School Level: Three Portraits CLARISSA SAWYER Introduction When I began elementary school in 1960, teachers' rules were the word of God and obeyed without question. But by the time I entered high school in 1969, my faith in teachers' authority to make and enforce rules was eroded by my adolescent cynicism and by books such as A. S. Neill's Summerhill . In Summerhill Neill described his famous alternative school in England and argued that students learn best when they are allowed to make decisions about issues that affect their lives in school. Without the right to make decisions, he reasoned, students would become apathetic.

This book helped explain the low morale among students in my high school. Even though my high school had a student council, most students viewed it as a do-nothing social club for popular kids. Student Council made decisions, but not about anything that mattered. At one meeting I attended, for example, a representative from the national organization of student councils invited my school's student council to join them in working on student rights, and protesting the Vietnam War. I was stunned when the representative was greeted with bored silence. Embarrassed, the president of my student council thanked the representative and moved on to the main agenda item—deciding whether the school should hold a "Slave" dance on the night before the Thanksgiving Day football game. The contrast between the concerns of my high school's student council and the concerns of the student body it represented was comic, but disillusioning. The truth was, students in my high school had no means of influencing school policies and practices, or becoming involved in issues that affected their community. Since my graduation from high school, increasing numbers of schools have begun to experiment with democratic practices that allow

Page 88 students to create rules for their classrooms and schools, and to become involved in community and social issues. Ideas such as Neill's that were once considered radical are now seen as mainstream, even at the elementary school level. This chapter describes democratic practices in three elementary schools near Boston, Massachusetts, which were initiated by a teacher, a guidance counselor, and a principal. They include an eighth grade curriculum unit on the U.S. Constitution, a student council for grades 1 through 4, and large group meetings for grades 1 through 5 in which decisions are made by consensus. Student participation in each democratic practice varies from two classes within a school to schoolwide. The problems students address range from everyday annoyances, such as the lack of soap in student bathrooms, to serious social problems, such as student drug use or homelessness. The description of each democratic practice is based on interviews with the three initiators of each practice. It includes information on what the practice is, how it was created, its impact on children, and some of the difficulties involved in implementing each democratic practice.

Teaching the U.S. Constitution When Kathleen Travers, an eighth grade social studies teacher at the Fletcher School in Cambridge,Massachusetts, decided to create a curriculum unit on the U.S. Constitution to honor its Bicentennial anniversary, she faced some challenges. "We're dealing with 13- to 15-year-old micro-wave-MTV-LL Cool Jay-Rappers, and here I was going to talk about 1787," she explained. Convinced that this 200-year-old document was relevant to students' everyday lives, Kathleen designed a curriculum that would appeal to her inner-city Portuguese, Hispanic, and African-American students, many of whom had skills two to three years below grade level. The eight-week unit began with an exercise that would teach students about the importance of rules. In the "Eraser Game," students were asked to line up in two rows that faced each other and then told, "Play the game," with no further instructions. As Kathleen had intended, her students were immediately confused by the lack of explicit directions and soon asked, "What are the rules?" She responded by handing the first student in each row a blackboard eraser and telling them to pass the eraser to the next student in the row, who

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would then pass it on to the next student, and so on, until the eraser reached the last student in each row. The last student in each row would bring the eraser back to the first student in the row and begin the process again. The two rows of students began following Kathleen's instructions. When the erasers had been passed halfway down each row she announced a new rule, "You must now hop forward." As soon as students began to carry out these new directions Kathleen called out still another set of instructions, "Walk backwards," and then shortly thereafter, she called out "Close your eyes." Kathleen continued announcing changes in the rules "amidst much laughter and chaos" until a few minutes before the end of the class period and then asked, ''What's the problem?"

Students: The rules. Kathleen: What did I do? Students: You kept changing them on us. Kathleen: Well, we have a document in this country that's been good for 200 years. There have been only twenty-six changes in it. This exchange was followed by a brief discussion about different kinds of rules: family rules, rules for school, and rules with friends. Students' homework assignment was to write down several family rules and bring them to the next class for discussion. The next segment of the curriculum taught students about the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. Students used worksheets (See Box 1) and dictionaries to translate the Preamble into everyday street language. "You do not talk to inner-city kids about 'domestic tranquility' and 'provide for the general welfare' because welfare means Food Stamps,"Kathleen commented. As students completed their worksheets, Kathleen worked along with them at the black board.

I asked students who "We the People" were and explained that when the Constitution was written, slaves and women were not included. Then we tackled "in order to form a more perfect union," taking this literally, line by line. Later, when they rewrote the Preamble as a class and decided how they wanted it to sound, it became sensible to them. The original language is too archaic. It meant nothing to them. When we had finished, they knew what the Preamble meant and why we had to form rules for our country. Page 90

Box 1 Preamble Worksheet The Constitution of the United States has several parts. It begins with the Preamble, an introduction. It states the purposes of the Constitution. Preamble

Explanation

We the people of the United States

in order to form a more perfect union establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America

Translating the words of the Preamble into everyday language brought the meaning of these 200-year-old words to life. Students then reinforced their learning by memorizing the Preamble using the "cloze" technique. This involved giving students a different fill-in-the-blank worksheet every day for a week. For example, on Monday the worksheet began with, "We the ___of the ___ ___," and on Tuesday it said, "___ the people. . . ." By the end of the week, Kathleen found that "reciting the Preamble and writing it out—spelling did not count—was a piece of cake for them." Students too shy to speak in front of the whole class were allowed to recite the Preamble to Kathleen privately before school.

As a reward for their hard work, Kathleen gave her students Bicentennial commemorative pencils. She was amused to discover the mixed effect the pencils had as a reward:

The kids thought they could sell the pencils for more money on the street, until they found they weren't worth very much. Following work on the Preamble, Kathleen introduced students to background information on the Constitution and the first ten amendments. Students began by translating the amendments into everyday

Page 91 language, again using dictionaries and worksheets. As students came to understand what the words meant, they began to relate the amendments to experiences in their own lives:

When we came to the Miranda Rights, many of the students who are on probation told unbelievable stories of what it was like to be booked, so it became very real to the kids in the classroom: "You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney." It was a very good experience for them. Students learned more about the meaning of the amendments by discussing solutions to famous court cases, rewritten in simpler language the students could understand. Students also played two simulation games, "The Tapdancer" and "The Aliens." In "The Tapdancer" students confronted issues of ownership and property.

Students are told they live in a 2 family home and come home from work tired, but the man who lives upstairs is a tapdancer at a night club who likes to tapdance before he goes out to work, which disturbs their rest. Working in their small groups, students come up with solutions using their class notes and copies of the Constitution, which they have previously highlighted for main ideas and supporting details. I pull a lot of study skills into this. On the day students played "The Aliens" simulation game, Kathleen co-taught the class with a lawyer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In this game students were told that a spaceship from outer space had taken over where they live, and that the Aliens would only allow them to keep five of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. They had to decide which of the ten they thought were most important. Students first decided for themselves which five they wanted to keep, and then met in a small group of four or five students to arrive at a group decision. Kathleen was shocked when the student groups announced their decisions. The amendment all forty-six students in her two eighth-grade classes ranked as their number one choice? The right to bear arms.

None of them would give that up! Talk about the influence of Rambo and the Exterminator, and that whole scene they live with. It was incredible. I just stood back and said to myself, "Wow, this is a lesson." For many of Kathleen's students, violence is no stranger to their homes and streets, and weapons seem the only sure defense against harm.

Page 92 Yet when students created a class constitution (see Box 2) they showed a recognition of an alternative to physical force

as a way of resolving conflicts, one grounded in talking and listening. Work on a class constitution was begun by having students take home a copy of the Preamble and writing down three to five rules they would like to see in their classroom. Next, students met in small groups for several days of what Kathleen described as "arguing and compromising," to reduce the twenty-three individual student Preambles in each classroom to four group Preambles. Students then voted to approve the wording of each line of the Class Constitution, which was not an easy task.

They went with 2/3 majority for about three days and then said, "Miss Travers we're having trouble," because twelve to fifteen kids were needed to ratify each line. By this time they were bribing each other with onion and cheese flavored Doodles, Ring Dings, and anything they could to switch votes. There was heavy, heavy lobbying! It was tense between them. So finally they said, "Can we go with simple majority?" And I said, "Oh, you finally realized 2/3 is a tough scene to handle."

Box 2 Constitutions of Kathleen's Two 1987–88 Eighth-Grade Classes

Constitution 1 We, the students of 8C, in order to form a more perfect and organized class, to promote a cheerful spirit among ourselves, and to provide for a common education, establish these rules:

A.

Respect each other's privacy

B.

Listen to others when talking

C.

The freedom to speak your feelings

D.

Students have the right to explain themselves and their actions

E.

Students should respect their school

F.

To give help to each other when needed

G.

Don't put anyone down

We do ordain and establish this constitution of the Class of 1988. Any changes will be made by the class officers making motions for members to vote upon in social studies class. Simple majority is needed. Punishment for breaking rules A and E only: Thirty minutes in detention and copy this constitution three times.

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Constitution 2 We, the class of 1988, in order to establish this class constitution, have written these following rules:

A.

Have respect for teachers and fellow classmates

B.

Cooperate with each other

C.

Students have a right to explain themselves and their actions

D.

No spreading rumors

E.

No "put downs"

To provide students with a good education. To promote all Eighth Graders. To secure the blessings of 8R. Any changes in this class constitution will be by secret ballot. A simple majority is required. Punishment for breaking rule E only is: Write this Constitution three times during recess.

Once each line of the class constitution was approved, students voted on the exact order in which the lines would appear. Kathleen found that this next round of voting resulted in:

unbelievable outbreaks of what was going to be ranked first, second, and third, and what about the punishments if these rules weren't followed. The punishments ranged from staying after school, to the Rambos, who said "Take them out to the recess yard and shoot them." When the exact order of the lines was decided, Kathleen copied each constitution onto a huge piece of paper and students voted to ratify it. Now the ratified constitution was ready to be signed, except for one more important decision: who would sign it first? Kathleen suggested several criteria for deciding the order in which students would sign the class constitution—class officers, alphabetical order, birthdays, first initials, last initials. With this final matter resolved, each student came up, dipped a feather pen into a bottle of India ink and signed the

constitution, keeping the feather pen as a momento. The school principal was invited to witness the event, and joined each social studies class in a small party. Afterwards the constitutions were hung in the corridor outside Kathleen's classroom for the whole school to see.

Page 94 They were very proud of this. It was a hard and long process. I told them about how the original delegation had boarded up the windows, even though it was hot, because they didn't want people to hear what was going on. They said, "Imagine what it was like with no air conditioning!" The two constitutions describe students' rights with simple eloquence and reflect an essential concern—the right to respect. Respect means listening to people when they speak, and helping people when they need help. Students' desire for respect stands in stark contrast to their insistence on the right to bear arms as the most important amendment in the U.S. Constitution. The difficulty of upholding students' right to respect is suggested by the four times during the school year that students demanded "a call to order" to discuss the problem of putdowns, specifically forbidden by both class constitutions. In each "call to order" students met to discuss the problem, review the rules of the constitution, and decide whether the rules needed to be changed. Since none of the students' other eight grade teachers were willing to make class time available for a call to order, each time Kathleen had to take time out of her social studies class. Kathleen, however, found the process of "watching them struggle a learning process for me and for them." As a result of the four calls to order:

The kids accused of put-downs . . . were made to apologize publicly . . . to their fellow students, and then there was a round of applause, which is a nice feeling that I hope will encourage them to not to do it again. Kathleen Travers' eight-week social studies unit on the U.S. Constitution takes urban adolescents through a process that transforms a 200-year-old document that lacks real meaning for them into a process for creating classroom rules and resolving conflicts with words rather than weapons. Her curriculum changes students' understanding of rules from constraints imposed by adults, to students' own consensually derived guidelines for membership in a classroom community. Through this experience these "micro-wave-MTV-LL Cool Jay kids" discovered that the words of men far removed from them by time, class, and ethnicity have a direct bearing on their daily lives.

The Summer Street School Student Council When Ron Nutter, guidance counselor for the Summer Street Elementary School in suburban Lynnfield, Massachusetts, received a pamphlet

Page 95 in the mail called "The Magic of Student Council," he quickly realized that a student council could be a way to help "pull the school together and make it more cohesive." He was delighted when the school's new principal gave her enthusiastic approval to create a student council. Every fall, during the three-week campaign and election period, Ron speaks to each classroom in grades 1 through 4 about the student council and its goal of "making school more interesting and enjoyable for children" by "improving the

internal environment of the school." Two student council representatives are elected by secret ballot to represent each classroom in grades 1 through 4. Although kindergarten students do not elect representatives because "we honestly feel they aren't old enough to participate" in student council, representatives meet with kindergartners weekly to hear their concerns. In addition to the two classroom representatives, three schoolwide representatives are elected from among the fifteen AfricanAmerican students who commute to the Summer Street School from inner-city Boston. In all, twenty-six representatives are elected. Each candidate for student council is allowed to put up a poster in their classroom and to make a three-minute campaign speech. Teachers integrate campaign activities into students' reading and language arts lessons; Ron has estimated that campaign activities during the three weeks take up no more than thirty minutes of class time. Concerned that Student Council elections not turn into "a popularity contest" in which children feel "they have to merchandize themselves," Ron advises candidates to give real reasons why students should vote for them rather than because they are popular. Evidence that his advice has made a difference comes from students who tell him that they voted for a particular candidate because "when he got up there [to speak] he really made me feel he would do a good job on Student Council." When elections are over, Ron explains to the newly elected representatives that being a member of student council is "both an honor and a responsibility because democratic empowerment relies on honesty between themselves and others." Honesty is needed in order to accurately present classmates' concerns at student council meetings and to report on the activities of the student council to fellow classmates. Ron helps representatives improve their reporting skills by bringing notebooks to student council meetings to take notes about the issues they have discussed. The student council meets on Wednesdays before school, from 8:00–8:30 A.M. , rather than "trying to force them into the curriculum" during the regular school day. Parents provide transportation. The agenda for weekly meetings is generated from students' written comments

Page 96 that are left in suggestion boxes in every classroom. According to Ron, the suggestion boxes have become popular with children in the school:

Once kids saw each other using the suggestion box, everyone picked up on it. Now when the student representatives have only one or two complaints or suggestions to share, they're disappointed. Student representatives bring the suggestion boxes to the weekly student council meeting and examine their contents. With Ron's help the representatives look through the comments and categorize them. Ron sees their skill at sifting through the contents of each box improve over the course of the school year:

The Reps will say to me, "Gee, they want an extra recess. Mr. Nutter can we have the Principal come meet with us?" Or because some of the kids will put in the same goofy stuff, like asking for four choices of dessert at lunch when we've already discussed that issue and reported back, the Reps will say, "Oh, here's one of these repeats again," and put that comment in a separate pile. Because the agenda discussed in Student Council meetings is generated by the children themselves, the discussion reflects their concerns, whether the concern is a request for an extra recess or extra desserts. Ron believes this is one reason Student Council is "empowering." In addition, the principal's occasional attendance at Student Council

meetings, at the representatives' request, develops the children's confidence that "adults come when asked." Because she brings her notebook and takes notes while the children talk, the children see that "what they say is important enough to be written down." The creation of a student council has given students at the Summer Street School the power to ask questions of adults, and the right to expect a response. This has expanded communication in the school from top-down, adult to child, to include bottom-up, child to adult interactions. In spite of these benefits, it has taken time for the Student Council to establish credibility with teachers and administrators. For example, when the Student Council was first formed, some teachers would not allow the student representatives enough class time to report to their classmates on issues discussed and decisions made in Student Council meetings. In addition, for the first three years that Ron supervised the student council he received no compensation, even though teachers in

Page 97 the upper-grade levels receive a stipend when they supervise student activities. He believes the stipend he now receives gives credibility to his work within the school system. Despite these initial difficulties, Ron feels that the Student Council has improved the morale of students and staff at the Summer Street School:

A lot of the stuff we deal with is probably mundane, but if kids had to assess the school, they'd probably say that it's a place where people care, and where they do have recourse. They feel that what they say and do has meaning. It's not just a place where teachers are either autocratic or laissez-faire. An example of the Student Council's effort to improve student morale is its handling of student complaints about children who allow their friends to cut into the line while waiting for the school bus. Ron says the issue came to the attention of the Student Council when:

Someone put in the drop-box, "We're really sick and tired of cuts because it causes fights on the play ground, it causes fights waiting for the bus, the bus drivers are yelling at us, and we don't like them shouting at us because no one talks to us like that in school." In response to this complaint the Student Council initiated a joint meeting that included the school bus driver accused of yelling at students, a school bus company representative, and the school principal. Ron believes that experiences like this make students feel they are being taken seriously by adults because students:

see it's a two-way street. They see that the school really wants to work with them to protect their safety, health and education, but also, that students have a responsibility, too. Some of the other issues the Student Council has addressed since its creation include a campaign to eliminate litter on the school grounds in response to community residents' complaints, contributions to Oxfam International, the donation of books to local homeless shelters and a role in the schoolwide anti-drug program.

Family and Community Meetings at the Heath School

Ethel Sadowsky arrived as the new principal of the Heath Elementary School in the city of Brookline, Massachusetts, determined to

Page 98 create an alternative to a student governance structure that relied on elected representatives. Her dissatisfaction with elected representation stemmed from her experience as a staff member at Brookline High School. There she had observed that only a small proportion of the school's students—40 to 50 out of 2,100—were elected to represent the entire student body. She concluded that the majority of those elected as representatives came from families that had "encouraged and expected" their children to speak up about what was their minds. Students without this kind of background were at a distinct disadvantage: not only were they less likely to be elected as representatives, but if they were elected, they were less likely to speak up than more articulate students. Ethel wanted a different kind of governance structure at the Heath Elementary School. It had to be a structure that would allow all children to participate, not just the most confident and articulate. In fact, she wanted a structure that would actually teach children how to speak up:

I wanted to train kids from the earliest years to feel confident and competent about expressing themselves, thinking about problems, and solving them. I wanted to reinforce in their minds that they can make a difference and to encourage them to say what they think, so that when they go on to the High School they won't feel, "I can't do that." I wanted the kids to feel empowered. This means if you see something that you feel is wrong, that's bugging you to death or makes you feel uncomfortable, that you have a right to say, "This makes me crazy," and that as a member of the community you feel you can not only raise the issue, but get a response. Ethel believed that the best way to accomplish these goals was through weekly open meetings that could be attended by all of the students within several grade levels. She hoped to encourage student participation even further by making decisions using consensus, rather than majority vote. Ethel realized that the small size of the Heath student body made consideration of a student governance structure without elected representatives feasible. Her first experiment with an alternative student-governance structure was "Family Meeting," a weekly meeting for all of the students in grades 1 through 3. The meetings were held for thirty minutes during the school day, on Thursday afternoons in the school cafeteria. Ethel saw Family Meeting as "a time each week for kids to come together and learn something, while also raising issues they are thinking about."

Page 99 In all, about 120 students attended Family Meeting; they were joined by Ethel, their classroom teachers, and the music teacher. With the needs of younger children in mind, Ethel began each Family Meeting with ''something that uplifts the spirit," such as a poem or a song, before moving to discussion of students' concerns. An example of the kind of issues students raised at Family Meeting was litter on the school grounds. The three second graders who raised the issue proposed what they thought they could do to make it better and asked for the cooperation of their fellow students. According to Ethel, students' concerns evolved over time, based on their shifting needs and interests. The next year Ethel created "Heath Community Meeting" for all students in fourth and fifth grade. This meeting was

held on Fridays during the last thirty minutes of the school day. Unlike Family Meeting, which began with songs and poems, the entire 30 minutes of Heath Community Meeting was devoted to discussion of students' concerns. The agenda for each meeting is generated from written comments that students left in an envelope on Ethel's office door. At the beginning of each meeting Ethel reported on the issues that had come up that week, and asked how many students felt a particular issue was important enough to spend time discussing it. If enough children wanted to discuss an issue:

We have a general discussion about how they perceive it, why they think it's a problem, and potential solutions. At the next week's meeting I give them 10 of the suggestions and then we break into groups of 8–9 kids and one adult to discuss them. We discuss: Is the solution fair? Does it hurt anybody else? Is it consistent with school rules and the way we do things? The focus is on fairness and equitability. The first problem students raised in Heath Community Meeting was, according to Ethel, "really wonderful because it was an instant success." Students complained that there was no soap in school bathrooms to wash their hands. "This seems really mundane, but it was an issue, and they didn't like it," Ethel explained. Following an initial discussion of the problem at the meeting, Ethel talked to the school custodians who reported that students threw the bars of soap away. When a parent volunteered to supply soap dispensers in order to circumvent this problem, the custodians warned Ethel that students would just knock the soap dispensers off the wall. Ethel reported these concerns back to the students at the next Heath Community Meeting:

Page 100 We had a big discussion about what could happen if soap dispensers were installed. It was important to have the soap there and be able to wash your hands, but what could the kids in fourth and fifth grade do to make it a school-wide issue and insure that the soap dispensers would stay there? Over the next several meetings students brainstormed possible solutions, some of which, while creative, were impractical, such as having a guard dog in the bathrooms, or installing television monitors to watch who was using the soap dispensers. The idea that eventually won students' approval was to form a committee of students who would go around to all of the classrooms in the school to discuss the problem of the lack of soap, the proposed solution of using soap dispensers, and the custodians' concern that the soap dispensers would be knocked off the wall. According to Ethel, when the committee of fourth and fifth graders talked with their fellow students:

It was easy for them, as fourth and fifth graders, to speak to kids in kindergarten, and grades 1, 2, and 3. They also thought it wasn't so hard to do grade 6 because the fifth graders thought they could handle that. When they went to the seventh and eighth grades, however, the older kids were giggling and they had trouble coping with this. But they did it, and got the message across. It was really very, very effective. The success of their approach was evidenced by the fact that only one major incident occurred after the soap dispensers were installed. One day a kindergartner saw an angry eighth grader go up to the soap dispenser in the boy's bathroom and punch it out. The kindergartner then reprimanded the older boy by calling out, "You're dead meat!" The next day Ethel received a telephone call from the kindergartner's mother, who was worried that the eighth grader would retaliate. But when Ethel questioned the eighth grader about his behavior, she was surprised to find that he acknowledged his anger and admitted that he really should not have punched out the soap dispenser. "That was just about the only incident that occurred, and the soap dispensers are still there. So that was a real success," Ethel explained. Not all of the issues students raise at Heath Community Meeting involve day-to-day problems at the school, however. Sometimes, Ethel has discovered, "There are wonderful moments where kids relate general problems to events of the

world":

One time we were discussing a fairly mundane issue, maybe cutting in line, or kids not lining up properly. We then began to discuss Page 101 how cafeteria workers get annoyed at kids sometimes, and then how sometimes stores get annoyed when kids go without adult supervision. Then a black child said that a store in her neighborhood wouldn't let black children go into the store alone. We discussed issues of discrimination and whether it was right. I was very impressed by what they said. Through discussion of events in their lives, children discover the link between the unfairness of being cut in front of in a line, and the injustice of being banned from a store because of skin color. They also learn that injustice happens to children they know, not just those in a distant town or country. Students are also exposed to concerns beyond the walls of school through visits from local residents who come to talk with students about their work in the community. These visitors included a columnist for The Boston Globe , a former state legislator, and a local group of musicians. Heath Community Meeting students also helped teachers in their school who cook dinner for the homeless by raising money to pay for one of the dinners. Ethel explained:

The point of these activities is to get across the idea that you belong to fourth or fifth grade, a Community Meeting, a school, and that all of us belong to many communities that branch out from each other. Ethel's experiment with democratic practices at the Heath Elementary School has convinced her that even young children have something to contribute to the running of a school:

The thing that is pretty powerful to me is how much kids know and are really eager to apply to practical problems.

Conclusion The increased acceptance of democratic practices, even at the elementary school level, reflects a profound shift in our beliefs about the kind of relationship between children and their teachers that make for good learning. In the past, most parents and school staff believed that relationships between students and teachers should be strictly hierarchical, with teachers firmly in control. Educators like A. S. Neill, who advocated student participation in school decision making, were considered radical. But today there is growing acceptance of practices that

Page 102 allow students to have a voice in making decisions about issues of concern to them, and that enable them to become involved in community issues. A primary motivation for instituting democratic practices is the belief that they improve the learning climate for students by increasing their morale. The importance of morale is suggested by the emphasis on empowerment on the part of all three of the initiators of democratic practices profiled in this chapter. Empowerment as used by these three educators refers to a relationship between children and adults in which children experience an increased sense of

personal power. But this poses a challenge to traditional beliefs about the proper relationship between children and adults. Some parents, for instance, objected to Ethel Sadowsky's Family Meeting and the Heath Community Meeting:

Some people don't consider this real teaching or germane to education—not the meat and potatoes, more like a garnish. Some see it as an intrusion on the school day, yet another event. One of the criticisms is that it upsets the balance of power. If kids are empowered, are teachers disempowered? Democratic practices like those of the Heath School and the other schools in this chapter shift traditional patterns of communication between students and school staff by giving students the right to and the means of voicing their concerns. But the belief that teachers are disempowered when students are given a means of making their concerns known and taking action on them reflects a conception of power as zero-sum. From a zero-sum perspective, the overall quantity of power is limited; therefore when one person gains more power, another person will have less. In contrast, the conception of power embedded in the democratic practices described in this chapter view power as increased, rather than decreased, when all members of a community participate in making decisions and solving problems. An added benefit of establishing democratic practices in schools is that they appear to increase adults' sense of empowerment, too. Kathleen Travers, Ron Nutter, and Ethel Sadowsky all reported increased excitement, growth, and learning from helping children have more of a say in their lives in school. With children involved in resolving problems and conflicts, adults are no longer left with the sole responsibility for solving them, since more heads are brought together to work out solutions. Embedded in the notion of empowerment is a view of relationships between children and adults as interdependent, rather than hierarchical.

Page 103 Carol Gilligan, a psychologist at Harvard Graduate School of Education, has identified two orientations to relationships in children's and adults' moral reasoning:

The values of justice and autonomy . . . imply a view of the individual as separate and of relationships as either hierarchical or contractual, bound by alternatives of constraint and cooperation. In contrast, the values of care and connection . . . imply a view of self and other as interdependent and of relationships as networks sustained by activities of care-giving and response.1 While most advocates of democratic practices in schools emphasize their value in teaching children about justice, rights, and cooperation, it is apparent that democratic practices also teach children about the importance of caring for others and responding to their needs. In teaching children that they can make a difference, that they are part of a larger community, and that people have different and equally legitimate points of view, we are reminding ourselves of these things also. What kind of world will it be when children taught democratic practices become adults? I hope that it will be not only a more just world, but also a more caring one.

Notes 1. Carol Gilligan. "Remapping Development: The Power of Divergent Data." In The Impact of Feminist Research in the Academy , ed. Christie Farnham (Bloomington and

Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987, p. 80). Page 104

6 Literature in the Classroom: Pathways to Social Responsibility BARBARA BECKWITH My first teaching experience was as a junior high school English teacher in Berkeley, California, in 1961. My classes were wonderfully diverse, but I didn't know how to respond to that diversity. The papers I kept from that first year show I did not see beyond "literature" to its relation to my students' lives. My forty-question worksheets on literature suggest I was more concerned that students remember and spell correctly the characters' names in Twain's Prince and the Pauper than that they find a personal meaning in his classic tale. My comments on essays were equally narrow. One paper by a Japanese student started: "When I was born my family was very glad, because the year before I was born my sister died by an atom bomb." I wrote "A" but no other response. A student who was a recent emigrant wrote: "I am a boy how [sic] is not too bright and not too good-looking either." I responded with a brief note to change ''how" to "who." Another gets a check from me but no comment on the dark vision in his poem: "Life is cold, it has no feelings, if you're not on your toes, you get trampled, the strong get stronger and there is no in between!" Since that first year of teaching, I've learned to welcome, rather than shun, my students' lives and concerns. I now look for ways that literature can touch and expand their lives, resonate with their experience and enhance their concerns for people unlike themselves. I no longer want students simply to parrot back the plot of what they read. I pay attention to what THEY say. The five teachers described in this chapter have all developed a "feel" for how literature connects with young people's lives. They've found ways to use books to give students a "voice" and to nourish their connection to others voices—to build a sense of social responsibility. They work in California, New Mexico, New York City, Massachusetts, and Maine. They teach in rural, suburban and urban areas. They range

Page 105 from English to History to Reading teachers, and from kindergarten to middle-school to high-school levels. Each of these teachers has gone through the process of trying ideas that seem promising and discarding those that don't pan out. Eventually, all five found specific methods that seem to work. They all share their methods with other teachers whenever they can. Their participation in this book is part of that sharing.

Kathy Lampert: Social Responsibility as Process Kathy Lampert teaches English at Wayland High School, in a quiet suburb of Boston. Her students are largely from upper-middle-class families. Through the METCO program, a small number of African-American students (30 out of

600) from Boston adds ethnic diversity to the otherwise all-white student body. She has been teaching literature for twenty-five years. She found that in teaching social responsibility through literature, process is as important as content. Lambert combines group work with a theme approach to the "relatively conventional" books she is given to work with. In small groups students find themselves making natural connections between what they read and important issues in their own lives. .

"I started as a very conventional English teacher," says Lampert. "My teaching style evolved gradually. I don't even know where I got the student-centered teaching idea. It may have been in the air when I came to Wayland. Somewhere in the 1960s I discovered social issues and women's issues. At that point, I realized I didn't want a teacher-centered classroom." She started to switch from lecture presentations to collaborative group activities. Rather than telling her students what she wants them to know, she gets them working in pairs or groups to analyze what they have read and to write papers collaboratively. She gives out "group grades"—each member of the group gets the same grade. "Now I care more about process than product. I try to get kids thinking critically. I try not to tell students what to think or how to think it." Lampert first switched to group work after deciding that most whole class "discussions" are not true discussions. "All sorts of ideas are in the air but the students tune out or think only about 'when am I going to get to talk?' I preper group work. It's easier for them to focus." There's an urgency to collaborative group projects, she says, that forces restless or self-preoccupied teenagers to share and discriminate among ideas. "When they focus together on a problem in a text, it gives them ownership of their own ideas, and access to others' ideas. They can get their teeth in the material and can work on it." This process isn't useful

Page 106 just in school—it's one they will need in later life, as collaborative work becomes the prevailing work mode, she says. Her goals have become longer term, but more flexible. "I have these four or five strands, so I don't need to be in control of every detail," says Lampert. "I lay things out so there are so many possible connections that kids will start making them. I try to make them think, but I don't push them." Tenth graders, for instance, explore social control, language conventions, and totalitarianism, as they read 1984, Once and Future King, Of Mice and Men, Master Harold and the Boys , and Inherit the Wind . A film in dialect shows them how social conventions shape the very words they use. Back in the eighteenth century "ain't" was used as a sign of being upper class. Now it's quite the reverse. In small groups, students share judgements they have made on the basis of language alone. They start seeing language in terms of social control and fairness. To help connections emerge, Lampert usually asks students to write as a preface to discussion. The prediscussion writing process helps draw the reticent student out and equalizes discussion time between quiet and voluble students. "I begin with their responses to last night's reading. Once they've written something, they know they have something to say. And once they know they have something to say they're more likely to participate." She's found that to do group work, she has to trust students' responses to books. "You have to get unglued from the idea that there is one right interpretation. Some teachers become panic-stricken: "What am I going to do if they 'misread' it? But why do we think that if we're in charge we'll get 100 percent productivity?" Lampert remembers one student's interpretation of Yeats' Second Coming which differed from her own interpretation. She at first resisted the student's analysis, but now realizes it was a justified reading as well. A teacher who wants to create a student-centered class must be willing to take student-generated ideas seriously. "I learn from the kids," she says.

She now sees her role as simply to bring up potential parallels between literature and their lives. She brings up MTV pop culture in a discussion of Orwell's 1984 . She asks students to imagine a 1990's Scopes trial a la Inherit the Wind , focusing on any issue they see people blinded to by fixed assumptions. The process of developing a student-centered classroom was made easier because Lampert has a solid support system at her school. "In my department there is a commitment to student-centered learning. I have a lot of philosophical support. That makes what I do much easier." Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) workshops dealing with

Page 107 the democratic classroom also helped her see process as being as important as content. New teachers, she says, too often think in terms of "units." Lampert sees what she does in broader terms. "I have a vision of the year. My goal is to have kids discuss certain issues. But it's not a platform. I'm not teaching politics. I've never lectured to them on my vision. But it informs the literature I chose. I never know how it's going to come out." "I see the whole year as if it's a flowing river, with one tributary flowing in, and then another, and at the end of the year you have this wonderful deep river." Lampert's trust in her students, in literature, and in group process has created a classroom in which students themselves can make connections between issues like social control, language conventions, and totalitarianism, and their own world.

Deena Zarlin: Social Responsibility as Openness to Multiple Views Deena Zarlin teaches a mixed class of third and fourth graders in a three-room school house in Comptche, a rural area in northern California redwood country.1 The family incomes of her students range from subsistence to upper-middle income. Zarlin, a teacher in the district since 1977, has always used literature to support her social studies work. Her teaching has evolved not so much in the books she uses, but in the way she uses them. A 1984 summer ESR institute influenced her thinking about methods of dealing with controversy: "At that time I was teaching a peace and nuclear issues unit. I presented information from a single point of view. I felt I knew what was important for the world and for kids to learn. The institute made me aware of my biases and of the importance of multiple perspectives. I now try to represent as many points of view as possible." Zarlin urges her students to stretch their minds by seriously considering many sides of the issue. Literature, she has found, is an ideal way to encourage students to identify with another person's life. Because her students live in a timber area, Zarlin reads Song of the Trees , by Mildred B. Taylor, about a family's struggle to save their trees from logging during the depression.1 Since many of her students are staunchly antilogging, she also brings in neighbors who are loggers for her class to interview about their lives and their work. She wants students to understand the perspective of both loggers and those who are concerned about logging's effects on the environment. Zarlin found it wasn't easy to create a classroom in which students listen to people they disagreed with. In fact, they questioned one

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visitor so sharply and even rudely that she was embarrassed. Luckily, Zarlin had taped the exchange, so she was able to play back the tape to her students and turn the postinterview class into a learning experience. The students could hear how they had acted, and then work together to figure out how to ask questions in a more respectful way. Before her ESR experience, Zarlin might have thought that the grilling the students gave the speaker was acceptable: they were simply expressing their views strongly. Now she wants her students to develop their own views but also to stay open to other views. She feels—and her students now do too—that there are ways to maintain your position while respecting others. "I hope they'll come out with a stand, but also realize they may not be 100 percent right, that they may change their minds, and that they don't have to make the other person an enemy." Zarlin deliberately chooses many books for her class that explore conflict, for example, Natalie Savage Carlson's The Empty Schoolhouse or Genny Lim's Wings for Lai Ho , which are both about prejudice and discrimination. She believes reading about people's experiences with injustice helps sensitize students and enables then to be more aware of other's rights and needs. But she tries not to reduce the books she reads to either a "social message" or a basic skills lesson: "I want students to be involved in the book, to read it out of pleasure. So when there's tremendous excitement, I avoid structured vocabulary exercises or questions at the end of the chapters. I want a book to be a literature experience for the kids." A good book, she feels, naturally draws a young reader into looking at the world through other people's eyes. And this, she feels, is the beginning of a sense of social responsibility. By expanding her own ability to "hear" a variety of voices on controversial issues, Zarlin has discovered how to help students be open to a wide range of people, problems and conflicting views on issues they care about.

Diane Shatles: Social Responsibility as a Reading Skills Method Diane Shatles is a K-6 reading teacher at PS 230 in Brooklyn, New York, a school with a richly diverse population: thirty languages are spoken by a student body that is 30 percent Hispanic, 20 percent Asian, and 50 percent a mixture of Russian, Yugoslavian, Israeli, Pakistani, Albanian, and Indian. Shatles is a veteran teacher, who for most of her 24year career has worked with small groups of K-6 students who have reading problems, many related to being newcomers to the United States. She has developed a process of teaching conflict-resolution skills through literature, skills that her students can use in their own lives.

Page 109 For her first five years as a classroom teacher, Shatles used basal readers—those carefully graded but content-thin books most classroom teachers are expected to use. Later, while studying for a reading degree, she was inspired by the "whole language" approach to try teaching reading through nonfiction trade books instead of basals. She became convinced that all children—even those who had fallen behind their peers—could best develop reading skills the way adults do, by getting involved in a good book, by using prior experience to figure out new words and by actively theorizing and strategizing to figure out their meaning. It was a hard switch to make, Shatles admits, but she is glad she took the risk. "I thought it was important for kids to read meaningful pieces of literature rather than basal readers," says Shatles. "Sometimes, I get scared that I'm skipping skills because I'm not using that phonics workbook, but on reading tests, my students always do well." Her first step was to find books that would stimulate discussion and relate to their lives in a richly complex, provocative way. She could see that conflict goes on all the time in classrooms, and gradually realized it was fodder for learning. "Children bicker, even the quiet ones: 'That's my pencil' or 'I got that toy first.' The outspoken ones express their feelings easily but don't know what to do with them. Those who can't express their feelings tend to fight. The

more verbal children yell at each other a lot, and the less verbal children often resort to physical aggression." Shatles figured that if children could learn strategies for working out conflicts that didn't involve yelling or fighting, they would have mastered skills they could use all their lives. She began collecting books that dealt with conflicts students faced in their own lives. Eventually, she evolved a method. To get any new group of students acquainted with the idea of conflict as a difficult but normal part of life, Shatles starts with a "semantic web." She writes "CONFLICT" on the board, and gets students to call out all the kinds of conflicts they can think of: sharing toys, keeping secrets, doing chores, deciding what to watch on TV, etc. She then collects REASONS for conflict, and the RESULTS of conflict. Ideas flow easily, since, according to the absolute rule of brainstorming, all ideas are accepted without criticism or correction. Everything goes on the board; no idea is labeled "right" or "wrong." Shatles then reads a book like Arnie and the Stolen Markers by Nancy Carlson, in which a boy steals a box of markers from a store, and when his mother finds out he confesses and agrees to work for the storeowner to pay for the markers. At the point where Arnie's mother discovers what he has done Shatles stops reading. Here's a problem, she says to the class: Arnie

Page 110 has stolen some markers and has been caught. What kinds of solutions can you think of? Ideas abound: hit him, ground him for two days or two years, send him to Juvenile Hall, shoot him!, make him work off the price of the markers, just "keep an eye on him." Each possible solution is discussed (younger children role-play different solutions with puppets) and then the group votes on which is fairest. Finally, Shatles finishes reading the story, and the students compare their solutions to those of the author's. The class ends with the children's speculations about what Arnie might have learned about stealing, what the shopkeeper may have learned about hiring kids, and what Arnie's mother could have learned about ways to help her son. Shatles often follows reading with writing. Individually, or in groups, the children write stories about conflicts and how they get resolved. Some describe real conflicts in their lives, and picture how they might be solved. "My aim is to give students alternatives, so when these situations crop up, they know how to deal with them," says Shatles. "After all, conflict doesn't go away. The unit helps children make the most of it." She believes not so much in smoothing over conflicts as in helping kids work through difficulties, take risks, and make hard choices. Not all the books she chooses for her class end happily. Shatles may read Old Henry by Joan W. Blos, in which neighbors get upset when Old Henry doesn't fix up his house, and they force him to move—but then find that they miss him. The book gives the children a chance to talk about what neighbors learned without glossing over the hurt they caused Old Henry. A grant made it possible for Shatles to write up her teaching method as a packet other teachers can use. She also teaches her process in workshops at various schools, part of a broader program in conflict resolution. Shatles' principal supports her conflict resolution reading program fully; in fact, she has taken the workshop herself. Like Kathy Lampert and Deena Zarlin, Diane Shatles has found a way to connect good books with concerns important to students' lives, but in a format that works.

Susan Rudolph: The Novel-History Social-Responsibility Link Susan Rudolph has taught history for five years at Dulce High School, a state-supported public school in northern New

Mexico. The school is on the Jicarilla Apache reservation land in the 7,000-foot-high San Juan Mountains. Students at Dulce are 92 percent Native Americans, plus a small number of Hispanic, Anglo, and African Americans. For the past three years, she has taught American history through novels as well as textbooks.

Page 111 She came slowly to this melding of history and literature. She knew that her students didn't enjoy reading and didn't read books in their free time: "Most of them don't have books at home. If anything, it's comic books, magazines, maybe the newspaper. Their main source of information is TV." The lack of age-appropriate books did not help. The community's small public library has no young adult novels and the school library carries only a few. The history textbooks, she said, meant little to her students. She wanted history to live for them. In a summer course Rudolph took, the professor assigned an array of young adult novels. She was immediately struck by how readable they were. Each was written for a specific age group and reading level, and many were set in carefully detailed, often richly informative historical settings. The plots, she saw, were dramatic but also straightforward. It was always clear what was going on. But the best thing about the books was that the main characters were usually the same age as her students. Such books, she thought, could give her class the experience of history and a sense of how historical events affected ordinary people's lives. "I thought if my kids could read these books, it would make history come alive," she recalls. So Rudolph designed her twelfth grade U.S. History course to weave in the reading of three young adult novels. But she still needed a method, a way to handle novels in the history class. She didn't have the time or experience to discuss each novel in detail as an English teacher might. And class discussions were often frustratingly superficial since her students didn't like expressing feelings in front of the whole classroom. "On the whole, Native Americans are more reserved than others," says Rudolph. "They will laugh at jokes but they won't say 'That makes me mad,'—or sad. They're not outwardly expressive—they don't gush. Rudolph turned to journal-writing as a way to let students express their personal feelings and ideas. It worked: the young people felt free to write because they knew that only their teacher would read them. Rudolph read their journals and responded in writing as a fellow reader to each student's ideas and reactions. At first, the students wrote only playby-play plot summaries. Eventually, they began to look inside the characters, to write about how the books made them feel, why characters did what they did, what might have happened if a particular incident had not occurred and what might come next. Reading novels also helped reduce her students' isolation from other people's lives. "They're not around a lot of people, so they know their own culture but little else." Some of her students expressed a disturbing amount of prejudice against people of other tribes and ethnic groups. But when they read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred B.

Page 112 Taylor, a funny, well-written story about an African-American girl growing up in the South, Rudolph saw they could feel the humiliation the African-American students felt when they were given ragged books discarded by white schools—some pages marked "Nigra." The book helped put into perspective similar situations in their own lives. "They made connections when I had them write. They'd write, 'I remember when I went to eat in a cafe and we were the last people in the line to be served.'" Later in the year, an incident made clear how deeply Taylor's novel had touched her students' lives. When Rudolph

handed out paperback books that were very old and falling apart, they said: "Miss Rudolph, we're not going to accept these books like this." Their rebellion was healthy, she felt. "I was impressed. They were processing the information, and thinking about what they'd learned." She also found her students' romantic images of war and Army life were forever changed by reading Fallen Angels , by Walter Dean Myers, an African-American foot soldier's account of the Vietnam War. "When we talked about World War II, war seemed like something glorious. With this book, kids can feel the war—its ugliness, the tensions between black and whites, how you just prayed when you went out on night patrol that you'd get back alive. The kids were glued to it." One journal entry shows the power of the book: "When they went on patrol through the streams and rice paddies the Cong began to surround them. Soon everyone began to panic, I started to feel something like I wanted to warn them. The enemy was on the hill and coming from the front. My heart was pounding as I read. I felt as though I were in the war, too, and felt and smelled what they did." Later, when Rudolph brought in Vietnam veterans to visit the class, her students, inspired by their immersion in the Vietnam experience through Myers' book, spoke up and asked much more pointed questions than she ever imagined they would. Rudolph's principal approved her literature-history program without any particular comment. Other teachers were doubtful about her use of novels in history class, but that soon changed. "The English teacher laughed at me two years ago," says Rudolph, "but the next year she said we should combine our classes." The school guidance counselor is trying out a Tony Hillerman mystery, Talking God in her Life Skills classes as a way to talk about the complicated choices Native Americans face living in two cultures. By allowing students to experience the effect of history on individuals, as portrayed in novels, Rudolph's students attained a depth of empathy and social responsibility that facts alone could never achieve.

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Zakiyah Bilal: Drama as an Experience in Social Responsibility Zakiyah Bilal teaches seventh grade at the Solomon Lewenberg Middle School in Mattapan, Massachusetts. Her students are a mix of African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American backgrounds. A typical class may be 80 percent African-American and 20 percent Hispanic, Asian-American, or white. A decade ago, Lewenberg students scored very low; now Lewenberg is a magnet school for academics. The school's immediate neighborhood consists of well-kept and solidly middle-class houses, occupied by single-family homeowners, but close by are more dangerous neighborhoods with a growing problem of drug-related violence. The school, in fact, is a haven of safety for many students during school hours. Bilal knows her students never forget what is going on outside the school. "There's a lot on kids' minds these days and on mine, too. A student I taught—a sixth grader I remember as the kid who chewed gum—was stabbed to death in a foolish argument. A twelve-year-old girl was shot to death on a street corner, mistaken for a gang member. I never thought I would outlive the students I teach. And the kids think about it, too." Bilal knows students need to talk about what is going on in their lives, and to think through such topics as poverty and drugs. Yet she finds it difficult to broach such topics head on. "I don't want to preach and I don't want to look like a bleeding heart or a fuddy-duddy. And I don't want to say: OK Kids, we're going to talk about this." She wants children to have a chance to deal with tough topics in their own way, and to work out solutions to the hard choices they face.

Drama and oral history are the methods she uses to bring literature into her students' lives. Bilal has developed a "Seeing Ourselves Through Great Literature" program that uses drama to connect great writing to her students' lives. Bilal finds it gives her students the distance they need to talk comfortably about sensitive topics. Her program "evolved" gradually over her twelve years of teaching. "I'm unapologetically eclectic. I take risks and throw out what doesn't work," says Bilal. Then at a certain point, she realized she had developed not just a haphazard set of activities but a program worth sharing. At the core of her program is Victor Hugo's Les Miserables , in which the convict Jean Valjean is released after nineteen years in prison for stealing bread for his sister's starving family. He steals again—silver—from a bishop who decides not to turn him in. Transformed by the bishop's act of kindness, Valjean changes his life, goes on to become

Page 114 mayor, but is tracked down for an earlier crime by a vengeful detective. Returned to jail, he escapes, returns to the streets, and rescues a street waif named Cosette. Bilal finds she can explore everything, from child abuse to philanthropy, through Les Miserables . ''Almost every child can identify with Hugo's characters, like the girl who never had a doll until Valjean bought her one, a child who was clearly abused. The class and I know what child abuse is." The book allows students to discuss crime, poverty, and homelessness from a safe distance, but also considers the choices people make. Valjean, released from jail, is "an outcast, hungry, desperate and tempted to rob again because of the way he's been treated," says Bilal, "but then he meets the Bishop." Hugo's classic allows Bilal to bring up the question: Can people change? It's a critical issue for her students, who are sometimes cynical about their ability to change their lives. The book gives them a gripping picture of a man who DID change. "Here is a man (Valjean) who changed. The change is tested and he passes the test," says Bilal. The edition of Les Miserables that she uses, although slightly abridged, is still thick and meaty and almost 500 pages long. She makes the book a nearly year-long project, taking a break in the winter. But she will not show the movie or cartoon version to "help" her students along. "A movie can never be as good as a book," she tells them. She is undaunted by students who object that the book is too long, too old, or too hard. She knows that when they get to the "adventure parts"—scaling of walls, fighting in the streets, the chase through the sewers—they will change their minds. She does, however, read parts aloud to help students navigate Hugo's lengthier passages. And she does show sections of the movie AFTER students have read that part of the book. The most important part of her approach to great literature is her use of drama—the key to letting students "own" the work by recreating it—and sometimes transforming it with their own vision. "It also allows us to lighten up as we deal with heavy subjects." "Part of me is an oral historian," says Bilal. She shares stories from her life, which stimulates students to share their own. When Hugo's Valjean is taken in by the bishop, she tells the story of how her grandmother once took a man in, and how she at first saw him as a stereotyped bum. Soon, students start telling their own oral histories. She then encourages students to work in groups to write and act out a dramatic scene from Les Miserables such as one in which a character, Fantine, is sick and cannot work and must sell her only assets—her hair and teeth. Or one in which Fantine, attacked on the street by a man who puts ice down her back, is arrested when she protests. Bilal

Page 115 asks students to imagine a different ending. They write a scene in which the policeman does not automatically assume the woman is at fault just because she is poor and ill-clothed. They have an opportunity to create a fairer outcome and to imagine how it might come about. "When students make skits, they have so much more control," she says. Drama also helps students to accept people, even ones they don't like. If students act the role of the fussy Madame, they can see that "yes, Madame is fussy and you dislike her, but she lives alone and this is the way she thinks—she's scared of Valjean." It's a natural way for her students go grow more tolerant. Bilal uses similar drama-oral history methods with Langston Hughes' "Thank you, Ma'am"; these allow her to explore the impact of poverty and repression, which she knows are also part of students' lives. "Good literature has a way of opening up topics the kids are concerned about. They're children, but they're aware of things." Bilal is not trained in drama, but she is comfortable using it in part because of her love of storytelling, which she traces back to her own first-grade teacher. "I think her name was Mrs. Urdry. She was my inspiration—I loved listening to her stories." She first decided to try drama in her classroom after watching a drama teacher at the Lewenberg. "I would see how she'd take risks and get kids moving. She'd entertain them but get them to interpret, to know what's right, to take responsibility." "Great Literature" to Bilal is a fluid term which includes folk tales and human interest stories about common men and women as well as the classics. She likes to think of it as a patchwork quilt, into which she continues to sew patches. She has her class read works by Dickens, Shakespeare, and Steinbeck, also Haitian and American folktales, and autobiographies, such as Richard Wright's Black Boy , Mark Mathambane's Kaffir Boy , Maya Angelou's I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings , plus an occasional young adult novel like The Upstairs Room . "I don't want to exploit my students' bad experiences, or probe any psychic wounds. But they have the potential to witness another's pain without laughter or mockery, and I want them to learn through literature that the human spirit is resilient, in spite of terrible circumstances and events. I want them to know about the sufferings and eventual triumphs of Jean Valjean and Cosette. About Richard Wright's struggle to become literate in a society where it was a punishable crime for an African American to possess a library card. About the gentile family in The Upstairs Room who hid a young Jewish girl from the Nazis. About the tiger and the goat in The Banza —natural enemies who became best friends. Once, when students acted out the folk tale Stagolee, she suggested

Page 116 they create an alternate ending—one that does not end in thoughtless gunning down of an innocent man. Her suggestion got them thinking long and hard about what would convince a man not to use violence. The students considered a priest or mother intervening, but in the end decided only that the attacker's conscience would convince him that violence leads nowhere. So they wrote and acted out a scene in which Conscience in the guise of a modernday kid, takes the folktale character to Mattapan to see areas where violence is going on, which persuades him to keep his temper and NOT kill the innocent man. Bilal's techniques allow students to experience new ways of being. They work well. One student recently wrote, "Mrs. Bilal understands how kids are today." And another told her, "You make us work hard but your class is fun." As an African American, Bilal's own youthful experiences may make connections for her students. But she believes it

is the books themselves that are at the core of what inspires them. "It's our learning together," she says. "Literature is wonderful for doing that." Bilal's love of classics, and her delight in story-telling as a powerful pedagogical tool, have allowed her to weave drama into her classes in a way that helps students deal with hard issues in their own lives. When I first started teaching in 1961, knowing Zakiyah Bilal, Susan Rudolph, Deena Zarlin, Diane Shatles, or Kathy Lampert, would have been very helpful to me. I would have seen in their approach to literature a way to make vivid social issues that touched the lives of their students—and, conversely, a way to make literature come to life. Eventually I did work out an approach to literature, inspired by team-teaching experiences, ESR workshops, and by working in an "alternative school" that encouraged student-centered learning. I came to the point where I could do exactly what the teachers I have described in this chapter do: allow my students to create anew their own lives through literature—and to see beyond their lives to the lives of others.

Notes 1. The local economy had traditionally been dependent upon ranching and logging. The post-1970s settlers brought activists, craftsmen and professionals into the mix. 2. The class reads Paul Bunyan tall tales and compares the values expressed with the message in The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Page 117

Books Recommended by Kathy Lampert (10th Grade) White, Terence Hanbury, The Once and Future King . New York: Putnam, 1958. Orwell, George, 1984 . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Fugard, Athol, "Master Harold" and the Boys . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Steinbeck, John, Of Mice and Men . New York: Modern Library, 1938. Lawrence, Jacob and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind . New York: Random House, 1955.

Books Recommended by Deena Zarlin (3rd and 4th Grades) Carlson, Nancy Savage, The Empty Schoolhouse . New York: Harper Collins, 1965. About children's experience with school desegregation.

Taylor, Milfred D. Songs of the Trees . New York: Bantam Books, 1984. About a family's struggle to save their trees from logging. Lim, Genny, Wings for Lai Ho . Translated by Gordon Lew. San Francisco: East/West Publishing Co., 1982; Yep, Lawrence, Dragonwings . New York: Harper Collins, 1965. About Chinese-American culture and discrimination against Chinese-Americans. (For mature students) Friedman, Ina, How My Parents Learned to Eat . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. About a bicultural family's personal story.

Books Recommended by Diane Shatles (K-6) Taylor, Milfred D. Arnie and the Stolen Markers . New York: Viking Penguin Press, 1987. About a boy who steals magic markers, and when his mother finds out, he confesses and agrees to work for the store owner to pay for the markers. Blos, Joan W. Old Henry . New York: Morrow Press, 1987. About neighbors who force a man who didn't fix up his house to move—and then they miss him. Steig, William. Brave Irene . New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1986. About the daughter of a dressmaker who braves the snow and cold to deliver a dress. She works through difficulties—she is afraid—but puts her feelings aside to do something difficult. Page 118

Zolotow, Charlotte, The Hating Book . New York: Harper and Row, 1969. A child is snubbed by her close friend. Her feelings are hurt, but she does not say anything at first. In the end, she talks to her friend, and they work out their conflict and go on being friends. Some stories do turn out happily. A good model of a problem that got worked out. Naidoo, Beverly, Journey to Jo'Burg . Lippincott, 1985. African-American woman works in the city, away from her family. When one of her children back home gets sick, the other two sisters go to the city to get their mother; they experience difficulties because of apartheid. Older students are able to see what is unfair, and what would make things fairer.

Books Recommended by Susan Rudolph (10th Grade)

Taylor, Milfred D. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry . New York: Bantam Books, 1987. About an African-American girl who grows up in the South. Myers, Walter Dean, Fallen Angels . New York: Scholastic Inc., 1988. A foot soldier's view of the Vietnam War. Hillerman, Tony, Talking God . New York: Harper and Row, 1989. A Native American copes with living in two cultures. Sender, Ruth Minsky, The Cage . New York: Macmillan, 1986. About the Holocaust from a teenager's point of view.

Books Recommended by Zakiyah Bilal (7th Grade) Hugo, Victor, Les Miserables . Translated by Charles E. Wilbur. New York: The Modern Library, 1931. A convict becomes a solid citizen but is haunted by a vengeful detective. Wright, Richard, Black Boy: a record of childhood and youth . New York: Harper and Row, 1966; Angelou, Maya, I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings . New York: Bantam Books, 1971; Mathabane, Mark, Kaffir Boy in America: An Encounter with Apartheid . New York: Scribner's, 1989. Autobiographies of African Americans (Mathabane is an African.) Reiss, Johanna, The Upstairs Room . New York: T. Y. Crowell Co., 1972; Hautzig, Esther, The Endless Steppe; Growing Up in Siberia . New York: T.Y. Crowell Co., 1968. Both lead to discussions of the Holocaust. Zindel, Paul, The Pigman . New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1977; Taylor, Theodore, The Cay . Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1987. Show friendships between races, economic classes, and generations. Page 119

Wolkstein, Diane, The Banza: A Haitian Story . Pictures by Marc Brown. New York: Dial Press, 1981; "Stackalee." In Treasury of American Folklore . Edited by B. A. Botkin. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Page 120

7 Educating for Multicultural Perspectives: A Doorway to the Rest of Humanity MONICA ANDREWS Culture determines the way we see others and ourselves, understand our reality, and make choices from the most trivial to the most profound. This fact—long a truism for anthropologists—has only recently begun to influence the teaching of young people below the college level. In all subjects a growing number of teachers are trying to provide opportunities for their students to consider how people of different cultures see the world in which they live and strive for fulfillment. They believe that the ability to imagine different cultural perspectives is important for learning in all subjects, and essential for learning foreign languages, social studies, and the expressive arts. Valerie Rousse, a teacher of German at the Needham High School, put it this way, "Language is like a puzzle with different pieces. If you had just the words, you'd be able to get a certain amount of the puzzle done, and then you have grammar to get another piece of the puzzle done. But if you don't have the culture, you'll never finish the puzzle. You'll never have the total picture. You'll just have a bunch of pieces." The approach Valerie favors is sometimes called "multicultural education," a term that does not imply a distinct curriculum but a philosophical orientation toward the goals and methods of education across the curriculum. Its fundamental claim is that people are not all the same, nor do they want to be: we have cultural differences which are so significant that our most basic understandings of our existence vary. Moreover, by implication at least, a multicultural approach asserts that only a pluralistic acceptance of cultural difference can support true democracy by giving a voice to all the peoples of a nation. This chapter describes the key concepts of multicultural education in terms of the following questions:

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What are multicultural perspectives?

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How do teachers promote them?

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Why are goals and approaches of multicultural education important?

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Cultural Mindset In his book, Teaching Culture , Ned Seelye broadly defines culture as "everything people learn to do," and "do" in the sense he uses it includes what people think and feel as well as what we usually think of as actions. Seelye argues that a sensitivity to culturally-based mores and values is essential for communication and understanding. This sensitivity requires an initial awareness that people who are not raised in the same culture do not have the same "mindset'' when viewing the same thing.1 Lakoff and Johnson similarly point to the influence of culture on people's ability to understand each other:

Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic, they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important. When people who are talking don't share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. . . . To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. . . . [You need] the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experience.2 The emphasis in a multicultural approach is to help students become aware of the cultural origins of the way things are understood, so that they are something more than a bunch of pieces. The dual goals of multicultural education are to heighten the students' awareness of his or her own cultural perspective and to consider alternative perspectives by learning to look through the lenses of different cultures.

The Myth of the Melting Pot Guna Svendsen, a colleague of Valerie Rousse's at Needham High School, teaches Spanish from a multicultural point of view. One day I visited her Spanish Four class. Students arrive in smiles and stone-washed denim. She greets them, returning a homework assignment to each along with two or three yellow Post-its, small squares of paper with one sticky edge—whose purpose I will soon understand. Guna has taped maps of Europe and the then Soviet Union across one chalkboard, and pulled down a spring-loaded, roll-up map of the world on another wall, featuring the United States at its center.

Page 122 The students nod and chatter as Guna walks from one map to another, recounting the discussion from the previous class. The bell rings. Guna introduces me to the class, explaining that I am here to learn about her teaching. "Señor Shapiro," she begins. "¿De donde viene su familia?"—From where does your family come? A tall junior navigates the narrow aisle between rows of desks, and turns to face the class. He reads from his notebook that his "antepasados maternales''—ancestors from his mother's family—came to the United States from Russia, and his "antepasados paternales" are from Poland. Stumbling through the pronunciation of new vocabulary, he repeats Guna's corrections to his past subjunctive verbs as he explains to the class the reasons why his grandparents and great-grandparents left their birthplaces. He then sticks a Post-it on the lower western border of the former Soviet Union. He puts a second one on Poland, both Post-its labeled "Shapiro," with the city, the dates and the reasons for his ancestors' immigration written in Spanish beneath his name. He returns to his seat as another student presents what she discovered about her family by doing her homework. In the next fifteen minutes, Ireland has disappeared under a flurry of yellow Post-it squares. Italy, Germany, France, Yugoslavia, Scotland, Egypt, Colombia, Panama, Austria, Canada, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Spain all bear the names of the seventeen students in this class. Some students were, themselves, born in other countries, while others have families that have been in the United States for three and four generations. "So as you can see," Guna says, pointing to both maps, "the idea that we live in a homogeneous community is not correct. We come from diverse cultures; we represent many countries." In asking her students to map where their families lived before coming to the United States, Guna seeks to correct a

pervasive American misconception, the "myth of the melting pot," according to which we are a homogeneous culture. "We represent a vast scope of cultural and ethnic backgrounds," she says. "This is considered to be such a homogeneous community, and everybody is supposed to be very much the same." The myth of the melting pot is reflected in our conception of our cultural identity and in our attitudes toward cultural diversity. For generations, immigrants to this country strove to make the melting pot myth come true in their own lives as they worked to look, act, and sound like everyone else, seeking assimilation into the "melted" dominant culture. Guna's mapping exercise helps her class perceive an alternative to the melting pot myth as they view the diversity of cultural roots within their own community. She impresses upon students that the "homogeneous" culture to which they belong as Americans is actually

Page 123 rooted in a rich array of diverse cultures. After several generations, our experience is still shaped by the traditions of our immigrant ancestors. Fundamental to the melting pot myth's emphasis on homogeneity is the belief that "when something is different, it's wrong," as Guna puts it. An emphasis on homogeneity easily leads to a belief in the superiority of one, and only one, system of values. When something that is "different" is viewed as "wrong," a natural corollary is the belief that those who are "different'' want to be "like us" if only they could. One's own culture is assumed to be the only "right" one, and all others are seen as inferior. The terms "underdeveloped," "primitive," and "Third World" suggest this comparative measuring of other cultures against a single, ethnocentric standard. It is the exclusionary effects of such thinking that teachers who advocate the development of multicultural perspectives most want to counteract. They wish to do so most of all on behalf of those groups who have not "melted in the pot," including poor African-Americans and recently arrived Spanish-speaking and Southeast Asian immigrants.

A Doorway to the Rest of Humanity Unfortunately, as Guna says, most American youth have "an appalling lack of interest in the rest of the world. Most of them say frankly, 'Why should I care? It's not me.' They forget so much of their own experience, or they're not equipped to make those connections. They don't have much empathy for people in other countries or other situations. When that 'not caring' happens, the stereotypes start flying, and they say 'they're dirty and they're stupid and they're backward.'" Her teaching seeks to counteract this attitude. When all of the students in Guna's class have presented their families' origins, she asks the class to think of those five things which are "mas importante en la vida"—most important in life. There is a long silence. "It will not be the same for everybody," she adds. Students tentatively utter "family," "home," and "safety." Guna lists these words on the board. I am startled to realize that my own great-grandparents left each of these "most important things in life" to come to the United States in the first decade of this century. They left their families and their possessions, and arrived in this country unable to speak English and knowing no one. Students suggest several more "important things in life" which immigrants leave behind. Guna writes them on the board. None kept the immigrants in their country of origin. Then she turns to the class and

Page 124 says, "When immigrants come to this country, they want something they can't have in their own country, and sacrifice

much to start again in a new land. They are seeking something even more important than they left behind." The students look thoughtful. The bell rings, and they gather their notebooks into backpacks to leave. Several gather around Guna to say a few more words before leaving for their next classes. At her lunchbreak, Guna explains that her students will watch the film El Norte during the next class session. In the movie, Rosa and her brother, Enrique, crawl through a sewage pipe to enter the United States illegally at its southern border. They are emigrating from their home in Guatemala, where their father has just been murdered and their village devastated for opposing a new government. The story follows Rosa and Enrique through their struggle for survival and their desire to establish themselves in the new culture of the United States. Before seeing El Norte Guna wants her students to think about the causes and process of immigration as it is experienced by real people—members of their own families as well as students in their own school who have recently moved to the United States. She prepares worksheets for the students to do as homework, saying that these will provide important bridges for developing understanding and awareness. "There are certain things I need to have the kids think about to create a context for them to watch the film," she says. "Many times, young people will see those scenes and say, 'Oh, gross! Why would anybody do that? I would just turn around and go back.'" She comments that she developed this unit and made it part of her language teaching:

. . . because it helps students become part of the world at large, helps them become more aware of the connections they have with other people. . . . I'd like them to understand that someone in their own family made certain sacrifices. If you can understand that that's part of you, then you can understand other people. . . . I don't want kids to dissociate, I want them to associate. It's a sensitization process which I hope will make them become more interested in what happens in the world. And language is just one way in which you do that. We happen to be in Spanish class, but that's just a doorway to the rest of humanity.

Bilingual Education in the Melting Pot Alice Wadden and Le Anh Vu work with students who have recently come to Cambridge, Massachusetts, from other countries. Alice

Page 125 teaches elementary school English as a Second Language (ESL) and Le Anh is the teacher in a Bilingual Education program for Vietnamese students from kindergarten through eighth grade. Like Guna, Alice and Le Anh emphasize cultural identity and attitudes about diversity in the education of their students. There are some important differences, however, between the students in Guna's classes, the majority of whom were born in the United States, and Alice and Le Anh's, who have recently immigrated. Alice and Le Anh's goals for these students take these differences into account. The students in Alice and Le Anh's classes are among those who are considered "different" from the ethnocentric point of view of the melting pot myth. These are the Rosas and Enriques who "sacrifice much to start again in a new country." Some are refugees from violent circumstances in their native countries, and some are the children of visiting scholars at Harvard and M.I.T. Irrespective, however, of the reason for their arrival in the United States, they are seen as strange by other students and teachers. They look different, speak English with an accent, and eat different foods than other students at lunchtime. The educational programs devised for students such as these label them and their cultures "minority" —a term inferring inferiority with respect to the melting pot culture dominant in most schools. "Difference" is equated with "wrong'' and, to Alice and Le Anh's concern, this attitude is internalized by most

immigrant students. They are ashamed of their cultural difference, and they are consequently inhibited around students and teachers of the dominant, melting pot culture. "I want to build self-esteem in these students," explains Le Anh, "attract them to their roots, give them the opportunity of sensing for themselves, knowing themselves, and having pride in the unique history of their lives. If you have self-esteem and self-worth, you're not afraid of communicating, you're not afraid of reaching out. Communication is most important. A child who is confident and happy is ready to open up." The students in Alice's classes come from Haiti, Japan, Korea, South Africa, and Cape Verde. Teaching English to nonnative English speakers, Alice focuses on language and culture. "They need to be able to mingle in different cultures," she says. She develops numerous activities, often spontaneously, as responses to students' comments and questions: reviewing the names of different coins in U.S. currency, the English words for our favorite flavors of ice cream, our favorite breakfast, our favorite games to play on the playground. In teaching history, Alice wants to make sure that her students, who are the newest members of American society, are familiar with the history of all American people, and not just that of the male, white European descendants. "It's important that they not only think of Abraham Lincoln and George

Page 126 Washington when they think of the American heritage," she explains. And so she has posters on every wall, high and low, including pictures of Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, and Shirley Chisholm; photographs of the faces of Americans with different ethnic backgrounds and different ages, among them an old Chinese woman laughing, and four men with yamulchas in a synagogue. Other posters make connections between contemporary American life and people in other nations of the world; the baseball we use at recess was made in Haiti by a woman who was paid seven cents for her labor. Next to this information is a quote by Nelson Mandela concerning the most important thing in his life: the human dignity of all peoples. Alice emphasizes that the most important reflection of this attitude is modelled in the relationships among teachers—that they reflect true interest, cooperation, and friendship.

A Context for Change Both Alice and Le Anh emphasize the influence of the school environment in either valuing or devaluing cultural diversity. They find that it is important for them to reach out to other teachers to encourage multicultural approaches in their classrooms. "I want to have a healthy environment for my students," says Le Anh, herself an émigrée from Vietnam, "where they feel they are not a minority, not outsiders." Alice and Le Anh believe that attitudes about cultural diversity are not learned by simply telling a child what to think. Children develop positive attitudes about cultural diversity in a context where different possibilities for how things are done, and how they are interpreted, are modeled, explored, and valued. In the classroom a multicultural perspective develops over time. Rather than the teacher telling students the "right" answers, the multicultural classroom is a context where students can express their opinions, listen to each others' opinions, question old assumptions, make mistakes, and explore new understandings. Teachers with a multicultural orientation emphasize the need to bring up many concrete examples of how things are done, and how they are interpreted, from a different cultural perspective. Sometimes the teacher must be the source of these concrete examples for students, and will benefit from the experience of having lived in a different cultural setting which she can interpret for her students. Multicultural education also calls for nontraditional relationships between the teacher and students, in which each student, and the

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teacher, is respected as a unique individual with his or her own personal history and views. Guna describes how she sees her relationship to students:

It's not a teacher's place to go turning people's lives around. I'm very interested in the students as developing people. I really hope they have happy lives, and nobody can tell them what's going to make them happy. I'd like them to know there are options. A lot of people go through life without making choices because they just don't see that there are choices they make. I don't expect them to go out and fight for causes. But I expect them to slowly start becoming aware of how they fit in. It's not my place to decide anything for them, but it is my role to help them see that they have lots of possibilities. It's an awareness, awareness of their relationship to humanity, awareness of the choices that they make.

Conclusion Until very recently there was neither the opportunity nor the imperative to think about cultural diversity and competing perspectives. Today, however, rapid change in a variety of areas is providing an impetus for a multicultural approach in the classroom. Jet-age transportation and instant communication technologies are bringing peoples of the globe together in a way that could not have been imagined by "Señor Shapiro's" great-grandparents. We are suddenly aware of our global interdependence—politically, economically, and environmentally. At the same time we are aware that while competing interests and conflict will always remain, advanced technology has made war ruinous; a multicultural perspective has become an essential ingredient in the resolution of conflict. More specifically, within this country an influx of recent immigrants and refugees coming from war and poverty in Central America and Southeast Asia has confronted school systems with the need to expand their understanding—and that of their students. More educators have become persuaded that the myth of the melting pot is just that—a myth—and one whose dominance derives in large measure from the dominance of the culture of the Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers sought justice, and they understood the connection between the assertion of cultural identity and the development of a political voice in pursuit of justice, but they could not have foreseen that what they sought would,

Page 128 two centuries later, be sought by people so varied and so different than themselves—women as well as men, people of color as well as whites. Educators committed to a multicultural perspective in the classroom believe that an understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity will promote equality and peace in a world still filled with prejudice, fear, and enmity.

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8 You and I are the Same: The Multicultural Classroom NINA A. MULLEN LAURIE OLSEN

Galileo High School stands at the busy intersection of Van Ness Avenue and Bay Street near San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. The huge, urban school sports a fresh coat of paint to cover up years of graffiti. Men with walkietalkies patrol the grounds. The mascot lions that adorn the courtyard steps shine golden in the sun as students pour out for lunch. The relaxed noontime scene portrays the ethnic separation so familiar on the campuses of so-called "integrated" schools and reflects a racially divided society. Tough Asian-American guys wearing baggy black sweaters and white turtlenecks, their bangs swept up high above their foreheads—classic, casual, conservative—hang out on the corner eating Chinese food from white take-out containers. Shouting and laughing, two African-American girls in cheerleader outfits chase an African-American boy with a SF Giants baseball cap. Inside, in a long hall, two large groups of girls—one immigrant Indian, the other, Chinese-American—sit against opposite walls eating their brown-bag lunches; a narrow path divides the two inward-facing circles. No communication crosses that invisible line. But there is a place at Galileo where lines drawn between races, ethnicities, and academic skill levels are crossed: the creative writing and poetry class taught by Judy Bebelaar and Poet-in-Residence Katharine Harer. In this class, serious attention to writing, communication, and self-expression are combined with a major emphasis on building a strong sense of community among students who would not otherwise have the opportunity, support, or courage to come together. On a fall day, Antoinette Easley, president of the Black Student Union, varsity basketball player and poet, steps forward to practice presenting her poem, "This is My Town," for a National Poetry Week reading.

Page 130 Black as midnight and skin dry as the Mohave desert, selling their bodies just to get a piece of the devil's white powder. This is my town. Antoinette is backed by three ebullient students, who echo the refrain—"This is my town "—of the chant poem. "Not enough expression!" "Read it from inside!" ''Tell it from the heart!" Voices from various corners of the classroom agree that the group needs to put more into the reading. Suddenly, Alfonso Gordon, a tall youth, leaps up to choreograph and direct. He says jokingly and yet with true appreciation, "Oh, it's so sweet, the classroom coming together." In the next reading, Antoinette exaggerates, stretching some words, shortening others and putting long pauses in unpredictable places, until everyone is laughing hysterically. The backup "singers" posture like rappers; they spin and strut to everyone's delight. Finally, even the quiet students in the corner acknowledge the improvement in the performance with rousing applause. Teacher Judy Bebelaar pushes her wispy blonde hair away from her narrow face and smiles. Her eyes reveal a quiet determination to get everyone to participate. She asks Mary Chav, a Cambodian student, and Mathew Fong, a Chinese student, to read a philosophical discussion about lies, a work they have written together. They start to read timidly, but their soft voices are drowned out by the continuing commotion and excited noise level of the still exhilarated class. Fellow student John Akzam, in his deep, movie-star voice, calls out "Whoa, we can't hear them." The class immediately becomes quiet and intent, listening. In their comments afterward, the students demonstrate a wonderful respect for the rapt attitude and outgoing styles of some students and the contemplative, philosophical bent of others. Bebelaar and Harer believe creative writing—particularly poetry—can create a sense of connection and responsibility in people. Twice a week, students listen to and write verses meant to reveal the human beings behind the skin colors in the classroom. Bebelaar and Harer also read the published works of writers from different races, cultures, and nationalities whose voices present contrasts—in form, in content, in varieties of dialogue and expression.

Their course—unusual for its emphasis on community above all else—has attracted public attention. The reason: schools rarely address the racial and cultural barriers students confront on campuses. "It's the whole thing of letting sleeping dogs lie," says Bruce Baron, an Irvine educator who has conducted seminars on racism for high school students.

Page 131 "Schools finally attend to the problem if there are fist fights or parent complaints. Self-segregation is a problem that snowballs from elementary to secondary levels and into universities." Without efforts to address this separation, students rarely understand what motivates them to choose friends along racial and ethnic lines, he says. Fear of the unknown prevents many from reaching out to those different from themselves. For example, Baron says, a student who is unsure how to pronounce another's name might feel too uncomfortable to make contact.

CORAZON DE ORO I am a son of a Salvadorean woman. not noticed in America for herself but for her race. Not noticed. Not knowing she had to leave her Beloved land. Creating a river of tears. Crying, "Land, I'll be back for you." Now she is on a mission to give future to us, the only ones that know she has a golden heart. Yo soy el hijo de una mujer Salvadorena. No conocida en America por ella misma sino por su raza. No conocida. No sabiendo que tenia que dejar su tierra amada. Creciendo un rio de lagrimas. Llorando, "Tierra, regresare por ti." Ahora esta en una mision para darnos el futuro, los unicos que sabemos que ella tiene un corazon de oro. —Melvin Figueroa (December Poem of the Month) The writing class's visibility in the community has been heightened by sales of a multicultural calendar produced by the students—1,500 printed annually since 1984. Bruce Sievers, executive director of The Walter and Elise Haas Fund, says his foundation usually does not give money to individual class projects, but found the Galileo class compelling

enough to fund the calendar for the past two years. "The

Page 132 project struck me as being productive and exciting," he says. "It gets kids involved in something that is more than a class project. It reaches into the community. It's a great concept and a wonderful model." The course takes place in a bright, welcoming classroom. The walls are adorned with posters of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Chinese princess standing among lotus flowers, and a plea to "Stop Bombing in El Salvador." Posted behind Bebelaar's desk are students' poems printed on brightly colored paper. Bookshelves hold a cosmopolitan mixture of poetry and prose by Maya Angelou, Jack Kerouac, Jenny Lim, John Donne, and Black Elk, among others. The desks are set tworows deep in a U-formation facing the blackboard. Rare is the emphasis on bringing together a group of students who are diverse not only in race, ethnicity, culture, and language but also in academic standing and skill levels. The instructors' approach is as embedded in what educators call "critical pedagogy" and democratic schooling as it is in creative writing; the students use their own experiences as the content for their work and learn the skills in the process. As Felix Jones, with his stylishly shaggy black hair and friendly manner, says, "You don't need books telling you things; all you need is yourself. You always have something to write about because your feelings are always there. This class doesn't pour things into us, it gives us room and encourages us and teaches us how to pour things out." It is precisely this strong emotional content that frightens many educators away from teaching similar courses at Galileo and other schools. Others, more critical, charge that the class is more therapeutic than educational. Indeed, in addition to learning writing skills, high on the list of objectives for the course are: teaching students to write honestly and deeply "from the heart" about their lives and feelings; helping students learn to share their work and to "take responsibility for supporting each other," according to Bebelaar; and arousing the humanity in each student and helping them see self-expression as an avenue to making a difference in the world.

POEM THANG PERSON THANG I was waiting for you Out of my reach You never came I knew you could be bought blue and off-white You were yet untouched unworn—virgin like then mom bought Page 133 you. What a cool pair of basketball sneakers. —Giovanni Dennis On the day before a holiday vacation, students pour into the classroom, raucous, yelling to each other, combing hair, and downing the last sips of Coke. The energetic and talkative Poet-in-Residence Harer, a few lines surrounding her sparkling eyes, begins the class. "Today we are going to try an experiment," she says, but her voice is drowned out,

ignored. She tries the old trick of blinking the lights, but today the class is oblivious. Harer mumbles, "I shouldn't have to scream in order to get their attention, but today I may have to." Instead, she puts on a tape of Ntozake Shange, author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf , reading her poem "About Atlanta," with the refrain, "We're Black and poor, and we just disappear .'' The power of Shange's voice, the words, the poetry, and anger conveyed in this poem about the disappearance and killings of African-American children in Atlanta does it. The class is absolutely silent. Intense. Listening. The poetry has captured their attention. The class has begun. Bebelaar and Harer choose poems and devise assignments that deal with basic human values and illustrate the use of the written word as a tool to change the world. Apartheid, racism, war, poverty, loneliness, and homelessness are regular themes in the class. During one class, Bebelaar reads a description by Galileo alumna and author Sean Hoorng Lu of her life in war-torn Cambodia. The students listen intently to the horrifying details. "The soldiers used to kill people, but they would not do it right away. They would cut the hands, feet, nose, or ears off. You would die slowly. My sister's whole family was thrown from the highest mountain into the sea. My father's oldest brother and two sisters died from no food. I lived like this for five years ." Alfonso Gordon shakes his head in disbelief. Cambodian-born students Van Lob Sok and Kien Po sit quietly. Kien's eyes look down. She holds her head in the crook of her arm, her thoughts focused inward as she plays nervously with a paper clip. Antoinette Easley, an outspoken member of the class, asks softly whether girls were involved in the fighting, too. Yes, Bebelaar answers. Easley's large brown eyes open wider as the extent of the violence strikes her. The other students are moved and surprised by the traumas that forced their Southeast Asian classmates to journey to the United States. Bebelaar comments that everyone has his "hard road" to travel—not necessarily escaping war as some students in the class have done, but even moving to a new school and facing the challenge of making new friends. "This is what the class is about, because you have stories to tell

Page 134 and your stories need to be told in beautiful writing. Only if we speak out and tell those stories will we make a difference," she says. "It's not just about English grades, it's about making a difference. When you write stuff and you go out into the real world with it, it comes back." Forty-six students in two periods are involved in the class, which is more balanced among Asian, African-American, Latino, and white students than the school as a whole, which is predominantly Asian. Between the two periods, the student makeup is roughly 40 percent African Americans; 25 percent white; 25 percent Asian (mostly Cambodian, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Chinese); and 10 percent Latino. A social mixing that is difficult to find elsewhere on campus takes place in this classroom. Teens facing academic challenges, such as English as a Second Language (ESL) and special education trackings, mix with others, such as football players, whose social groups are stereotyped as failing to foster strong academic skills. All come together and often break down classifications with the beauty and skill of their poetry.

THIS IS MY TOWN Black as midnight and skin dry as the Mojave desert, selling their bodies just to get a piece of the devil's white powder This is my town Boys the age of 12 selling weed and playing the radio so loud that I can hear them from miles away This is my town

Curl juice dripping from head to head loud cars mark their existence by leaving tire marks everywhere This is my town On hot days they come out like ants attacking their prey people that you've never seen before ask you, "Want hubba?" This is my town Women walk around with just their underwear covering their stretchmark infested bodies This is my town Guys ask you to go to bed with them and get upset when you say, "Hell no!" This is my town A guy gets two girls pregnant at the same time and he doesn't claim either of them This is my town Old people shake their heads as they walk past the base heads the same old people go home and stick a needle in their arms This is my town Page 135 The smart energetic successful people are overshadowed by the stupid lifeless shells of humans searching for something to smoke This is our town This is my town This is my world But this is not my destiny —Antoinette M. Easley Lois Meyer, a professor in the School of Education at San Francisco State shows a videotape of the Galileo creative writing class in her teacher education course. The video gets the highest response rate in her student teachers' journals. What occurs in the Galileo class is extraordinary because students' experiences become part of the learning process, Meyer says. "It is obvious in observing Judy and Katharine that they want the students to lay out their lives and their hurts," she adds. "Students are able to go as deep as they do because the teachers are open to that, and yearn for that level of sharing between people. There is a sense that the teachers are willing to reveal parts of their lives and experiences too." Building trust is an essential goal of Bebelaar and Harer. "Only in a safe environment can kids feel free to express what is in their hearts, and that is the basis of good writing," Bebelaar says. On the first day, ground rules are laid down: no laughing at other students' work; no talking when someone is reading or when it is writing time. Simple. Bebelaar and Harer remind as necessary. "What is the rule when we're writing?" Bebelaar asks, raising her eyebrows and looking directly at the noisiest kid in the class. Or, ''We need to focus in here and leave lunch time outside the door." Reading poems aloud is an integral aspect of the course. Antoinette Johnson, her hair in a short wave, approaches the class with the same seriousness she puts into choreographing Songbird routines for the Galileo football team's half-time

show. Antoinette was nervous at first about reading in front of the class because she thought someone might laugh at her. But, "No one's ever laughed at me or given me a hard time," she says, and now she doesn't expect anyone will. "Students and teachers in this class are friendly and helpful," Mary Chav adds, "not like other classes where there is prejudice and where students only stick to their own races. We feel comfortable and free about who we are. I feel all myself here, not like other classes where I only feel my body but not my heart." Often, students take the lead in convincing a classmate to read his or her work. Later in the school year, the problem is no longer getting students to share but fitting in everyone who wants to read aloud.

Page 136 In this class, even students who might be labeled "difficult" in other classes are enticed into participation. On Halloween, senior Marcel Gilton came to school dressed as Freddy from the movie "Friday the 13th" and spent the day terrorizing everyone with a bloody plastic machete. Loud and large, Marcel is a student to be reckoned with—one who often wears thin on Bebelaar's seemingly boundless patience. One day, Marcel stands in the center of the room refusing to sit down, upset because someone is sitting in his usual seat, although there is no assigned seating. Bebelaar tells him if he doesn't sit down he won't be able to read his poem. He complains, scuffs his feet, and finally sits down. Later, when Bebelaar asks Marcel to stand up and practice reading his poem with expression, he makes a fuss but finally changes his mind and moves behind the podium. He raises his arms, imitating Martin Luther King, Jr.; the class responds with cheers. Then Marcel takes a breath and settles down. As he reads from one of the first writing assignments recalling childhood memories he becomes serious, expressive, convincing, moving: "I remember back in the days when I used to smell grandmom's sweet potato pie. I remember the feeling of the leather strap across my soft behind ." The class is completely still. He finishes to enthusiastic applause and insists on reading two more poems. Harer comments to the class that it is interesting how Marcel can focus right on his poems and has the power to pull in his audience. "I know they are wondering about how I act and how I can write," Marcel says. "When I say my poems I seem like a different person. Sometimes I act mean and when you read my poems it doesn't seem that a guy like me could even write something like that."

I REMEMBER I remember back in the days when I used to smell grandmom's sweet potato pie. I remember the feeling of the leather strap across my soft behind. I remember when I used to hear my bird sing all night and get up and let him out the cage and chase him all day. I remember those days so well when violence wasn't a big part of my life, and I could go anywhere without a question being asked upon where I lived. I want those days back again, but for now it's just a dream. —Marcel Gilton Page 137

Bebelaar and Harer have definite opinions about their teaching approach, students, and education. From the moment students enroll in the course and receive a long list of requirements for completion of the class, they are immersed in an intense effort to develop writing skills, creative voice, and an ear for the English language. They must practice writing daily and develop a portfolio of work. They receive broad exposure to different genres of poetry and learn the value of reading, sharing, and publishing the written word. Although grammar books and spelling quizzes are absent from this class, both teachers seek marked improvements in students' ability to use complex vocabulary and expect them to acquire knowledge of a repertoire of poetic devices, approaches, and forms. Such serious focus on writing skills and the high levels of expectation for performance in the class are unusual when working with students with academic deficiencies. Outsiders have expressed amazement at the success of the class, given the broad range of skill levels. "Just based on their test scores, some of these kids don't seem like they'd be ready for creative writing because they wouldn't have the skills to write creatively," said one of Meyer's student teachers before viewing the videotape. But afterward, the same student teacher praised the quantity of skills taught during a class period and the superior writing. Students must rewrite their best poems, correcting spelling and grammar errors before inserting them into portfolios for grading. Works from the class portfolio are chosen to be published in the school magazine, as Poem of the Month, or for insertion in the multicultural calendar. Students are encouraged to view all of their writing as potentially publishable material. They want it to be good. The sense of ownership of the content of the work, and the drive to share it in publications makes them care about the expressive and technical quality of their writing, according to Bebelaar. Bebelaar and Harer agree on how important it is that the adults teaching the class are writers themselves. "You can use all of the things you have learned as a writer to help the kids become writers," Harer says. "We're not just English teachers figuring it out from reading a text about the creative process. We're people who in our lives are considering the same things the kids are trying to figure out in facing their own poetry." Harer describes a conversation with one student who says that writing poetry has changed the way she looks at the world around her. Coraly Mosher, whose thick, curly brown hair often hides half her round face, used to trudge home looking down at her feet. Now she sees a bottle top on the sidewalk, kicks it and watches it skip and jump and thinks about how she would describe it in writing. Harer proclaims, "That's just what I do, too!"

Page 138 Writes Coraly: "A different face from my work now shows. Brilliant, shining, hungry, eyes yearning to learn new ways of expressing myself. Sometimes when I write I'll talk about the numbness of my fingers when my pen hits the paper. That is when I really start flowin', thinkin', smilin', and speakin' of all kinds of things that mean something in me. When I read my poems, then I'm the proudest of my work. " The course has only recently been awarded "college preparatory" status at Galileo. Students agree that earning an "A" is not easy, but if they meet the clearly outlined requirements and write from their heart, they can get one. Bebelaar tries to expose students to the authors and poets colleges will expect them to know, but also feels the strength of the class is provision of the writing expertise and skills so sorely needed by students going on to higher education. The class includes many students for whom English is a second language. Van Lob Sok, a Cambodian girl, has discovered she has English skills that she did not expect. She laughs shyly and talks of the first time she shared her poetry with her family. "They say, 'I don't think you know how to write poems. You didn't write poems in Cambodian; how come you write in English? Very surprising.' I write in English more than in Cambodian." Many students come from disturbing backgrounds and view the class as a means to help them to exorcise the pain.

Born in Cambodia, Kien Po had to leave with her family because "war or something happened." They moved to Thailand, then the Philippines, and finally arrived in the United States in 1981. The words start to spill out from this usually quiet girl. "It's tough, it's not long (that I've been here) but when you live here you develop, you see the prejudice. When I was small I didn't know which country, where home was. Where's home? Over here I am not wanted because of my skin color. It's totally outrageous, dead people, where's home? So sometimes I don't like this world and reality." Reading and writing poetry are ways to deal with reality and the pain in her life, she says.

CAMBODIA (Chant Poem) I was the palm trees that waved to the morning breeze I was the blue water flowing down the cascade I was the laughter that rang in everyone's hearts I was the temple that received many prayers I was a little girl going to school with my friends down that crooked road I was tomorrow that brought a new day I was Cambodia I am Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge Page 139 who knows the meaning of death I am the bomb that kills thousands of innocents I am the heart that beats like a drum every night I am the ground that carries a burden of dead on my shoulder I am the sky that deceives the eyes I am the planes that have death written all over them I am the bodies that rot in that muddy road I am the eyes that see infants thrown up high, like targets into that sword I am Cambodia —Kien Po Danielle Madruga also has felt like an outsider. A cheerleader at Galileo, she usually wears a miniskirt, a purple and white Galileo letter jacket, and hot pink lipstick, but she does not exude the easy, carefree smiles and qualities one might expect. In a slightly quaking voice, Danielle reads a poem about the hard times she had growing up, living in an old trailer with her mother and moving almost every year of her life: "I remember the smell in the travel trailer, the musky old smell and I can still see the rusty drops of water falling from the roof ." At the beginning of the school year, Danielle shared a poem with her mother. "She started bawling. She goes, 'You're such a powerful writer.'" The reaction surprised Danielle, who did not expect that she could move someone so with her writing. She is getting her first "A" in a high-school English class. Her poems are direct and honest and she reads them with conviction and pride instead of insisting that Harer read them, as she did at first. "It feels so good when they start clapping and you get your point across," she says. "If I think I can write it on paper . . . then I think it's OK to read them." Anton Ambrose, a wrestler who had everyone sign his senior class t-shirt while he wore it, explains that writing helps him deal with emotional stress. "If I can't figure out something, I can write about it and that will help me figure it out.

Through writing I am learning to control my emotions." Such comments might provide ammunition to the critics who charge that the course is more a form of therapy than education. Asked how she responds to this frequent comment, Bebelaar becomes serious, leans forward thoughtfully, and insists, "Kids are whole human beings. I don't believe you can to teach skills and techniques that are divorced from the kids themselves, especially in a school like this where so many of our kids come out of terribly difficult situations. They have burdens to bear and you have to pay attention to that or they won't

Page 140 even come to your class. It is obvious to me that kids want to talk about their lives, to be heard, to transform the difficult parts of their lives, the suffering of their lives, into something beautiful that they can write about. This is what art is." Criticism comes from other directions, too. In spite of support from the Galileo administration and funding from the district for the calendar and projects, the class remains to some degree an island because it flies in the face of traditional approaches to teaching. The class can be rowdy and raucous, causing raised eyebrows as people pass in the hallway. Honors students are often reluctant to take this course and opt for traditional English classes, which they feel are "more suitable" for college careers. Despite such opposition, Bebelaar and Harer remain committed to their approach to creative writing—a pedagogy honed from their experiences not only with the Poets in the Schools Project, but also from the Bay Area Writing Project and their combined years teaching English and writing poetry. "Fifteen years ago, when I got my first job teaching English at a continuation high school," Bebelaar explains, "I was teaching kids who never wrote and had to figure out how to get them writing. I knew they had a wealth of things to express. So I decided to bring in a poet." That was the beginning of her quest for an approach to helping students find their creative voice through writing. "Working with poets in my classroom was a big part of my own training as a teacher." In 1986, Bebelaar invited Harer to team-teach the class. Harer, a credentialed teacher, has published three books of her own poems, Spring Cycle, In These Bodies , and The Border . The poet's salary is paid by a three-year grant from the California Arts Council. The grant runs out this summer. Bebelaar and Harer, worried their partnership will be dissolved, are scrambling to find new funding. Class projects intensify community building among the students. Bebelaar and Harer actively recruit for a diverse student enrollment, then purposely pair students who normally would not take opportunities to talk to each other. Unlike most classes in which students produce individual products, Bebelaar's course uses assignments that emphasize teamwork on group poems, plays, productions, and publications. "Most basic to my teaching philosophy is that kids need to produce something concrete to help them realize that they can produce something that is meaningful and beautiful," says Bebelaar. "We work hard to create ways for kids to work together in a team . . . to pull off a joint project." To fulfill portfolio requirements, each student must participate in at least one project, such as working on Facets (the literary magazine),

Page 141 the Poem of the Month Selection Committee, the Russian Exchange, putting together an assembly or poetry reading, or producing the annual calendar.

Lunchtime in Bebelaar's classroom is often busy with project meetings. In one corner, three girls select the poem of the month. A larger group of students brainstorms for the 1991 multicultural calendar theme. "What about Come Together, Right Now from John Lennon's song?" asks one student. "Yeah, that's great!" shouts another. Next, they discuss whom to include as representatives from different cultures. "Who could we choose for China?" asks Bebelaar. "How about the student leaders in Tiananmen Square?" suggests a student, to the group's approval. The excited conversation continues and slain African-American activist Malcolm X, United Farm Workers vice president Dolores Huerta, and Dith Pran, the Cambodian refugee whose life was chronicled in The Killing Fields , also are chosen. And in the spirit of bridge building established within the four walls of the creative-writing classroom, the class has decided to include in the calendar the works of students from other local high schools. Poets also visit the school, significantly influencing students' futures. Jerome Washington, a African-American poet who spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he claims he did not commit, spoke at an assembly one year after his release. Later, as he was leaving, Easley, who had dedicated a reading of "This is My Town" to Washington, appeared in the archway of the open walkway above to say good-bye. Washington looked up and simply said, "Howard University, Law School, I want you to remember that." The creative writing class affects not only how these students look at their futures, but also how they look at each other. Asked whether hearing the African-American students read poems about their neighborhoods, families and experiences has changed her perception of them, Antoinette's classmate Kien Po answers: "Yeah, because it's so moving. I always thought of them very mean and stuff like that. I finally understand they are just like me, like everyone else . . . I was blind." Perhaps even more telling is the poem "You And I Are the Same," which Kien wrote to describe this new awareness:

You and I are the same but we don't let our hearts see Black, White and Asian Africa, China, United States and all other countries around the world Page 142 Peel off their skin Like you peel an orange See their flesh like you see my heart Peel off their meat And peel my wickedness with it too Until there's nothing left but bones Then you will see that you and I are the same.

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9 Words, Not Weapons; Dialogue, Not Debate: Managing Conflict at the Middle- and Secondary-School Levels ANNE YEOMANS In the spring of 1988 at a summit meeting in Moscow Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev took an unexpected walk together through Red Square. As they stopped to talk to reporters, Reagan said, "What we have decided to do is to talk to each other and not about each other and that is working just fine." As I read this account in the morning newspaper, for a brief moment I breathed a sigh of relief, for my children, for all children everywhere and for all people in a world held hostage by the deep divisions, suspicions and enmities which have marked the relationship between the two superpowers for the last forty years. "Good," I thought to myself, "I'm so glad they are talking. Life in the nuclear age is a little bit safer because of it." What was bringing me even more reassurance than reading Reagan's comments that morning was something else, however. At the very same time I was learning that today thousands of young people in schools throughout the United States are learning how to do what Reagan and Gorbachev decided to do: they are learning that if you are having trouble with someone it works better to talk with them and not about them, and what's more they are learning how to do it well. The art and science of conflict management, of finding ways to have a dialogue with other people even when you disagree with them, and coming to equitable agreements which honor the needs of all those involved is a relatively new but rapidly developing field. In this country it was first developed in business and management in the early 1920s; in the late 1960s the legal profession began to explore mediation programs as alternatives to litigation. In the 1980s and particularly in the last five or six years, conflict management has made a real impact in education. Students as early as kindergarten and first grade are being taught how to resolve conflicts with their peers. Teachers wanting to educate for life in our complex

Page 144 society are recognizing that conflict is a potent theme around which to explore traditional academic subjects such as literature and history. Some schools are exploring how building a sense of community within the school creates a climate in which conflicts can be handled more equitably. In preparation for this essay I visited schools and talked with teachers and administrators who were working with conflict in some new ways. One of the questions I asked was, What are the qualities and skills you think it takes to work toward the equitable resolution of conflict? Some very important themes emerged from their answers.

Qualities and Skills

1. Listening . The ability to listen nonjudgementally was mentioned by all the people I spoke with. Several spoke of the importance of learning to listen "between the lines" to the deeper needs and concerns of those in conflict, including one's own. One teacher reported that one of his students had said that he had realized that the first act of violence was not listening. 2. Patience . Patience was the second most frequently mentioned quality—the ability to "hang in" and believe in the possibility of deeper understanding and contact even when it seems impossible. Patience requires a "long fuse," and the ability to recognize that your first instinct may not be your best. 3. Finding your own voice . Several people spoke of how important it is when you are engaged in conflict to find a way to speak with strength and clarity for your own viewpoint. One teacher called it "standing your own ground," learning how to assert your perspective without apology or defensiveness and also without attacking the other person. 4. Respect for diversity . Many raised the issue of diversity, particularly those working in schools which had mixed racial and ethnic populations. They spoke of the need to listen to and explore the other person's point of view, to accord it respect, no matter how different or hard to understand it may seem at first. As one woman said, "I am teaching a respect for all forms of diversity, both of ideas and of people. It is a real multi-cultural approach." 5. Learning to see from the other person's perspective . In the words of one teacher there is a need to keep in mind that there must be a reason why someone on the other side of a conflict situation thinks and feels as he does. It is important, too, to learn how to ask questions in order to better understand his perspective, but in a way that does not make him defensive. Roger Fisher, Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project

Page 145 and co-author of the very popular book Getting to Yes , put it this way, ''knowing the other person's side so well that you could speak for it as well or better than he does." 6. The ability to be open to change and to be changed by what you learn . As one person said, you need to be able to say "I may be wrong" and to consider in what way your own perspective may be limited. 7. A sense of detachment as well as an ability to recognize and accept those times when you cannot be detached was mentioned by another teacher, as well as learning to let go when you see you have made a mistake or your own thinking has boxed you in. 8. The ability to reflect on process . One man spoke of learning to be sensitive to the interactions between people, to be more aware how one's choice of words and the way that one expresses feelings affect others. He emphasized learning to be more aware of your thinking process, for example noticing whether your reasoning is circular and self-confirming, or open to new information and ideas. 9. Compassion . The word comes from root words meaning to suffer with and implies a capacity for empathy, and the ability to know in yourself how someone feels on the inside and what their reality is. 10. A sense of humor . Perhaps this is the quality most often forgotten when one is in conflict: Being able to laugh at yourself affectionately, and smile at your own foolishness. How can these skills and attitudes be best taught or transmitted to young people? What motivates one to teach about conflict and conflict management? What kind of training and self-knowledge does it take to do it well? Here are some current answers:

1.

Student mediation programs

2.

Using conflict as a lens in traditional courses

3.

Managing conflict through the creation of community

Student Mediation Programs In a number of schools across the country, students are being trained to help their peers resolve conflicts. Student mediation is currently one of the fastest growing approaches to working with conflict. Where such programs have been implemented there tends to be a decrease in the number of fights, a drop in suspensions and a reduction in the need for traditional means of discipline as students learn the skills of conflict management. Larry Dieringer, associate director of Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) thinks "the reason interest in mediation is growing so fast

Page 146 is because it is an approach that seems to be speaking to what more and more people are pointing to as a major social crisis in the United States: the problems of racism, violence, and alienation. Mediation is a method that seems to be having results in these areas where the common citizen usually feels disempowered and without any control." The Quakers and other religious groups initiated the earliest work in conflict resolution in the schools. The Children's Creative Response to Conflict (CCRC), which was a project of the New York Friends Meeting, began work with innercity children in New York in the early 1970s, but it was only in the 1980s that peer mediation programs began to appear in schools. Among the first of the mediation projects was the Conflict Managers Program in San Francisco, which was developed by Community Boards, an organization which trains volunteers to mediate neighborhood disputes, and, in New York, School Mediators' Alternative Resolution Team (SMART). These two programs have served as models for other programs. The National Association of Mediation in Education (NAME), established in 1984, has seen the growth of such programs from just a few to over 200 in a few years. How does mediation work in schools? Usually selected students are given twenty to twenty-five hours of training in mediation skills. They learn to listen, facilitate dialogue, allow for the expression of feelings and listen for what the real needs and concerns of both parties are. They also learn to help the disputants come to an agreement. As part of the training, role plays are used which depict typical student conflicts, and students act them out, both as participants and as mediators. The students who have been trained then have the opportunity to become part of the mediation team for the school. When there is a dispute or altercation, anyone in the school community (teacher, administrator, or student) can refer the disputants to mediation. Because it is a voluntary process, all parties may choose whether they are willing to participate. In some situations students have begun referring themselves to mediation. In the words of one teenager, "If something doesn't change I'm going to bust that guy. I think I'd better go to mediation." At the start of a mediation session the two student mediators set the tone and the ground rules, which include a prohibition on name calling. They make it clear that the process is confidential, and that each person will have a chance

to tell the story as they see it. The mediators explain that they are there to listen, not to take sides and that they will support the disputants in talking to each other and working toward an agreement. Usually a teacher or mediation coordinator is present during the process to give support or guidance if needed, but the main work of facilitation is done by the students. The emphasis in the session is on nonjudgemental listening rather than on trying to determine who is

Page 147 right or wrong. The student mediators try to create a climate where the underlying needs and concerns of the disputants can be clarified. If an agreement is reached it is written up by the disputants themselves and focuses on how they will act toward each other in the future, rather than on determining exactly what happened in the past. In trying to find out more about student medation, I visited Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School (CRLHS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One complex of buildings houses 2,700 high school students from over seventy ethnic backgrounds. The school is divided into a system of four houses and several other programs, each with its own administration and faculty. There I talked to John Silva, who is Director of Safety and Security for the Cambridge school system, which includes the high school and thirteen elementary schools. I also talked with Clarence Gaynor, who is a physical education teacher and a coordinator of the Mediation Project within House C in the high school, and to Paula Hogan, the House Administrator for House C.

John Silva The position John Silva now holds was created in 1980 after a student was murdered at the high school. In his job he is responsible, as he puts it, for all the "real problems, the court-referred cases, the 51As, the CHINS [children in need of services], the court complaints, the breaking-the-law types of behaviors, the real severe discipline cases." As he addresses the day-to-day crises in this complex urban high school, John is developing what he calls a progressive or proactive approach to discipline. He is doing this both through mediation and also through educational programs and workshops on prejudice reduction. John admits to having been a sceptic about mediation at first. He said, "I thought it might work in some of the suburban schools or in a private school, but not here where we have such racial and ethnic diversity. I especially didn't think it would work with some of our 'tougher' kids. After about twenty mediations with 'tougher' kids in the school I was convinced." John sees mediation as an opportunity for adolescents to think rationally and maturely. "At that age they are fighting for their independence from authority. They want to prove they can be adults, and mediation is ideal in this respect. Having them think rationally and maturely and come up with their own agreements has worked well. . . . Some kids that I thought would just walk back into the hallway and start fighting abided by their agreements. They kept their word and a lot of them came back and wanted to be mediators. They'd be in the hall and see a fight and come right to me, or they'd grab the two kids and say you've got to go to mediation."

Page 148 He explained that his ultimate goal is not just to have students come to the mediation program to resolve their problems, but to learn the skills to resolve their conflicts on their own. He wants them to have these skills for life. John sees mediation as making a difference in all aspects of the school community. "What it is going to do for everyone is free up time for the teachers to teach and the administrators to do their work. It creates a less disruptive environment, and I hope education will benefit as a result." John Silva is now so convinced of the value of the mediation program that he is working to institute it systemwide in all

the Cambridge schools.

Clarence Gaynor For Clarence Gaynor, who is now one of two Mediation Coordinators in House C at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, mediation is an expression of principles he has always believed in. As a young boy Clarence was raised to appreciate the importance of resolving conflicts fairly. He tells how his father would never let anyone in the family go to bed if there was still someone angry in the household. This family training was reinforced by an incident which occurred when he was a fifteen-year-old student at the very high school where he teaches today. He and a friend were involved in an altercation; they resolved their differences but nevertheless were punished by an administrator. "No one took time to hear both sides," Clarence says. "No one cared that the conflict had been resolved. We had no involvement in the decision-making process. The experience stayed with me all my life." Clarence and his co-coordinator, Ed McGillicuddy, work closely with the team of student mediators. They are clearly proud of their mediators, and speak of the growth in their skills and even more important of the development of selfesteem and a sense of empowerment in them. Clarence's basic faith in human nature is very deep. "People are willing to work out their own problems if given a chance," he said. "It's just that they don't know how; they don't have a working knowledge of how to do it. Without that knowledge they often back themselves into a corner and strike out. No one has ever given them a chance to come together, and that's what this is about—giving people a chance. Just opening doors and saying, "Here is a chance to talk.'' When I asked if this work is effective in racial incidents, Clarence, who is African-American, said, "very successful," and told of a racial conflict where in mediation the two parties wept when they realized

Page 149 how they had hurt each other. In talking further about this incident, which involved an African-American, a Haitian, and a white student, he said, "These racial incidents come from name-calling and not understanding each other's cultures. Learning to live with another culture is not natural, it's a learned process. A lot of this aggression which we see in school is based on lack of understanding about each other. It's not a matter of caring," he said firmly. "Theseadolescents-care. But they have been introduced to each other's cultures out of fear and not out of understanding. The only tools they have are ethnic and racial slurs. When they can sit down and talk together over a table they begin to see that this person cares like I care. They too feel, and they too cry in the night. They find out they have families, brothers, sisters, and that things hurt, and the same-things-hurt! They don't know this until they sit down together. Mediation gives them this opportunity to interact and to process all this." I also had an opportunity to talk with several of the student mediators at CRLHS. Dawn, a fifteen year old, told me that she had a long history of getting in trouble at school, but now she doesn't get into trouble any more. "I know now if I have problems in school or outside of school, I'm not so quick to start arguing. I'm more calm and willing to talk about it. I don't just blow up and want to fight." Fatima, a soft-spoken young girl from a town near Bombay, India, who has been in the United States only three years explained that she does mediation because she "wants to help people." Her sincere commitment to be of service to others seemed to shine out of her eyes and smile. Clarence said that because of her quiet bearing some of the disputants thought at first they could overpower her, but her genuine commitment to helping others has gained the respect of her fellow students.

Paula Hogan Paula Hogan, House Administrator for House C in the high school, was so convinced of the value of mediation skills for young people that she offered a mediation course to all ninth graders entering House C in the fall of 1988. The previous year she had instituted the course as a pilot project for those incoming ninth graders identified as at risk for dropping out of school. In her words, "These high-risk kids blossomed." She has observed a change in their self-esteem and 90 percent of them have improved significantly academically. The subsequent course for all ninth graders taught the skills of mediation, but also dealt with the deeper questions of why mediation is important. In the words of Caroline Hunter, who taught it, "I was teaching

Page 150 not just the structures for mutual respect, but the basis for it." The course that she developed included work on selfimage, group-building, and an emphasis on respect for all forms of diversity, both of ideas and of people. Much of Paula's motivation to make these courses part of the House C curriculum comes from a long-standing interest in achievement motivation. "What happens to adolescents to make them not aspire to anything?" she asked. "What do you do to motivate kids to get them to perform?" She answered her own question: "Give them a sense of empowerment and an ability to control their environment. That's why we have developed courses that teach kids how to be in control. Mediation is just one piece of this. I want all students to have the skills even if they don't become mediators.'' Paula reported that teachers and staff at House C feel mediation should be a schoolwide effort. She believes that it should be incorporated into the curriculum. To the concerns of some school administrators who fear that giving students skills to mediate disputes involves a surrender of their own power, Hogan replied, "To empower others gives you more time to do the things that make this school better. Then you are not spending a lot of time on discipline issues."

Conflict as a Lens in Traditional Academic Courses I interviewed two teachers who make conflict analysis a fruitful part of the study of history and literature.

Shelley Berman U.S. History . Shelley Berman began his work in education as a social studies and U.S. history teacher, but he was extremely dissatisfied with the traditional approaches to U.S. history. In his words, "to teach U.S. history chronologically is virtually to teach from war to war. The underlying message that students get from this kind of teaching is that war is a natural part of human behavior and an effective way of resolving differences." Teaching in the Brookline school system from 1978–81, he created, after much experimentation, a thematic approach to U.S. history that took as its central focus the question of social change. He asked students to grapple with such questions as: How have we created social change in the United States? What are the major conflicts that emerged in the course of our history and how have we worked with them? How have we resolved or not resolved our differences? What has the process

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been? What are the challenges to creating dialogue when things are controversial? In designing the course Shelley tried to identify current political and social issues which could be traced back to their historical roots, and to the conflicts that preceded them. For example, he took the theme of dissent and started with current expressions of dissent familiar to his students, like the opposition to the Vietnam War and protests about the Seabrook nuclear power plant, and then traced the history of dissent in America going back to the American Revolution. Another unit in the course examined current conflict between environmentalists and the business community and then explored the history of conflict management and negotiation back to the birth of the labor movement and the conflicts between labor and management in the early part of this century. In this particular unit students learned the skills of conflict resolution, and made simulations, and engaged in role playing to deepen their learning. A major part of the course looked at movements for human rights and social justice, studying the civil rights movement, the Native American movement and the women's movement. In studying the civil rights movement Shelley had his students look at how the status of minorities has changed in the United States and asked them to analyze how this came about. "What process moved us from a point of blatant racism to adopting a standard of racial equality?" he asked. The Native American movement was studied as a failure in civil rights. Immigration was another important theme of the course. The class looked at how the United States, unlike many other countries, had to integrate a great diversity of cultures. In this section they studied prejudice, and the issue of what makes people acceptable and unacceptable to our society, and how Americans have learned over time to live with diversity. At the same time that he was teaching history Shelley was teaching a second level of analysis as well: conflict analysis. As students were identifying what the major conflicts in the United States were, they were also learning to evaluate how successfully these conflicts had been managed. Questions were asked like, "What are the structures that existed for resolving these conflicts? Were the voices of those without political and economic power heard? If so, how? What led to a good resolution of conflicts? In whose interests were the solutions? While he helped students understand and evaluate the structures and systems of government that society sets up to deal with its conflicts, Shelley also explored with them a more subtle and often-overlooked aspect of conflict management: the issue of process, the "how" of interaction between people, which either fosters or impedes positive

Page 152 and equitable change. Process concerns focused on questions like: What are the factors that lead to polarization when there is conflict? When do people not listen? As a person working for change when do you push hard because you are not being heard and when does pushing hard cause a negative reaction that works against you? How do you know? In this creative and challenging course Shelley dealt with the dynamics of change as well as the facts of history. In his words, "I was teaching United States history in layers and by the end of the course my students all had a good chronological understanding. I found I could teach all the same things I had taught in the the more traditional course and have it make sense," he said. Studying Controversial Issues: Nuclear Weapons . In recent years Shelley has assisted other teachers in piloting new and controversial material in the classroom. He considers one such course at Bromfield High School in Harvard, Massachusetts, the best teaching experience of his life. The focus of the course was the issue of nuclear weapons, although the same format could have been used to explore any controversial topic. The course, an elective for

sophomores, juniors, and seniors, met two hours once a week for a semester. Shelley's goal for the course was to study a controversial issue in depth and to help students see some common ground around competing viewpoints. Ten different speakers, representing a wide range of opinions and convictions, were invited to the class over a sixteen-week period. They included a speaker on the history of nuclear weapons, one favoring civil defense, one in favor of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a presentation on Soviet foreign policy by a Soviet émigré very critical of the former Soviet Union, and another by a historian with a much less antagonistic attitude. What made the course unique, however, was that students were asked not to debate with each speaker, but to employ what has been called the Believing Exercise. This exercise was developed by a professor of literature, Peter Elbow and has been adapted by Shelley and others to teaching in history and the social studies. It is particularly well suited to the teaching of controversial public issues. In this exercise the class was encouraged not to argue with the speakers but to enter into their reality and to believe as they believed, to try to understand as they understood and to see the issue as they saw it. In order to do this students were asked to put aside their own opinions temporarily and to frame questions that sought understanding; they had to ask their questions in a way that did not create fear or defensiveness in the person being questioned. When questions were asked which were hostile, confrontative, or even subtly reflective of the student's own point of view,

Page 153 Shelley would interrupt and ask the student to try to rephrase the question so that it sought understanding. Central to the interaction was respect for different points of view. Shelley reported that, "By the end of the course students had mastered asking questions that didn't have an agenda behind them. They could hear a person and share his or her concerns without trying to put the person down in any way. They came to be enriched by the other's point of view, even if it was very different than their own. The speakers loved it." The Believing Exercise leads to the discovery of common ground between the player and whomever he or she is seeking to believe. This is so, Shelley explained, because "as you struggle to find a way into a position with which you disagree, the natural points of entry are those areas where there is shared agreement. You find these and you keep building on them, clarifying where you have shared or overlapping concerns." After each speaker left, the next hour of the class included a critical analysis of what he or she had said. For as well as teaching the ability to identify with and understand a different point of view than one's own, Shelley was also committed to teaching the tools of careful critical analysis. In this part of the process the class reflected on such questions as: Why is this person believable? What are his credentials? Does this person have a point of view based on what he does? What are his real interests as opposed to his stated position? What are the facts? Are there things left unsaid? And then in Shelley's view "the most powerful piece of critical analysis: What are the assumptions behind the person's position which were unstated yet key to maintaining that position?" Shelley noted that these two very different yet complementary tools for dealing with controversial issues—the Believing Exercise and critical analysis—had different effects on different students, depending on their natural orientation. "The students who came in with very strong opinions about an issue were powerfully affected by doing the Believing Exercise with someone whose point of view differed from their own. The students who "tend to believe anyone were blown away by discovering their own capacity for critical analysis." Shelley himself gained a new appreciation of how well students do when you expect that they can think for themselves and think clearly: "If you expect that, it really does happen! What constantly surprised me was the profundity of their statements."

The words of the students themselves on the last day of the class are perhaps the best testament to the depth of their new learning. When Shelley asked them how their own thinking had changed and evolved during the course they answered:

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"In the beginning I started with the 'us and them' theory. We were the peace-lovers and preservers of humanity and they were the warmongers, creators of blood and violence. Now I have learned that they have reasons behind their positions, and some of them are right and some of them are wrong. I think before we can make any progress we have to start to understand them, then maybe we can compromise if we know each other more as people than as opposite sides.

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"I have also learned that there are no easy answers, that every solution has its drawbacks. . . . No one is going to be pleased with every solution. . . . Now I feel I know more about the issue, I feel I should go out and educate others. If everyone is educated then at least they'd know what they are talking about and maybe they wouldn't go around yelling at each other."

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"My thoughts are clearer than before even though I still have trouble expressing myself clearly, but the course has helped me to think more clearly when there are a lot of different sides to an issue. It doesn't have to be so intimidating that there are all these sides. It doesn't have to be so completely confusing. It just means there are many sides."

•

"Now I don't seem to think there are just two contradictory sides, there seem to be many, many sides. Now I can support some of the things that are more liberal as well as the things that are more conservative. Now it doesn't have to be that I can only support the Freeze because that is where all the liberals are. It's not in that boundary anymore.

•

"I've learned how to be less dogmatic about my ideas, more open to change and other opinions, and it's kind of nice now at the end of the course to feel a little bit less ignorant by recognizing my own capacity for ignorance.

In an environment where right and wrong, put-downs and oneupmanship were put aside as much as possible, where understanding and respect for different points of view were highly valued, these students came to some discoveries about themselves which are rare even among highly educated adults.

Lucile Burt Conflict As a Theme in Literature . Lucile Burt, who teaches English in a high school in Arlington, Massachusetts, has found ways to teach many of the skills and attitudes that lead to effective work with conflict within the English curriculum. "You can do this work in very traditional structures right within the curriculum that is given to you," she said.

Page 155 For Lucile, the entering into the perspective of others that is a fundamental skill in the management or resolution of confict is not new. "I guess I always found it interesting to think about different people's perspectives, about how the world would look to someone else," she said, "but in the past I never thought about it as a peace-making skill. I never thought about it as a way to make people's lives better, only just more interesting. So now I think I do it with a little more emphasis, a little more conscious choice. Now I say to my students more often, 'Take it out of literature for a moment, what would it be like in your life to look at other people's perspectives?' "If you look at literature carefully," she continued, and really try to uncover the complicated interactions among people in it, you understand that this is not just two characters in a book, you realize that this is about something real in human life and that it is a way to lead to better understanding and therefore better conflict resolution. The more they [the students] know about human nature, the more they understand about what works and doesn't work in interpersonal relationships, the better they are going to be able to think about how conflicts get resolved." It was an increased awareness of the nuclear weapons issue in the early 1980s that added a new emphasis and sense of urgency to Lucile's concentration on other people's perspectives. In 1982 the nuclear issue erupted in her classroom and she realized that both she and her students were both very ignorant and very upset about it. She said it came up in class "like a piece of dynamite"; as a result she decided to spend some time teaching about it more directly. She taught the ESR curriculum Decision-Making in the Nuclear Age for a few semesters, but reflecting back on that period now, she says, "In retrospect I realize I always felt uncomfortable. For two reasons: The content is difficult to fit into an English class. It feels forced, but I also think teaching about empowerment (which is what I am most concerned about), needs to start at a simpler level than teaching about nuclear weapons. When kids take on nuclear weapons they take on one of the most difficult international problems there is, one that makes most of us feel powerless. If they are going to feel empowered they need to start somewhere where they can have an effect. In the last few years I have come to feel that the way to approach the subject is not through the weapons themselves but through the underlying things that have created the weapons: the way people don't resolve conflicts, the way they fail to see their interconnection with other people on the globe. It feels closer to the bone this way. "As a result my teaching has changed. Now I feel like all I'm really trying to do is to set young people out there with the kind of skills that

Page 156 will accept complexity, understand human nature, and be better communicators. All of these skills will help them think about how to resolve conflicts better." With few changes in the content or the books she is required to teach, Lucile has developed many ways to explore conflict and to help her students develop the awareness, sensitivity, and the skill which lead to better ways of dealing with conflict in their lives. To accomplish this she draws first of all on the literary texts the class reads. "Almost all literature deals with conflict," said Lucile. "A Separate Peace by John Knowles really lends itself to talking about personal and global conflict. It is a great book for dealing with issues of war and peace and with enemies. Or take Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman . What are the conflicts in this family and how do the characters handle them? You could also look at the violent resolution of conflict in Julius Caesar , and how it doesn't work. Really any piece of writing can be appreciated this way." Using a modification of the Believing Exercise, Lucile often asks students to enter into the minds of different characters in literature, particularly characters we don't usually like or feel sympathy toward. She cited Madame

Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities as one example. "We hate her. She is despicable," said Lucile. "She does terrible things to the people we like. We have no real sympathy for her." Developing a skill which is central to the ability to work well with conflict, Lucile asks her class to shift perspectives. "What would the world look like if you were Madame Defarge? How could you construct a novel with her as the main character? Don't change the story, but think about what it would look like from her perspective." Using the changing-perspectives approach and integrating it into creative writing assignments, Lucile often assigns writing about a current conflict in the lives of the students for homework. She suggests they write about this conflict from their own perspective, from the other person's perspective and from a third as well. Here she is implicitly teaching students the three perspectives in a mediated dispute, exploring both sides and then bringing in a third perspective from which one has the possibility of seeing the conflict from a more inclusive view. Using research projects, another of the required components of any basic English course, Lucile asks her students to do social action research. They pick a social issue they are concerned about, one in which they would like to make a difference. They do research for the purpose of taking some action. Topics have included homelessness and teenage pregnancy.

Page 157 At the same time that she uses literary texts with their rich portraits of human interaction as a basis for teaching perspective-taking, she tries to make the classroom itself a laboratory for the management of conflict, and a setting in which to help students toward a sense of personal empowerment. "It is my hope," she said, "that as they feel that they have power in their classroom, and have a feeling that they can have an effect on world problems even in a smallcommunity sense, they will grow to be more empowered as citizens." Although she expressed doubts about how well she is able to handle disagreements between her students, it was clear to me that in her own interactions with them she was teaching and modeling many of the qualities and skills essential to good conflict management. She was unfailingly committed to their empowerment and to giving them a sense of control over their studies and their lives. For example, she always gives them an opportunity to learn from their mistakes, including the chance to revise their essays as many times as they wish until they are satisfied with their grade. She explained to me that she was teaching them to be assertive about their own concerns and at the same time helping them to learn how to address her concerns as well. She wanted them to come away from her class with a model about how to handle disagreements so that they "never throw up their hands and say, 'Oh well I can't do that.' I don't want them to respond in a way that makes it impossible for the person they are in conflict with to resolve it with them. I try to teach that they can and should say when they feel something is not fair, and I am also teaching them ways to voice their feelings so that they can be heard." Lucile works with many of the elements of what has been described as the democratic classroom, which include making students part of the decision-making process, valuing the empowerment of students, yet at the same time teaching and modeling for them effective ways to approach disagreements and difference. When we had finished talking, Lucile looked up with a smile and said, "Sometimes I really mess up. I make terrible mistakes, lose my patience, get angry at kids." Then she added emphatically, "Be sure you say that." Then she paused. Referring to everything we had talked about—empowerment, valuing the other's point of view, working well with conflict and teaching practices for life in a nuclear age—she continued, with real awareness of both her limitations and her commitment to this kind of education, "I do as much as I can, and that is the best you can do when you have four or

five classes a day, 180 days a year, and probably if you are trying to do it and being conscious of it, you are doing a lot!"

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Managing Conflict through the Creation of Community Graham and Parks: Len Solo and Kathy Greeley Graham and Parks Alternative School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an experiment in community. It is a school community with the richness and challenges of diversity; half the student population are white and half, minority. Sixtyfive to 70 percent come from working-class backgrounds and the rest are middle class. Many of the students are Haitian and there is a Haitian bilingual classroom within the school. I visited the Graham and Parks Middle School a number of times and talked with both Len Solo, the principal, and Kathy Greeeley, a History teacher, who is also "school climate coordinator." In this capacity she works with the Student Government, runs the Community Meeting, and coordinates the Student Mediation Program. Len and Kathy see the goal of the school as the creation of a community where both students and teachers feel empowered, where both have a sense of belonging and ownership. In Len's words, "Where there is a sense of belonging, kids treat themselves and others differently." The school has attracted many teachers who share this commitment and vision of what a school can be. Graham and Parks was formed in 1980 by the merger of an alternative school and a traditional school. "In bringing the two schools together, we created a lot of conflict," said Len, "between kids and kids and between kids and staff. At the end of the first year, which was a year of chaos and difficulty, we spent time talking to the middle school students about what was needed. They said that they felt alienated from the school, powerless as if they didn't have a voice. Out of this "we redesigned the program to create an ideal environment for the seventh and eighth grade kids." Structures were created to give students a voice; The Student Council, School Mediation, and Community Meeting. It is within these structures that most conflicts are dealt with.

Student Council . The Student Council is a group of twelve students (eight elected by the four homerooms and four appointed by the staff). They meet once a week during lunch and recess and discuss a variety of issues concerning the junior high. The student council also sets the agenda for Community Meeting.

Mediation Program . Kathy Greeley reports that interest in mediation has grown. In 1988 twenty-five students—one third of the junior high school—signed up to take mediation training. Eight were chosen to

Page 159 be trained. A few parents have also been trained. Mediation sessions are conducted by two student mediators with Kathy present, but her role is minimal. About half the students and half the referrals come from students and half from

teachers. There have also been mediations between students and teachers and students and the principal. The results are impressive. Len reports that in 1987 he suspended twenty-five to thirty students and in 1988, only four.

Community Meeting . The entire junior high, students and teachers, holds Community Meeting every other week. Kathy facilitates. Because of the large Haitian population the meeting is translated into Creole. The rest of the school stops and waits from time to time while the Haitian teacher translates. Community Meeting has dealt with such issues as integrating Haitian bilingual students, student social events, eighth grade privileges, stealing, and equitable use of the playground. Once in Community Meeting Haitian students confronted the whole group about their experience of inequality and prejudice in the school. This led to an intense and confrontative discussion between the bilingual students and the monolingual students, but one that was free of personal attack. Kathy refers to this event as one of the most incredible meetings she has ever witnessed. The Haitian students, with Kathy's support, had prepared for the meeting. They knew what they wanted to say and made a pact that they would all talk and support each other, not just let one person do it. After the meeting twenty-five students —one third of the junior high—voluntarily came forward to talk about what could be done to bring the two groups together. As a result of this meeting and continued sensitivity to the issue of prejudice within the school community, the ethnic tensions have almost entirely disappeared. Events like this do not happen just because a forum called Community Meeting exists. They happen because Len and Kathy and others on the staff and faculty are committed to creating a school community where this kind of interaction is fostered in as many ways as possible. Although the structures for giving students a voice and for dealing with the tensions and conflicts of the community are in place at Graham and Parks, the work is not over. When I visited in the late spring of 1988 there was a feeling of discontent and frustration, some of it derived from the fact that it was the end of the year and some from the fact that the students had inherited structures that had been created by other students in previous years. The framework was not working as well as it had when it originally had been set in place, when it had the aliveness and vitality of a new creation. "It is hard to do what we are trying to do." said Kathy one day when she was feeling very discourage. "Some

Page 160 days I am tempted to take away Community Meeting and Student Government and Mediation and just see if it makes any difference to the kids.'' Persuaded by other members of the faculty and administration that there was a better way to address the apparent student discontent and apathy, a community meeting was called to address this very question. Len started by giving a brief history of the school and of how the present program had been designed with the purpose of hearing and empowering students. He reminded the school community of the vision the school had originally created. He said very directly to all the seventh and eighth graders, "If the Community Meeting isn't working, I want to know why. If students don't have a voice, I want to figure out why and change things, so they do." His sincerity in wanting to hear from them was clearly evident. Then the community broke into small groups, each with a faculty person as facilitator. I observed Kathy Greeley's group of eight students. The first question to the groups was, "Do you think students should make up the rules?" I was impressed by her caring and skill, her efforts to see that even the reticent were heard from. "What about you, Joey, do you think kids have a voice in the school? What about you, Kenneth?" At the same time that she drew students out, however, she asked them to think, not just complain. "Can you be specific? Can you give an example? I hear you

saying community could be better. How could it be better? If you are not happy with Community Meeting, could you give me some concrete suggestions?" Here was the philosophy of the school put into practice. Here was careful attention to process. Kathy wanted to learn from the students, to hear each one. She was drawing them out without being in any way condescending. She was asking them to take responsibility without being angry or putting anyone in the wrong. Her approach included a willingness to see her own mistakes and to see them without defensiveness, as on the occasion when one boy pointed out that she had not listened to someone else. She admitted her mistake and seemed genuinely pleased that he had been quick enough to see what had happened and had felt enough trust to tell her. Kathy Greeley was modeling what she most wanted to teach. From my visits to Graham and Parks I learned that the spirit of community must constantly be renewed or its organizations and structures become only empty forms. In Len's view, "The experience of ownership and participation needs to be recreated every year," since every year there are new students for whom this kind of responsibility and opportunity in school is a new experience. This commitment to the renewal of community takes hard work and an ability to sustain a

Page 161 vision. "It will not all happen at once, but we are moving forward," Len said. Finally, I learned another lesson at Graham and Parks: When a community is committed to the empowerment of all its members, to the value of diversity, to hearing every voice, the very attitudes and skills essential to conflict management begin to be woven into its fabric. They become a priority, part of the way people try to treat each other on a daily basis, not something that is important at some times and not at others.

Conclusion I had not been thinking at all about community when I first started these interviews about conflict management, but as I concluded this exploration I saw that in my quest to understand how conflict is being worked with well in schools I had been led to community and that I had seen evidence of small pockets of it wherever I went. There was certainly a sense of community between Clarence Gaynor and Ed McGillicuddy and their young mediators. There were seeds of another community between Shelley and his students at the high school in Harvard, Massachusetts and also in Lucile's classroom in Arlington, and in Graham and Parks, where the whole school was committed to community and the leadership of the school was explicit about it. I had learned that there was an important relationship between the health of a community and the way it deals with conflict. When people come together to work or live or study as a group, conflict is inevitable. There is no escaping it. However, a healthy community has the capacity to reframe the inevitable and on-going differences among individuals into something both necessary and very positive. It sees them as a potential source of richness, vitality, and new insight and as holding the possibility of deeper contact and connection between its members and not as a sign that something is wrong. In the words of M. Scott Peck in his recent book on community, The Different Drum , the only way to real community is through conflict. This commitment to community and to working carefully with differences is a deep one among the people I interviewed. It was clear it had been with them a long time and was connected to their deepest values. I was touched by

their skill and precision in the daily interactions that are part of expressing such a vision. It was also clear how challenging and difficult this work is at times, both because we live in a society which is experiencing such a

Page 162 loss of the traditional forms of community, and because we are human and get worn out, impatient and frustrated. I'm reminded once again of Lucille Burt's comment, "I do this as much as I can." Community grows where there is time for listening, where empowerment is a priority, where there is commitment to hearing every voice, and where there is respect for diversity. These are the very qualities that are essential to working well with conflict. So back to Reagan and Gorbachev walking through Red Square. Can we end by saying community can only begin when "we learn to talk to each other and not about each other" and when we learn to do it every chance we get? This is essential if we are to learn to live with our differences, and it is also how real community begins to grow, whether it is at home, in schools, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, or in the world.

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10 Promising Practices in the Social Studies DENNIS SHIRLEY Within the social studies, a small number of teachers have in recent year developed pedagogical styles which transform the atmosphere of their classrooms, upset the prevailing emphases on obedience, conformity, and test scores, and replace institutional controls with community engagement. Such teachers encourage students to articulate questions that derive from their intuitions and reflections. They urge students to understand their embeddedness in historically determined social structures and natural ecosystems. They make clear to the students the historical and contemporary costs of political passivity. Without preaching or inculcating their own convictions—which would defeat their purpose of freeing students—these teachers enable students to develop thinking skills which will not only help them to understand their world but can also give them the tools to play a role in changing it. Six teachers have been selected for this paper who model such alternative ways of teaching social studies. Their teaching styles may be described as "alternative" for several reasons. First, all of them emphasize a powerful experiential component in their classrooms. Whether they are helping students to design a constitution of class rules, encouraging them to grapple with deeply held prejudices, or enabling them to enter fully into the world view of someone with an utterly foreign background and culture, they all aspire to move beyond a strictly cognitive and intellectual approach to their subject matter. Second, they all urge students to be introspective , to examine their own beliefs and to explore fundamental conceptual change. They view social studies as a domain which requires not simply assimilation in the sense of acquiring new facts, but also reconceptualization, as when students learn to accommodate new beliefs which fundamentally change

how they think about social phenomena. Third, these teachers model alternative pedagogies insofar as they are not afraid to engage students with large ideas in all of their profundity and

Page 164 complexity and to connect them directly with their everyday lives. They ask students not only to learn about the concepts of self-determination as stated in the Declaration of Independence, for example, but to reflect on the freedom in their own lives and the risks and consequences it entails. Fourth, the teachers all are willing to start with students where they are as individuals, rather than to presume that they can be bunched into undifferentiated aggregates and batch-processed through the day. The teachers take time to learn the personal idiosyncrasies, problems, and strengths of their students, and to use these as ways to make the curriculum directly relevant to them. Finally, the teachers are all concerned with cultivating empathy and compassion in their students. They attempt to find new kinds of classroom activities which humanize their students by enabling them to emerge in their full individuality and enjoy interdependence and tolerance with others. The six teachers bring together these pedagogical elements in different ways. They follow no set recipes, and they have none to prescribe to other teachers. However, they share a common spirit and conception of citizenship education, and one which stands in sharp contrast to the behaviorist models so prevalent in most of our secondary schools. Their thinking is consonant with that of Henry Giroux, who has shown in an illuminating essay entitled "Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education," that many traditional conceptions of citizenship education in the United States focus on acculturation and socialization for national unity. By emphasizing national identity, school curricula typically downplay or exclude altogether the many social cleavages in our society which occur largely but not exclusively along lines of class, race, and gender. Giroux notes that even relatively intellectual approaches to the social studies frequently perpetuate a canonical approach to knowledge which systematically suppresses the themes, questions, and experiences which students bring to the classroom. As a consequence, students compartmentalize their world views into the ephemeral kinds of knowledge rewarded in the classroom and the "real world" kinds of knowledge which are part of their lives outside of school. In the place of this division of knowledge, Giroux has developed an alternative theory of citizenship education which stresses student-initiated inquiry, active learning which transcends the parameters of the school, and a sophisticated meshing of personal narrative and political analysis. It is a theory that requires committed, intellectual teachers, finely honed group-leadership skills, and an openness to new and largely untried approaches to learning.1

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Democratic Pedagogies Craig Beaulieu is a social studies teacher at Brunswick High School in Brunswick, Maine. A community of 20,000 people, Brunswick is the home of a naval air station and Bowdoin College, and, like most of Maine, almost exclusively white. Brunswick High is an aging school building which serves the entire city's public high school population. Craig has been teaching for thirteen years, and in the spring of 1989 completed his first year of teaching in a "democratic classroom." Craig has the freedom to innovate with his classes, provided that his undertakings do not disrupt learning in the rest of Brunswick High. The school administration does not exert pressure on him to demonstrate his pedagogical prowess by

priming students for standardized tests. What makes Craig's teaching particularly intriguing is his ability to use his autonomy to the fullest by creating classes which are democratic in their conceptualization, implementation, and evaluation. The forum for Craig's experiments with democratice approaches has been three classes of eleventh grade combined U.S. History and Government. In September 1988, Craig began the school year by giving students a "lecture on my beliefs on human nature." Briefly, Craig holds that people rise to the level of responsibility expected of them, and that any people—including high school juniors—regulate their own behavior better than others can regulate it for them. On the first day of classes, Craig presents the students with a challenge and a goal: Could they work together as a group to establish a democratic classroom with their own rules, rights, and responsibilities? Several details are important in understanding the manner in which Craig constructed this initial situation. He did not perceive his approach as that of "open education," which earlier in his teaching career had culminated in "more anarchy than anything else." Rather, Craig was careful to set limits on democratize education from the start. This meant that he would retain veto power over actions which violated school guidelines, and that the course curriculum could not be jettisoned. Within these parameters students would have unlimited freedom to participate in the evolution of the course. Craig approached the experiment with the inner conviction that "sharing power results in more power" and that the students would truly use the course to cultivate "ethical citizenship." Students spent the first days of the school year writing a class constitution. To assist his students, Craig divided each constitution into areas of classroom management, teaching and learning, and evaluation. He was curious to see what rules the students would create, and how they would address decision-making processes.

Page 166 Although Craig pressured the students to come up with a set of rules to assist classroom management, the students disagreed with him. Rather than approach their self-regulation through rules , they chose to approach it through rights . Rights represent a more positive formulation of appropriate conduct and contribute to a more positive classroom atmosphere. Rather than stating that students shall not speak out of turn as a rule, students emphasized their right to express their viewpoints and be heard by their peers. Craig accepted the reformulation. It took each class about six days to draw up their constitution. Each decided how it wished to proceed with majority rule, consensus, and amendments. To confirm the significance of the process, every student received a copy of the class constitution and was asked to indicate whether he or she accepted or rejected it. No one rejected it. By the time the constitution was completed, each student had participated in group decision making and had played a role in determining how he or she would interact in class for the rest of the year. The students had experienced participatory democracy, not as an abstract concept but as a deeply engaged personal experience. According to Craig, the students recognized their lack of background in American History and were happy to give him full control over the curriculum. Craig elected to teach history thematically rather than chronologically. While such an approach surrenders the narrative continuity of history, Craig finds that the linkages between the past and the present are more accessible to students with topical instruction, and that the key lessons of history can be learned more easily. As expressed in their constitutions, students wished to learn with a variety of instructional methods, including lectures, work sheets, small-group activities, role playing, and individual research and reports. Only one class had a strong injunction pertaining to methods: they did not want Craig to lecture more than three days a week. Before Craig advanced far into the curriculum, he observed that some classes had serious flaws in their constitutions and would need amendments. For example, as part of their desire for regular one-on-one contact with Craig, the students had come up with the ideas of holding individual biweekly conferences with him to review their grades and class progress. While the idea of close contact between the instructor and the students on a regular basis was laudable, in practice Craig found himself spending up to three days every two weeks conferring with students while the rest of

the class worked in groups or individually without the benefit of his involvement. A remedy had to be found. This problem provided students with an opportunity to use their constitution to revise the class organization. They learned that planning activities for a large class of students is complex. Rather than leaning

Page 167 on the teacher to resolve the difficulty, they came up with a solution on their own. The revised plan called for Craig to confer with them twice every six weeks. This proved much more feasible and rewarding. Although working through the initial proposal and its revision was time-consuming, Craig felt that by taking the time student ownership of the course was enhanced. After the class constitution was drawn up, Craig planned a curricular unit to dovetail with the first activity. In each class, students followed the achievement of making their own constitution by studying how the Founding Fathers debated and constructed the U.S. Constitution. Based on their recent experience of the process of constructing a constitution, they were able to compare the legal system of the United States with the rights and guidelines they had devised for their classes. As a result, the U.S. Constitution became a living document, created by human beings motivated by similar concerns with order, effectiveness, and liberty. Craig reports that one major success of democratic classes is that he has few disciplinary problems. When disruptive behavior does occur, it is resolved expeditiously by referring to the constitution—which all of the students signed—and through the agreement of the group to abide by its guidelines. However, Craig does point out that there are problems with his classes. The major issue, he feels, is that a democratic class develops a momentum and rhythm of its own which does not always square with the curriculum. There are always issues to be addressed in a democratic classroom relating to points of procedure, student rights and responsibilities, and interpersonal relationships. It is sometimes difficult to give these the time they deserve when the curriculum calls for students to learn about the French and Indian Wars, the Compromise of 1850, and Wilson's Fourteen Points. Matters are made even more complicated by the fact that Craig has to teach U.S. History and Government in one year, rather than over the two-year spread which is common in most states. However, although Craig's work load is great, it does not outweigh his enthusiasm.

Creative Confrontation Carol Kilpatrick has taught U.S. Government for three years at West Linn High School, in an affluent white suburb outside of Portland, Oregon. The school is attended by 1,350 students who are taught by eighty teachers, and Carol teaches five classes with about thirty students in each class. Government courses in her district last for one semester, so

Page 168 that Carol does not have the students for a full academic year. Carol describes teaching in West Linn as a project with "interesting demands, which come from teaching in a community where kids have everything." Carol was a juvenile social worker for many years, and she is intrigued by the problems young people have in "downright rich" West Linn. From her perspective, the

kids are really out of touch with any kind of social responsibility. There is a big push to get into Ivy League schools and to make top grades. The idea of kids caring for others really isn't part of their

home life, which leads to a kind of emotional impoverishment. I like the kids, and I also see them as just as alienated as any kids I've ever seen. Carol starts off the semester by introducing her students to classical political theory. They study the code of Hammurabi and selections from the writings of Machiavelli, Locke, and Marx to learn something about legitimate and illegitimate bases of power and authority, group decisions making, and property rights. Carol then tries to help them see how they can cope with moral authority in their own lives. In one activity. She asks her students to leave their desks and sit down on their knees in a circle around a large piece of blue butcher-block paper. When they are ready, she walks into the middle of the circle, carrying a glass bowl filled with water and a goldfish in it. Carol explains,

I tell them, "The older I get the less I know for sure. One thing I do know for sure is that I'm not paid very much money and I should be paid more. I did pay for this fish with part of my last salary money. This fish is mine. Don't touch it." I tell them that very imperiously. And then I kneel down and I scoop the goldfish out of the water with the ladle and I flop it onto the butcher-block paper. I put the bowl down next to it and I take the ladle with me and I walk out of the circle and stand in the back of the room with my arms folded. The kids talk as soon as they see me with the ladle. Somebody will say, "Oh my God, is that what I think it is?" As I scoop out the goldfish, someone will say, "Oh, she's done it!" And then it seems like an eternity and all hell breaks loose. Invariably the discussion goes, "Do something!" "No, she told us not to!" ''Well, then we'd better not." Eventually one of the students puts the goldfish back into the water. Carol then asks them to return to their desks and write about

Page 169 why they either saved the fish or did not. The students then defend what they have written, and an animated discussion follows. After the exercise with the fish, Carol continues the class with further explorations of the nature of authority and the problems that arise when legitimate authority is misused. To personalize the topic, Carol has the students write about a time when they should have spoken up against an abuse of authority but did not. The class spends several days sharing incidents of parental, teacher, and peer abuse of authority, probing the central question of "When is it immoral not to act?" Sharing their own perspectives heightens students' awareness of the necessity and the difficulty of defying the abuse of authority. In addition to the study of classical political theory, the class exercise with the fish, and the sharing of journal writings, Carol uses other activities to teach social responsibility. Several times during a semester she invites parents to join a "parents' panel" in which they share their political perspectives on topical issues. Recent themes have included a gay rights' referendum in Oregon, school bond votes, and political party affiliation. Carol also uses simulation to nurture empathy in her students and empower them to act for social justice. Her students first learn about the civil rights movement by arranging their seats to simulate the Montgomery bus on which Rosa Parks refused to move and by writing and performing extensive dialogues between passengers who agree with parks and those who disagree. Carol also uses cooperative learning in almost all facets of her class activities, including cooperative teaching. Nor is she afraid to be audacious; she had refused to unlock the door to her classroom as a way of challenging students to think about their rights to a free public education. In spite of her ability to pull together a wide range of provocative techniques to teach critical thinking in her

government course, Carol is dissatisfied with her course as it now stands and intends to revise it considerably. While she had enjoyed simulations, she now feels that "Anybody can simulate anything to death" and that a simulation can be just another way for teachers and students to avoid confronting contemporary political realities. Carol is now contemplating putting together a Political Action Committee at her school which will take positions on pressing civic issues. "I just want to do the real thing," she says, "There's no substitute for reality."

Building Community Carol Lieber teaches at the Crossroads School, a private school in St. Louis, Missouri. She has been teaching for twentyone years in public

Page 170 and private schools and founded the Crossroad School with her husband. They envisioned a school that provided a heterogeneous learning environment with "a lot of different styles of teaching" and a highly integrated curriculum. Carol brings together history and literature in a two-period course she gives for ninth graders on World Civilization and World Literature. Carol devotes a great deal of attention to the study of divergent perspectives on controversial issues. She starts off each academic year with a three-week unit on evolution and creationism, exposing the students to a variety of primary sources which attempt to account for the origin of human life. Students read religious arguments against the teaching of evolutionary doctrine, philosophical treatises addressing different facts of creationism, and scientific documents which interpret evidence in different ways. Rather than focus on which perspective is right or wrong, Carol engages her students in the practice of "methodological belief," in which students practice understanding how different perspectives can make sense in accounting for the same phenomenon. The practice of methodological belief is formulated in a now classic essay by Peter Elbow, entitled "The Doubting Game and the Believing Game—An Analysis of the Intellectual Enterprise."2 In that paper, Elbow observes that much of what is learned in schools focuses on critique, argumentation, and rigidity—in brief, on doubting. However, Elbow posits, another "game"—based on BELIEVING—has equal educational value. The Believing Game encourages students to approach controversial points of view in a manner which AGREES with the advocate of a particular position, thus helping the students to suspend judgment temporarily and to learn how their perspectives may be based on their prejudices, cultural and historical contexts, and selective interpretation of evidence. Teachers who use the Believing Game in teaching historical units assist students to identify with and appreciate the perspective of others, not in an unquestioning, undifferentiated way, but by learning to engage and disengage with them without feeling threatened. Students further learn to discriminate between those of their beliefs which are based on relatively arbitrary cultural forces and those for which one can indeed gather supportive evidence. Carol uses the Believing Game as a basic part of her teaching method throughout the school year. She finds it to be most successful with curricular units in which a variety of different perspectives are plausible. Historical topics such as the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, the collapse of the Roman republic, the interaction between Christianity and Islam at the time of the Crusades, and Renaissance humanism all allow multiple interpretations, and Carol uses these as

Page 171 focal points throughout the year for students to explore history through the lens of methodological belief. One major consequence of using methodological belief in the classroom is that students learn to formulate questions differently. In playing the Believing Game, students are forbidden to ask questions which impugn their interlocutor's integrity, intelligence, and good will. Instead, they are required to learn how to pose questions which enhance

understanding of another person, regardless of how alien they may find his belief system. In the process, the defensive barriers which students and adults often construct are weakened, and students experience a richer, more empathetic classroom climate. Carol's pedagogical practice carries over into extracurricular activities. Throughout the 1980s she worked with her school's chapter of Students for Social Responsibility, which has contributed to projects ranging from recycling to raising funds for Amnesty International and Oxfam, to serving meals to the homeless. For Carol, this work represents as important extension of her classroom activity, in which many of the values she espouses when teaching translate into direct social engagement. She therefore models active solidarity with others for her students both inside and outside of the Crossroads School.

Enhancing Systems Thinking Dwight Gibb teaches at a private school, Lakeside School in Seattle, Washington. Dwight describes the school as "a very aggressive college preparatory environment." He has taught for twenty-five years and currently teaches U.S. History to juniors and seniors. For the last fifteen years Dwight has been working to reconceptualize his teaching. A major catalyst for this effort has been his instruction of students in whitewater kayaking. Through this experience, Dwight saw students who were "completely involved in learning—emotionally, intellectually, and physically." As Dwight coached students, he discovered the importance of their learning to "become part or the river" rather than seeking to master it. Excited by the transformation of students as they established a harmonious relationship with nature, Dwight asked himself whether he could do anything in his history classes to achieve a similar kind of engagement. The result has been a novel emphasis on harmony and integration in Dwight's teaching. "The student really is the subject of my teaching," Dwight states. He explains that a major goal of the course is to enable students to understand their personal biases, how these relate to the academic subject known as history, and how many of these biases

Page 172 are not idiosyncratic but are part of a cultural value system. Dwight wants his students to understand themselves as people who are living in the process of history rather than observers cut off from it. He believes that if his students can appreciate what it means to be a part of history, just as a kayaker is part of the river, students will be better able to understand the currents of continuity and change which surround them, and will also be better able to navigate their way to future goals. Dwight works to achieve these ends on several levels. He is aware of the degree to which adolescents are involved in a search for identity, and he feels that "U.S. History is an ideal context within which a student may ask 'who am I?'" Dwight tries to be alert to the relative fluidity of students' identities at this stage of their development, and he encourages them to enrich personal introspection with historical awareness. To help them understand the manner in which the historical context of their lives has influenced their thinking, Dwight occasionally gives them readings or shows them films about indigenous peoples who hold none of our modern and Western conceptions of science, progress, or mastery over nature. These readings and films help students to step out of our culture and to reflect more substantially on the manner in which their identities and beliefs have been influenced by our society. Second, Dwight is aware of neurological research which suggests that the dominance of one side of the brain over another can lead to different learning styles and abilities. According to this research, the right side of the brain is more attuned to intuitive and emotional sensitivity and the left side of the brain is involved in abstract, cognitive skills. Most teaching is narrowly "left-brained" but Dwight tries to teach in an inclusive manner which allows students with the

domination of the left or right sides of the brain to become involved in course material from equally accessible points of departure. Third, Dwight's instruction emphasizes the integration of apparent opposites: the residues of the past and the possibilities of the future; the distinctiveness of the self and the conditioning of society; the interdependence of women and men; the dialectic between the person and the planet. He does this by highlighting the underlying matrix of mutuality which sustains them. The year is divided between chronological history in the first half and a more innovative thematic approach in the second. Dwight works with this model because he believes that the first half—up to Reconstruction—holds together well and allows him to introduce many new ideas in a framework which is familiar to the students. Dwight begins the second half of the year with introductory readings on the idea of cultural, social, and economic change. Of particular

Page 173 significance is an excerpt from Marilyn Ferguson's Aquarian Conspiracy , which seeks to distinguish between readily identifiable events and deeper "paradigm shifts." According to Ferguson, "a paradigm is a pattern of thought," and a "paradigm shift" catalyzes "distinctly new ways of thinking about old problems.''3 Ferguson's thesis is an extension of the work of Thomas Kuhn, a historian of science who contends that subtle but far-reaching paradigm shifts mark all of the major advances of modern science.4 Paradigm shifts are ordinarily not recognized as significant developments during the period in which they are occurring but in retrospect are identified as major changes of world view. After group discussions on the nature and dynamics of change, Dwight organizes his course around what may prove to be three examples of paradigm shifts in modern history: from prejudice to justice, from war to peace, and from economic growth to ecology. When Dwight's classes focus on the shift from prejudice to justice, students trace the social history of black/white relations since the Civil War and examine the civil rights movement. They read selections on Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and Martin Luther King. They also write papers on historical or contemporary forms of prejudice. Throughout this section, Dwight works with the students to address questions relating to the origins and dynamics of prejudice, shifting relations between state and federal governments, and "the strengths and limits of nonviolent change." The second possible paradigm shift Dwight explores is the transition from war to peace. In this unit Dwight has his students work with explanations from the origins of human aggression. For Dwight, this unit usually marks a turning point in the course. Before the course, most students think violence is innate and war is inevitable. The certainty of students on this point is upset when they confront data which suggest that violence is learned. "That really changes them," says Dwight. "That changes everything." From this point onward, students learn to see personal behavior as part of social systems. The third paradigm shift studied in Dwight's history course examines a transition from unlimited economic growth models to sustainable ecologically sound ones. Dwight wants students to move beyond an understanding of wealth based on commodity production to consider the extent to which environmental resources or interpersonal relations can be construed as manifestation of wealth. By exploring the deep conceptual changes in our thinking that may be occurring, Dwight wants his students to move beyond the memorization of discrete facts which forms so much of orthodox high school history. "I'm continually asking them to think in terms of wholes and in terms of systems," he says. Students sometimes have difficulty with

Page 174 this approach, and he recalls one student telling him, "I can't think that big." Dwight knows he is "stretching them," and he works to make the concept of systems accessible. If the students can realize the degree to which "they are in charge of the information'' which makes up history, they can learn to direct their own inquiries into the past and to forge their own identities based on their relationship to that past. Through this personal involvement, Dwight hopes his students will "arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of how American society works and an enhanced awareness of the power of individual choice."

Clarifying Decision Making Robert Scrofani has taught for thirty years and is now teaching at Berkeley High in Berkeley, California. Berkeley High is a racially integrated urban school with 2,800 students in a city with a national reputation for progressive politics and intellectual excitement. The aura of openness, individualism, and creativity which pervades the city spill over into the halls and classroom of Berkeley High. Robert is the past chair of the Social Studies department and has taught courses on World History, U.S. History and Government, Economics, and Anthropology. While California State Department of Education mandates require students to take spefific Social Studies courses, Berkeley High offers a wide range of electives and encourages students to select their courses in ways which make sense to them. The department offers semester-length courses in Criminal Law, China, Japan, Model Congress, and other topics which stimulate high levels of students interest and participation. One feature makes Robert unique among the different teachers interviewed for this essay, and that is his quick and easy use of the first person plural rather than the singular. When Robert talks about teaching social studies at Berkeley High, he talks about "we" when referring to the staff of twenty Social Studies teachers and the students. His "we" indicates a degree of collegiality among staff and community with students that is rare. According to Robert, "At Berkeley there is a lot of openness between the teacher and the student, and the student and the student." Social studies faculty plan events together, discuss how they want to teach curricula, and photocopy lesson plans and lecture notes and share these with each other. While most of the dialogue occurs on an informal level, faculty take the time to plan major departmental events in common. For instance, to educate students about the issues entailed in the 1984 presidential election, the faculty brought together all of the students from all of the social studies classes meeting in each

Page 175 class period to assemble in the auditorium to hear perspectives of other students on campaign issues. Students could pose questions to speakers after formal presentations, and at the end of the exercise, students voted not just on presidential candidates but also on the issues. As a result of such collaborative activities, the social studies teachers at Berkeley High are spared the isolation felt by many teachers. Like all of the teachers previously discussed, Robert tries to teach students about the relativity of the everyday knowledge they take for granted. Robert's economics class is a case in point. He had initially attempted to teach economics according to the guidelines of mainstream textbooks, but he found that most economic books "start off too cold" and are not tied to "the controlling ideas of a belief system." To remedy the situation, Robert substantially redesigned the course, pulling together curricular material from a variety of sources to analyze the assumptions which underlie orthodox economics. Robert begins his economics course by having students work with a simulation called "The Island." In this exercise, Robert divides his students into groups of five, and presents them with a scenario:

Following a global catastrophe, a group of students find themselves shipwrecked on a tropical island with no hope of rescue. There is enough food and water on the island to support the group and the temperature is about eighty degrees year round. For three to four weeks Robert works with his students to address the dilemmas the students must solve to survive on the island. The students develop a system of leadership, a division of labor, property control, a medium of exchange, and a set of laws. They create a way to resolve conflicts, respond to a second immigrant group which arrives on the seventh day of the simulation, and deal with an expatriate landlord who claims legal control of the island. Throughout the simulation, Robert teaches the students economic concepts relating to production, distribution, wages, profit, capital, and interest. With the island simulation Robert does more than familiarize the students with economic vocabulary. He also teaches them that economic systems are embedded in the assumptions of the overall culture, that people can make economic decisions without understanding their full ramifications, and that ownership of property can be contested and its use negotiated. By constantly relating values to behavior, and behavior to economic outcomes, Robert demonstrates that however recondite the workings of a modern economic system might appear, it is embedded in "our beliefs, which are as important as anything we do." Following the island simulation Robert teaches his students to

Page 176 identify their assumptions about economics and American society. To accomplish this, he distributes a handout which asks students to indicate agreement or disagreement with statements such as "Everyone's self-interest adds up to the common good" and "A just society seeks an equal distribution of wealth." In the conversations which follow, Robert wants the students to come to terms with their preconceptions and to analyze them critically. A student who states that people attempt to satisfy their desires with the least possible exertion may have to rethink her claim when attempting to understand the forces which drive a marathon runner. Another student who assumes that economic power is distributed equitably in American society may find himself rethinking his assumptions when studying Power and Land in California , a Ralph Nader Task Force Report which documents concentrations of property and the penetration of government by elite business groups in California. Robert asks the students whether an "economic bill of rights" might be one way to abolish poverty in America, and has his students read from Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal for such rights in a radio address of 1944. Finally, he asks students whether they can imagine a convergence-model economy, which would combine the concept of economic equity from communistic command-style economics with the principles of economic liberty from Western market economies. Robert is able to assimilate vast amounts of information and use it to develop his lesson plans. He draws his curricular materials from articles published by the Institute for Food and Development Policy, curricula complied by ESR, topical issues of Scholastic Update , Ralph Nader Task Force Reports, and countless newspaper and magazine articles. Robert has also developed and published curricula of his own, which have been distributed through the Economic and Political Literary Newsletter of the Henry George School of Social Science. He plans further explorations of the intersection of economics and ethics in coming academic years by using Frances Moore Lappe's Rediscovering American Values as a major source.5

Teaching Differences and Commonalties Paula Paul teaches U.S. History and World Cultures at the Bodine High School for International Affairs in Philadelphia. She has been teaching social studies in the Philadelphia public schools for twenty years. For the first fifteen years she taught middle school and she has now been teaching high school for five years. Bodine High is a

racially diverse magnet school of 450 students established by the Philadelphia Board of Education in compliance with federal integration laws.

Page 177 Paula is interested in developing the skills of critical citizenship in her students, but they need work with basic reading and writing. Outside of school, they are coping with situations of poverty and family instability which create "terrible confusion and chaos in their lives." The students need an opportunity not only to learn their course subject matter but also to work through personal issues with a trusted and empathic adult, so that Paula is often sought out not just as a history instructor but also as a counselor. The school's response to the severe problems of the community includes a tight and narrow conception of the teacher's role with the result that Paula finds it difficult to exercise her full strengths as a teacher or to encourage students to develop their skills in critical citizenship:

It's not that the administration wouldn't say "we value democracy" or "we value students' critical thinking" or "we value students formulating their own thoughts on controversial issues." They're not opposed to that intellectually or pedagogically. They're only opposed to that when it's translated into actual classroom methodology, because it's contrary to the other things they're trying to achieve—which is the standardization of curriculum, and handing in your lessonplans, and writing your objectives on the board every day, and making sure the room is neat for the next person. Paula does not blame administrators and understands the social dynamics which promote teacher deskilling, yet her personal dilemma remains. She is caught in a system which substitutes techniques of control for learning: "teachers are made to do things they really think are nonprofessional in terms of what we believe and our years of experience." Paula has worked with at-risk students for years, and she knows that learning basic skills relating to writing, mathematics, and the sciences is imperative for future citizens. However, she attempts to push beyond type inculcation of skills to convey to students the historical and contemporary issues which make basic skills instruction for them necessary in the first place. By bringing the realities of students' lives and the social problems they experience on a daily level in inner-city Philadelphia into the classroom, she strives to enliven and make relevant the entire educational enterprise. In spite of daunting external circumstances, Paula succeeds in creating classes which promote an impressive synthesis of interpersonal sensitivity, individually achieved ethical choices and historical knowledge.

Page 178 One of Paula's greatest assets is her ability to listen to her students and to draw on their experiences to inform her classes. She believes that they are acutely aware of the need for social responsibility today:

There's no way I could work with kids today and not deal with issues of social responsibility because it just comes out of them. . . . They're dealing with issues of race, they're dealing with concerns about the environment, they're dealing with apartheid, the arms race, drugs, and violence. Paula notes that many of her students are in a multiracial and multicultural classroom for the first time in their lives when they enter Bodine High: "They bring with them a lack of knowledge about each others' cultures and a lot of stereotypes." Rather than ignoring her students' interactions with new people, languages, and cultures, Paula attempts to make their responses an ongoing concern in her course; she explores the way in which her students as well as groups in

history have responded to cultural differences . Paula interprets history not so much as the record of past events but as the manner in which "people treat each other." The concept of difference becomes a key to exploring the dynamics of intergroup relationships in American history. In teaching about the age of colonization, for example, Paula uses a variety of primary sources to enable her students to see the different ways in which Europeans and Native Americans viewed each other. Paula makes a special effort to help her students see the distinction between ways of viewing cultural and racial differences as interesting and attractive, and ways of viewing others as grotesque and despicable. Paula teaches about differences as an organizing category in relations between African Americans and whites, women and men, U.S. citizens and immigrants, Nazis and Jews, and Americans and Vietnamese. All of these themes serve as vehicles for exploring the manner in which human beings either make connections with one another or create images of each other as enemies and act upon their interpretations. Paula gives her students "a whole vocabulary" for understanding how prejudice works. An important piece of this project is a scale which students can use to follow the transformation of prejudice analytically as it moves from passive witnessing to active participation, nonviolence to violence, and racial epithets to genocide. Paula makes intergroup relationships among the students in her class part of her pedagogy. If one group of students stereotypes another, Paula intervenes, not so much by scolding, as by asking whether the stereotype really fits the diverse individuals in the room who are from

Page 179 the group which has been labeled. The students who have done the stereotyping almost invariably back down when confronted with the many different individuals who don't fit their labels. Once students have a solid knowledge of how prejudice works, Paula asks them to write about times when they have been a perpetrator, victim, or a witness of prejudice. From this point until the end of the year Paula works with her students to discuss "the choices people make." Paula tries to show her students that people are always making decisions in any given situation, and that knowledge of their potential for self-determination can help students to gain control of their lives. Rather than simply discussing these ideas, Paula has the students role-play to address concrete situations in their lives in which they need assistance in the decision making. Since they are constantly dealing with prejudice—whether in the form of a racist remark on the school bus, with family members who insult their friends of a different racial background, or in the form of sexist comments in the hallway—Paula helps her students to identify the situations and to practice responding to racial or sexist slurs in ways which will be empowering for them. In her experience, role-playing is extremely effective.

It seems to be very powerful for kids because it's very practical: "When this happens to me, this is what I can do." They pick out situations in their current life where this happens. I put them in pairs, they try it together first, and then we play it out in front of the group. For Paula, all of the exercises and events covered in the course of the year lead up to this point: "Where I'm trying to get them is where they feel that they have a choice." In effect, Paula is teaching her students that they can be decision makers and need not be the playthings of external forces. In other words, she is teaching them freedom—not as a disembodied, abstract concept, but as part of the practice of emancipating their everyday lives.

Lessons for Critical Citizenship Education At the beginning of this chapter I noted that the six teachers I would be describing shared a common point of view, a

common alternative teaching style. Here, in closing, I want to stress two further qualities they share. First, in their ongoing engagement with their students, their communities, and the knowledge which makes up their disciplines, all six consistently model behavior that is independent, socially astute,

Page 180 open-ended, and pedagogically audacious. Moreover, each is very much his or her own person. In approaching citizenship education it is imperative for teachers to develop their own synthesis of leadership, student selfdetermination, and community, and each found a way to do so. Craig Beaulieu creates democratic classrooms which allow students to make major decisions in matters of teaching, learning, and evaluating. Carol Kilpatrick experiments not just with critical thinking but with confrontational activities which lead students to test the relativity of her injunctions. Carol Lieber has her students explore the Believing Game to discover the relativity of their beliefs, to discriminate between irrational and logical referents for their beliefs, to enter fully into the values of others, to practice empathy and compassion, and to create an overall atmosphere of tolerance for others in the classroom. Dwight Gibb integrates chronological and thematic history instruction, and helps his students to move beyond the comprehension of discrete facts or identify their deepest beliefs and to understand their consequences. Robert Scrofani pulls together the most diverse materials to enable his students to juxtapose their assumptions about economic behavior with the complexities of commodity production and exchange. Paula Paul uses the concept of differences to teach about prejudice, and relates her teaching to her students' experiences. Second, these teachers transgress . They break the boundaries of their specific academic disciplines; they subordinate state-approved texts to their own curricula; they empower their students to take active control of their education. They transgress not to repudiate more conventional approaches, but to challenge students to expand their ability to think critically, become aware of the degree to which they are shaped by and interdependent with their social and natural environments, and to question passivity and fatalism. Finally, I wish to emphasize that few teachers will undertake promising practices such as I have described here unless school culture and school structure are changed. It is highly improbable that more than a few teachers will attempt this kind of teaching in our schools as they are now constituted. For most teachers, working in the American school is a fundamentally undemocratic experience, leading them to feel disempowered and to see themselves as institutionally atomized white-collar workers, hardly in a position or frame of mind to model critical thinking, decision making, democratic participation, and citizenship empowerment. We face the paradox that in spite of our ideological attachment to the values of democracy, most Americans experience little of democracy in their everyday workplaces. Schools share this dilemma more sharply than other institutions because of their role in socializing children as citizens.

Page 181 The fact that our schools provide meager sustenance for critical citizenship education underlines the remarkable work of these six teachers. I honor them for their compassion, creativity, and—last but not least—their tenacity.

Notes 1. Henry Giroux, "Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education" in Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition (South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1983, 168–204.). Giroux is remarkably prolific; for most recent works, see his Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota, 1988); Schooling for Democracy: Critical Pedagogy in the Modern Age (London: Routledge, 1989); (co-authored with Stanley Aronowitz) Postmodern Education: Politics, Culture, and Social Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); Popular Culture, Schooling, and Everyday Life (Granby, Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey, 1989); and Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (New York: Routledge, 1992). 2. Peter Elbow, "The Doubting Game and the Believing Game—An Analysis of the Intellectual Enterprise" in Writing Without Teachers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, 149–191). 3. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980, 26). 4. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 2d. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970). 5. Frances Moore Lappe, Rediscovering American Values (New York: Ballantine, 1989). Page 182

11 Science and Society: Teaching Social Responsibility in the Nuclear Age BETH WILSON FULTZ Recent years have brought plenty of bad news about science education. Study after study has confirmed that U.S. students lag behind those from other industralized countries in their mastery of science and mathematics. Even when American young people measure up in their knowledge of factual information, they fall short when required to use that knowledge to solve problems or reason about real-life situations. Although national leaders and the media warn that we must do better to stay competitive in the world economy, other news suggests that we must do better simply to stay alive: the problems of waste disposal, air pollution, the depletion of the ozone layer, and a looming greenhouse effect are leaving us increasingly beleaguered and hardpressed for solutions. Educators, of course, view these developments through their own particular lens. While blue-ribbon panels of science educators plan wide-ranging reforms over the next decade or two, classroom teachers must continue to fill in their lesson-plan books day by day. Many are bringing social issues such as pollution and deforestation into the curriculum, hoping to persuade students that science and technology can help us solve some of the problems they have already helped us create. These teachers find that raising questions of social responsibility improves their teaching of scientific concepts and skills, as it prepares students to think critically about the human and ethical dimensions of scientific

investigation and decision making. The issues they discuss will illuminate other efforts, large and small, to train a generation of citizens and scientists who are not only competitive but responsible, not only competent but concerned.

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The Pressure of the Curriculum Like their colleagues in other subject areas, science teachers feel keenly their responsibility to teach students the material contained in the school's curriculum. However, because science is so often perceived as a discipline of observed facts and objective knowledge only, the dilemma of how to incorporate societal issues into the curriculum may be knottier for science teachers than for those, in say, social studies, language arts, or the humanities. Often, science teachers ask themselves: If I teach social issues, what must I omit? How will that omission affect my students' performance on achievement and advanced placement tests? Questions like these have led the teachers whose ideas are highlighted in this chapter to appreciate the support of groups like Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) and, in particular, that of an ESR-sponsored teacher-support project, Education for Living in the Nuclear Age (ELNA). ELNA encourages them not to add new material to an already bloated curriculum but to infuse their teaching with an awareness of the ELNA objectives that are appropriate to their subject matter. Thus Bob Simmons, a curriculum specialist in the Lynnfield, Massachusetts, schools, asks teachers to do what they normally do, while keeping in mind the ELNA objectives of helping students to (1) understand the interdependence of the planetary ecosystem, (2) appreciate the cooperative relationship between humans and nature, and (3) understand that the actions of humans carry consequences and create the world we live in. Once teachers begin to view curricular topics through the prism of these objectives, says Simmons, social implications begin to inform all aspects of their teaching, from the design and presentation of lessons to the management of daily classroom activities. Carolyn Moritz, a teacher in the Lynnfield schools, thought planetary interdependence might be a bit abstract for her third graders, but she found a way to approach the curricular topic of scientific observation by having them investigate some rotten logs on the edge of the playground. Watching the logs carefully over several weeks, the youngsters gathered information to help them decide whether the decaying wood should stay or be removed. When they finally concluded it should stay, they had well-thought-out reasons: it provides a home for insects, the decayed material feeds the soil, and the logs are fun to observe and play on. The curricular crunch increases at the secondary level, as students become preoccupied with course credits for graduation and tests for college admission and placement. Even so, Grace Taylor of Cambridge

Page 184 Rindge and Latin School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, finds that because advances in biology have created so many of the social problems we now face, social issues can enter the biology curriculum quite naturally. She believes the study of scientific and technological advances is incomplete without the opportunity for students to think through the ramifications of those advances in the light of their own values. In a unit on bioethical decision making Taylor's tenth graders tackle both the biological and social aspects of the cases they study. Regarding curriculum priorities, all the teachers interviewed for this chapter agree on the importance of enlisting the support of administrators, who are the link to parents and to district-level authorities. If administrators are behind an individual teacher's efforts to incorporate social consciousness into the teaching of the science curriculum, they can be tremendously persuasive in communicating the importance of that approach to those who might be skeptical.

Social Issues Motivate Students Students and even teachers often find the standard curriculum dry as dust, but incorporating social issues can help bring the material to life. Larry Weathers of Bromfield High School in Harvard, Massachusetts, finds that his students are more motivated to study when he highlights the relationship of science to contemporary and often controversial social issues. Even when scientific knowledge in a particular area is cut and dried, notes Weather, the application of that knowledge is often fraught with ambiguity and ethical questions. Students want and deserve the chance to grapple with such questions. In fact, when students in his school were unable to convince administrators to provide a course on the nuclear arms race, they came to him for help in organizing an after-school seminar for themselves. Weathers helped them connect with ESR, which organized an experimental course of fifteen two-hour sessions of speakers, films, readings, and discussions. Seeing students blossom—though sometimes painfully—through their encounters with opposing viewpoints, he began to bring social issues more and more into his physics curriculum. Even elementary schoolers can benefit from wrestling with complex issues when teachers present the opportunity appropriately. Wanting her sixth graders to focus on an ecological problem, Carolyn Moritz organized a simulation in which students tackled an item on the agenda of the local town meeting: local wetlands development and its relationship to the problem of water in town residents' basements. Science and

Page 185 social planning both took on new meaning as they assumed the roles of various city officials and citizens. They learned to research and articulate their positions (even ones they didn't agree with), to listen to others, and finally to take actions such as writing to their town officials to express their views. Moritz feels that studying a local instance of a wider problem is important for young students. Understanding wastedisposal problems is more meaningful, for example, when she asks each child to bring a piece of litter from the schoolyard as a pass to reenter the classroom after recess. As the class collectively examines the resulting pile of trash, they decide what could be recycled and what should be thrown away. From there, they can go on to investigate the quantities of rubbish their school accumulates, how the waste is disposed of, what options their town provides for recycling waste materials, and how fully residents take advantage of those options. Ted Hall of Wayland High School in Wayland, Massachusetts, finds that when introducing topics of global signicance, even with his older students, it's important to establish a local ''need to know." In his chemistry classes he teaches about acids, bases, and salts partly through a study of acid rain. In addition to lab activities to help students understand pH, sources of acidification, and its effects on soil and plants, he brings in provocative films and clippings, including data not only about the global extent of the problem but about the effect on neighboring bodies of water. From the beginning of the unit he has students measure the pH of any precipitation that occurs and post the readings around the room. He also encourages them to take pH paper home on weekends to test nearby ponds, streams and puddles. Before long, students are full of questions about who is to blame and what should be done. At this point, observes Hall, some science teachers are tempted to bail out. Dealing with questions of responsibility and action requires some discussion, some analysis of opposing viewpoints, and frequently some library research—classroom techniques and background that many teachers do not have at their fingertips. Science teachers especially, Hall contends, tend to rely on the textbook and curriculum guide, presenting material mainly through lectures and lab activities. They feel uncomfortable leading discussions and unsure how to create the kind of safe environment students need to sort out controversial, value-laden questions. They can learn these skills, but they need help to do so. It takes time, Hall points out, to get used to teaching without right answers. For most teachers, introducing social issues is a matter not just of new topics but of new methods of teaching. Even when they believe such changes would improve their teaching and spark student

Page 186 interest, most cannot adopt them successfully just by hearing or reading about them. They need training, opportunities to learn from each other, and support.

Like it or Not, Values are Part of Science Another shared belief of these teachers is that values are part of science whether they're talked about in the classroom or not. Indeed, an implicit goal of science education is to help students think critically, evaluate data and form conclusions. As a health education coordinator of Wayland High School, Jill Goldman designs activities to remind students of the human factor in all scientific investigation. Though scientists have devised certain methods to help filter out the effects of human biases and values, experimental results and their interpretation are never bias-free or valueneutral. Among the ways Goldman tries to give students experience with scientific investigation is a simulation of a double-blind Federal Drug Administration study, using caffeinated and decaffeinated cola. She intends that first-hand participation will produce a deeper understanding of scientific procedures and their purposes, and will help students be more critical consumers of scientific and medical research, rather than accepting it as the entirely objective domain of authorities who cannot be questioned. She wants her students to see that the environmental and medical situations we find ourselves in are largely a consequence of our own thoughts, decisions, and actions. Besides analyzing research and judging its quality, Goldman's students analyze advertisements, particularly those for cigarettes and alcohol, comparing the images portrayed in the ads to the scientific findings on cigarette and alcohol consumption. Grace Taylor tries to give students a systematic approach to thinking about social issues, especially the inherently valueladen nature of the bioethical dilemmas so prominent in current events. To involve her biology students in both biomedical and ethical issues, Taylor assigns cases familiar to students from the media, such as Baby Fae, who received a transplanted baboon heart; Karen Ann Quinlan, a comatose patient whose parents sought court permission to disconnect life-support systems; Baby M, whose birth to a surrogate mother raised a host of issues about reproductive technology; Ryan White, an AIDS victim in school; and Pamela Rae Stewart, an expectant mother sued for criminal neglect of her unborn baby. Realizing that all these recent cases involved white individuals or families, Taylor also offers students the option of investigating some historical instances involving

Page 187 people of color. These include the mass sterilization of blacks at the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital from 1924 to 1972 and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which African-American men were allowed to die of syphilis so that medical researchers could study the behavior of the disease.1 Taylor divides students into cooperative groups and asks each group to consider its case in five steps: (1) state the ethical problem, (2) generate many possible solutions or courses of action, (3) rank the solutions according to the students' values, (4) decide on a solution, and (5) think through the implications of that solution, both for the immediate parties and for humanity if the solution were implemented worldwide. Sometimes she asks students to present their cases orally and open the discussion to the whole class. Confronted with the curriculum she must cover and the time such projects require, Taylor must keep long-term goals and educational priorities in mind. She is convinced that "long after our students forget the stages of mitosis and meiosis, they will remember and use the skills involved in thinking through problems and arriving at decisions consistent with their values. Learning what we value and why," she goes on, "is a lifelong process. That our values are

often in conflict is a way of life."

The Importance of Classroom Process Implicit in all these teachers' efforts to make room in their teaching of science for questions of values and social responsibility are changes in classroom methods. For at least one teacher, Jim Trierweiler, a twenty-year veteran of the Carlisle, Massachusetts, public schools, classroom process has been the primary focus in addressing ELNA objectives. Although Trierweiler has introduced socially relevant topics into his lessons, his main effort has been to implement cooperative learning in his classes and to make it the principal arena for interaction and learning among his junior high students. Under this system, students work in heterogeneous groups of four; leadership is shared in each group, but individuals are accountable for what they learn. When Trierweiler assigns worksheets or problems, each group studies the material together or searches jointly for a solution to the problems it poses until all agree and are satisfied. When the time comes for grading, individuals earn their own grades for tests and other written assignments, but the individual scores are also totaled to yield a team score for current performance and improvement.2 Trierweiler is fond of assigning problems that prod his students to

Page 188 think through the societal implications of scientific and technological advances. For example, in a unit on astronomy he might pose a three-part problem for cooperative groups to investigate: (1) What are the advantages of building a space station? (2) What are the dangers or disadvantages of doing so? and (3) Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? He finds that when students grapple with such problems in groups they not only think through the problems more fully, but they learn to articulate and defend their positions, to listen to others' views, and to see issues from multiple perspectives. Steve Saslow of the Catlin-Gabel School in Portland, Oregon, also emphasizes classroom practice and feels it is as important as content in determining what students learn. For the last several years he has been teaching nuclear issues to his junior high classes, each time starting from the questions his students generate. Asking kids, "What do you want to learn?" he spends the first few days of the unit listening, taking notes, gathering resources, and creating lessons to fit students' questions. He describes this as a "simple but frightening way to teach, because you have to do it cold every time." According to the ground rules Saslow sets up, questions can come either from groups or individuals, and ambiguous questions are perfectly acceptable. Though he has tried the technique in high school classes, he finds it works best at the junior high level where students are less reluctant to admit that they really want to know something. He saves all their questions in their exact words so that both he and they can look back at them at the close of the unit or later in the year. Other teachers cited more incidental but equally significant ways that working on ELNA project goals has prompted them to rethink or alter their practice. Ted Hall notes that because students are highly grade-oriented, it's important to incorporate the emphasis on social issues into the structure of the grading system for a course. If not, students might get the message that thinking about social implications is an afterthought, or peripheral to the real meat of the curriculum. Thus, his tests, quizzes, and written assignments include questions that ask students to reflect on social issues and provide evidence or ethical arguments to back up their points of view.

Emerging Guidelines

Science education in the United States may be at a nadir, but the teachers featured in this chapter give cause for hope. Out of instinct, commitment, and skill, they are already striving to do what the Educational Testing Service called for in a recent report on how American

Page 189 students fare in science: they are helping students to become "doers and thinkers," not just passive learners. Moreover, they are reshaping their own role from that of an authoritarian transmitter of a body of knowledge presented as if it could not be questioned to that of a guide and coach for students who are actively engaged in their own learning. Their experience suggests some guidelines for others who want to make science both meatier and more meaningful:

•

Continue to teach your subject matter; then help students to use the facts, concepts, and skills they have learned to inform their opinions. Don't settle for knee-jerk reactions to social questions. Insist that students back up their arguments and consider several perspectives.

•

Start early in the elementary grades to establish that science is relevant to what students are familiar with and care about. If this connection is made, they will be encouraged to learn more and thus be more inclined to continue taking science in high school. Some evidence suggests that the emphasis on real-world applications and the implications of scientific knowledge may appeal especially to girls and minority students, two groups at particular risk for dropping out of science as soon as requirements are fulfilled.

•

Introduce more inquiry-based activities into the curriculum. These teachers feel most science labs now are too cookbook-ish. Students know the results before they do the experiments. They need more challenging assignments that require them to think about problems the world confronts and apply their scientific knowledge to a search for solutions.

•

Encourage students to work cooperatively in groups. This combats the notion that the teacher and textbook are the only authorities and helps students to see that in science, as in other domains, knowledge is socially constructed. Persuading each other, explaining to each other, and listening to each other, students experience the active give-and-take that's necessary for real learning.

•

Find ways to narrow the chasm between students and professional scientists or other problem-solvers who use scientific information. Bring scientists or town planners into the classroom and have students collect data they can use to solve real problems—even something as apparently trivial as measuring the water waste from a leaky faucet and using the data to convince the maintenance department to fix the faucet.3

•

Enlist the support of principals, department chairpeople, and curriculum specialists, who will have to handle any objections from skeptical teachers, parents, and district-level administrators. As a teacher, be articulate and confident about the rationale for what you are doing and communicate it clearly. Doubters will not be impressed by pie-in-the-sky

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objectives but will find it hard to argue with an approach that not only teaches science but also prepares students to think critically and be good citizens. •

Support colleagues who are trying to break out of traditional chalk-and-talk methods of teaching. Most are more comfortable with this approach because that's the way they were taught themselves and that is the way they were trained to teach. Change requires time to talk to one another, to reflect on the effort, and to search out new methods and materials. In other words, teachers who are learning new things need much the same kind of guidance, support, and safe environment that their students do.

•

Realize that the pressure of the curriculum comes not only from the testing industry, the school board, and the superintendent but from yourself as well. It's tempting sometimes to buy into the security of the curriculum: teaching atomic structure in the right week of the right grade can make you feel you're doing your job well. But the obsession with coverage often sacrifices depth for breadth and thus produces shallow learning. Remembering that the pressure is created and sustained by individuals, as well as by institutional structures, helps us realize that we can choose to change. As one teacher pointed out, lack-of social relevance might be grounds for dropping a topic from the curriculum.

By themselves, such guidelines will not turn a science education program around, or perhaps even give an individual teacher sufficient fodder to rewite her lesson plan for Monday morning. Nevertheless, they suggest new ways of thinking and new ways of behaving in the classroom that have large implications for the teaching and learning of science in our schools. Too often, classrooms are organized to make participants feel that teachers possess a defined body of knowledge which they must transmit to students. Such an approach to education can ignore what students already know and believe about their world. It also fosters an adversarial relationship in which teachers, must reluctantly cajole or coerce students into learning material that seems remote from their daily concerns. Instead, teachers like those whose work is described in this chapter are seeking to make science a domain of lively inquiry and an arena for the shared exploration of societal problems that affect everyone.

Notes 1. For an account of this experiment, see Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment—A Tragedy of Race and Medicine by James H. Jones (New York: Free Press, 1981). Page 191

2. For a further discussion of Jim Trierweiler's work, see "Cooperative Learning: Making the Transition" by Sarah Pirtle in this volume, pp. 000-000. 3. For an interesting example of how students can collaborate with scientists, investigate the Kids Network, a National Geographic Society project operated from the Technical Education Research Centers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The project takes advantage of telecommunications technology linking 200 sites around the country, where students gather local data on acid rain and enter it in a national database that is used by

professional scientists working toward solutions to the acid rain problem. Page 192

12 Math and Social Responsibility SHELDON BERMAN The cheering and clapping make me pause at the classroom door. Eight twenty-five in the morning and these suburban sixth graders are exuberant. Fred Gross, their teacher, puts another problem on the board. In pairs, the students pore over their "tills"—cards sectioned off into five columns to help them understand different number bases—as they move plastic chips from column to column. In moments hands fly into the air, accompanied by urgent "oohs" and ''aahs." Fred waits for everyone to finish, grinning at the excitement and relishing the moment of suspense. "Okay, Jamie and Monica, what did you get?" "Three in the green column." As Jamie speaks, Fred makes symbolic circles in a till drawn on the board. "Two in the red column," Jamie continues, "none in the yellow column, and one in the brown column." "Did anyone get anything different?" Fred pauses and no one moves. Then the room erupts in cheers and applause, not just at their own success but also to acknowledge their collective success as a group. "Well, everyone got the same answer," Fred smiles. "Let's check it." Mandy, a small, affectionate girl who seems more like a fourth grader than a sixth grader, notices me at the side of the room and calls out, "Hi, Shelley!" A staccato of "Hi, Shelleys" follows until Fred says, "Okay, all together now." The room resounds in a chorus of "Hi, Shelley!" It is impossible to be unobtrusive in this class. Waving my hello, I move to a lab table on the other side of the room and pull out my tape recorder and a fresh piece of paper. This is my third visit to Fred's class and I am just beginning to appreciate the fine weave of techniques he uses to help his students develop a sense of social responsibility—a sense of personal investment in the well-being of the world. Number facts and computation skills are generally the goals of math teaching, gradually making way for problem solving as students

Page 193 progress through the grades. Neither the math texts nor the curriculum objectives mention social responsibility. Even problems which could easily include information on social issues do not. Rate problems examine which car will get to its destination first rather than when the depletion of the ozone might become threatening to our survival. Students draw pie charts of how fictitious children spend their allowance rather than how the Federal Government spends the public's tax dollars. Students may learn to make change, balance a checkbook, or fill in a tax form but, in general, school math is removed from social and political reality—a reality that all too often manipulates statistics, charts, and graphs to give authority to political argument. Math is presented as a logical system, a set of mind games and puzzles in

which the right answer, and even the right method, are calming neutral absolutes in an otherwise ambiguous and valueladen world. I am here in this classroom because Fred refuses to settle for this definition of math teaching. Fred puts another problem on the board, this time a more difficult one in base five. Each pair of students works intently; one member counts while the other trades off five of one color chip for one of the next higher color. Everyone is completely absorbed in the task. Fred roams through the "maze" of double-seated tables. I have never seen a room arranged in quite the same way this one is. Tables set in a sideways U form the front corners of the room, whereas tables set in an L mark out the back corners. Scattered in the middle are several isolated tables. "I didn't want kids in straight rows," Fred tells me later. "This way all the kids have a decent way to look at the board and not feel like someone is behind them all the time or going to hit them in the back of the head—there is a tendency to do that at this age, you know. It is also a way for me not lose kids, because I can take many different trails walking through and by them, and they can too. It allows for mobility." Fred leans over one pair after another, observing silently each group's methods. Hands begin to pop into the air. "Okay, what answers did you get?" This time there are several different answers. Fred picks one and says, "Tracy, walk me through your thinking on this one." As Tracy begins to explain her thinking, it is evident that her pair has made a simple multiplication error. The other students provide the correction. "You had the right idea, Tracy," Fred reassures her. He moves to the next answer, but the two students have already checked their work and corrected their answer. "When I was walking around I saw people using a number of different methods to get the answer besides the one I suggested. Joe, you were using an interesting one. Would you like to explain it?" Joe

Page 194 describes what seems to be a far easier method than the one Fred had described several days earlier. Sandra, a bright and energetic girl who sits in the back on the girls' side of the room, yells out that she has a third method. Leaping from her seat she goes to the board and demonstrates it to the class. Fred stands off to the side in recognition of her authority. "Hey, I use that method too!" some of the students call out. "This is great," Fred says. "What is important is that you figured out a method that works for you. It is great to see how creative you were in thinking up ways that seemed to make sense to you. I noticed that Amy has invented a tool to make it much easier for her to figure out the exponential numbers." Fred pauses, looking down at Amy's chart of the products of 1 to 10 squared, cubed, and so on up to the fifth power. This spares her the trouble of multiplying out each exponent for each problem. Almost in unison the class calls out, "What did she do?" "I'll let you ask Amy later. For homework I want you to create two of your own problems that we can do as a class." Instead of groans at the assignment, I can feel the students' anticipation at challenging each other with their problems. With an expression that suggests an idea for stumping the class, a boy in the back corner asks, "Mr. Gross, can you have a base one-and-a-half?" "I don't know, I'll have to think about that."

"Mr. Gross, can you have a base one?" another boy asks. "I don't think so, but I'll check. Good questions! Looks like I have some research to do myself. Okay, see you tomorrow." Picking up their backpacks or dufflebags, which are a standard appendage for these Lincoln youths, they shuffle out the door. Their energy level still reflects the unself-consciousness of elementary school students, but their public appearance is taking on the coolness of the seventh and eighth graders. Although the content of this math class seems standard, the atmosphere is strikingly different. "I believe that schools should be bastions for generating and exploring ideas," Fred explains later. "You don't get discussions in most math classes, but we have discussions here all the time about possibilities and 'how comes.' Mathematics is too often 'how to do' rather than 'how come.' I don't want my students to accept simple answers but to learn to consider all the possibilities. Kids need to know that there is more than one way to figure something out." "See, if I am trying to help people become socially responsible, then the first thing I need to do is to make them think , rather than just accepting my authority," Fred continues. "And to do that they need the freedom and safety to make mistakes, to check out new ideas, to ask any question that comes to mind. I celebrate the questions. I let kids

Page 195 know when they've asked a good question. They know that they can ask any kind of question and they won't be put down for it—they don't have to be afraid of feeling stupid." Fred tries to stretch their thinking even about the meaning of math itself. Like a philosopher, he sees math as a language, a symbolic map of reality. "We teach the grammer but rarely the literature—the meaning—of mathematics," he explains. He teaches fractions not merely so that students can understand the practical applications in baking a cake or the systemic applications within the number system, but so that they can "better understand the relationship of parts to the whole, and the assumptions that can be made about the whole from an examination of the parts." The symbolism of finding a common denominator so that two fractions, or two people, can work together is not lost on Fred or his students. Even other number bases, this week's lesson, has a larger symbolic meaning. "Our society is filled with different bases," he tells me after class. "Base ten is our money. Base twelve is our measurement. Our measurement of liquids is in base two and four. There are sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours to a day. What we are really getting to is different points of reference. We need to understand the point of reference in order to understand what the information means, and that's the skill I'm teaching. You can take that on a personal level too—like two different points of view. A classic case is how some people misled the public in understanding Soviet military spending. We judged their expenditure on the basis of what we would have spent rather than on what it cost in Soviet terms. We used our point of reference rather than theirs and came out with an estimate twice what it should have been." However, although he stretches the minds of his students, Fred is sensitive to their level of cognitive development. Well versed in the developmental literature of the middle school movement, he knows that he is nurturing a shift from concrete to abstract thinking and that this places special demands on his efforts. His primary concern is to preserve their self-esteem and help them develop a positive self-concept. "I think there's a math phobia in schools, particularly around middle-school age. They're very concrete thinkers and they're used to memorizing. All of a sudden you throw X s and Y s at them, multiple possibilities, and more than one way to get to a right answer. It's very abstract. Many of them are not prepared to do this. So when you start making them think in prealgebraic and algebraic terms, they get lost. Their grades start going down and there's a lot of anxiety for both parents and kids. I think that's unfortunate. We're not taking into consideration the development of kids. Mathematics can be really fun and exciting and empowering if taught right. I may not get through all the

Page 196 curriculum, but I give them a solid foundation and build on their confidence." Every concept has it "manipulable," like the till for number bases, to give it concrete form, and each is tied to activities since "this age group has too much energy to sit still." Moreover, every concept is applied in the practical world: students play a world economy game to understand how negative numbers are used to represent deficits, or a polling exercise to understand percentages. "Empowerment—giving them a sense of their own power and ability—is a word that means a lot to me," Fred explains. "It is a mission of mine to empower kids about mathematics.'' A large crowd is gathering in the entryway outside Fred's room. There are shouts. Fred glances over and then, concerned, hurries toward the crowd. But the group disperses as quickly as it appeared. As they walk toward Fred's room, several students are patting James, a lanky African-American seventh grader who buses to Lincoln from Boston every morning, on the back. "James, what happened?" asks Fred. "Nothing much. Just a minor scuffle, Mr. Gross." "James broke it up, Mr. Gross," adds Tom, another seventh grader. "Thanks for doing that, James." All three enter the classroom. Fred moves to the front corner of the room and waits for the seventh graders to take their seats. One wouldn't expect fights among these upper-middle-class suburban students. Thoughtfully, he looks down at the floor and taps his foot. He picks up his grade book and briskly takes attendance, and then says, "You know, I am concerned about the amount of fighting that is going on among the seventh graders. Yesterday Randy and Steve were in a fight that left Randy with four stitches across his nose. People are getting hurt and people's feelings are getting hurt. What is going on?" His tone is one of genuine concern. "Last year it was worse, Mr. Gross. Well, maybe not worse, but more intense," defends Michael, one of the crowd that has been involved in some of the fights. "That's a lie!" James replies. "Saying that isn't okay, James." Fred stops James short. "It is all right to differ, but do it in a respectful way." The discussion quickly moves to a recounting of yesterday's events. Skillfully Fred tones down the exaggerations and tries to pull the students back to talking about the more general reason for all the fights; but they can't stop talking about Steve's inability to control his temper. Giving in to their energy, Fred asks, "Has anyone tried to talk to him?"

Page 197 "No one can talk to Steve, Mr. Gross," offers one student. "He takes his problems out on everyone around him," a girl says bitterly. "He has gotten better this year. He used to use sticks and stones," adds Michael.

"I'm glad you said that," Fred says, evidently trying to diffuse the bitterness these students feel at being the brunt of Steve's anger. "Maybe something happened to him in the last week that really bothered him. You've been in a situation where something was bothering you and it made you edgy. You didn't feel like yourself." "Even if it was that something was bothering him, it wasn't right," argues a girl in the front of the class. Fred nods. "He certainly needs to suffer the consequences for his actions but he may need people to understand him and help him out as well." "You know who has gotten a lot better this year, Mr. Gross, is David." Everyone turns to look at a thin tall boy slouched in a seat in the back corner of the room. "He used to be in fights all the time last year and he hasn't been in one this year that I know of." The rest of the class echoes this perception. David blushes and looks down at the table. "That's great. Has anyone told that to David?" Fred asks. There is a moment's silence. "Well, if someone is doing something you appreciate, you should let him know." Fred waits as many of the students tell David how much easier it is to be around him this year. Later, at lunch, David's social worker will find us to tell us that David has been "beaming'' at being noticed and acknowledged. Seeing an opportunity to refocus the discussion, Fred asks, "My concern is that this is two fights in two days. Why do you think that's happening?" "Most fights start out of people, you know, bossing them around," says James. "Some people think they can boss others around, and you can't let yourself be bossed around so you fight." "People consider you a wimp, too, if you don't fight. You get a reputation and have to live up to it." "Yah, people fight to be on top." "So the way to be better is to be tougher?" asks Fred, more rhetorically than literally. "No," James quickly replies. "See, if you have a lot of friends you don't get into fights. People who don't have friends end up being picked on by everyone. They're like scapegoats." "Yeah, and you get picked on if you're small, too," a short boy in the back of the room says quietly.

Page 198 Fred, whose small stature disguises his wrestling training, smiles wryly and says, "I understand how that feels." The class laughs with him as he turns and writes "INTIMIDATION" on the board. The discussion moves to put-downs and play wrestling or, as they call it, "cracking" and "capping," and then to play and cruelty, status and power, peer pressure and reputations, and finally to the sense of dignity that comes from avoiding and preventing fights. The students eagerly and freely discuss their social habits and social pressures, clearly enjoying the chance to get these subjects out in the open and to consider alternatives they previously thought were unavailable to them. "One of the things I focus on in my teaching is helping them get along with each other," Fred tells me later. "Sometimes, like today, its talking about fights or stealing or things like that. Most of the time it's just helping them listen to each other's ideas and work together in groups. I use many of my activities as a way for them to learn how to work with someone else as well as to learn the material. To be socially responsible they need to begin to see beyond

themselves, to cooperate with others, and to feel a part of a community. Kids this age don't have a well-developed sense of self, they suffer from tunnel vision. They see only themselves in the world. They don't make many connections. And they certainly don't make connections with peers other than in a superficial way. Part of my task is to give them peripheral vision so they see one another. "At the beginning of the year, I had the sixth graders work in groups to do a scale drawing of a building," Fred continues. "One group failed miserably and several groups worked moderately well. The group that failed miserably could not come together and sort out the work so that people could do it and succeed. Instead they fell apart and argued a lot. We talked about it—about the things that made the group work and the kinds of things that made it difficult. That group, and the whole class in fact, has come a long way in learning how to deal with one another." But working with one another is only one of the social skills Fred teaches. He places special importance on helping students feel a part of the school community. He encourages them to participate in decision making in his classroom and in the school at large. "I believe that kids should have input into their education," he says. "For instance, my eighth grade math group asked for Friday review days so that they could catch up and review to make sure they understood what they had been studying. I thought it was a good idea and I thought they were sincere and not just trying to get out of work. After we discussed it, we settled on review days every other Friday. I hope my kids in all my classes feel the freedom to make a suggestion. Investment is missing

Page 199 in classes. Investment is what happens with involvement. It is something I am trying to nurture in all my classes but it needs to happen in the school as a whole, too." "This is where I think I am a maverick," Fred says with a degree of pride. "I convinced the grade chairperson that the best way for the sixth grade to have an overnight away is for them to have a committee and to make decisions along with us. The kids applied for it and we chose eight kids and it is very exciting. That's the way to get kids involved. I think you have to start small. The world's a pretty big place and you have to start small and build from there." Fred himself is a model of what he tries to encourage. Although this is only his first year in the system, he is actively involved in the school community. He serves on a committee to plan for the transition of the fifth grade into the middle school. He and other members of the math department offer a course to parents on some of the innovative techniques they are using to teach math. He is an advisor to the Student Council and encourages the Council to become involved in the important school issues, not just in the social decisions. And he is the coordinator of his system's participation in a twelve-school-district collaborative effort to make social responsibility a core element of the K-12 curriculum. "Why do I do all this?" Fred asks. "I learned in my last job that to be respected you had to get involved and be part of committees. But more than that, being involved in your school system as an educator is important. I am not only a classroom teacher, but a member of a community." Fred's eighth grade science class enters, throwing their packs and dufflebags underneath the tables. They are significantly older and bigger in more ways than just size. Clothes are more precisely disarrayed. Some of the boys look like they just walked off the set of Breakfast Club —jackets on, collars up. Fred had described them as a somber group, burdened by a new-found self-consciousness, holding themselves aloof from the sixth and seventh graders, yet fearful of the coming separation from the comfort of their elite status in this small community. Fred talks with several students about their homework as the others settle into their own conversations. Walking to the front of the room, Fred notices their relaxed attitude. "Okay, who's ready to work?" Seeing no response, he calls out the names of several students in an even, businesslike tone. "I want you to have paper, pencils, and books out. Let's go." Some students begin to shuffle through their packs and dufflebags, the others continue their conversations. "Everyone freeze!" The room hushes, all attention is now focused at Fred. "It is taking much too long to

get started. It's

Page 200 already five minutes into class." Fred's words are a clear reprimand but his tone is even. Within moments the class is focused. "Okay, I was observing your groups yesterday as you were working on developing a U.S. energy policy for the next one hundred years. There were a lot of good ideas and some strange ones as well. I'd like you to think more carefully about it today. You need to think through what you might need to know in order to make a good decision about energy policy. Let's think about that for a moment. In general, what do you think someone has to do before he or she can make a good decision?" As the students call out their answers, Fred records them on the board: "Study the different ideas." "Know all the facts." "Compare facts." "Look at all the pros and cons of each idea." ''Try things out." "Gather other opinions." "Think about it." "Think about the consequences of each idea, and know how it affects you and others." "Great list. When you go into your groups, all of these should go into your thinking about your energy policy." The class divides into their groups of three and four. Cooperation is more difficult here. Social patterns and concerns about image interfere with group process. Fred moves from group to group, coaxing, coaching, challenging. The class has spent the past several weeks working in pairs designing and then building steam generators. Each pair presented their invention to the class and was recorded on videotape for future viewing. Moving from the hands-on activity to a research mode has been difficult. Fred had introduced this unit with a lecture on energy sources—the only lecture I saw him give in my seven visits to his classes—and now I wonder if they would be more invested if he had simply started by asking them what they knew about our energy problems and what concerns they had. Fred moves to a group of three students in the rear of the room who appear stuck. Marcus, who has not been able to stay in his seat for more than five minutes at a time, asks, "Mr. Gross, why think about an energy policy one hundred years from now? We won't be around." "But your children will," Fred says, watching Marcus to see if there is more to it than that. "No, we won't survive. We won't even be around in the year 2000." Fred looks intently at Marcus. "Why?" Before Marcus can respond, Mary blurts out, "Nuclear war." Adrea, the third member of the group, adds, "Depletion of the ozone." "No, that's not it," Marcus says. "Just, like, an accident or something." Marcus's issue seems to be more the inability to imagine the

Page 201 future than any specific fear of nuclear war or other planetary disaster. Fred looks at the clock and realizes that the five minutes left in the period is insufficient for what may need to be a lengthy and delicate discussion. He pulls the group back to its task but makes a mental note to find a later opportunity to discuss these potential threats. "I know it's hard thinking about the future," he tells them, "but imagine that we will be

around in a hundred years, and imagine that you can create the best energy policy possible so that people then will look back and thank you." Even when the teacher carefully plans for them, discussions of nuclear war, threats to the environment, or political and social injustice are not easy. More often than not, such topics arise unexpectedly in the course of a regular classroom activity when the teacher is unprepared to deal with them. Students may react with passion, fear, helplessness, cynicism, denial, or genuine indifference. How can a teacher respond appropriately to the needs of some students without inappropriately raising anxiety in others? How much information should students be given, and at what age? What of teachers' own political beliefs, and how can they avoid propagandizing students? It is not an easy balance. In these discussions, teachers need to hear childrens' concerns, affirm the importance in their caring about the world, and, at the same time, encourage hopefulness. "I need to be better at this kind of discussion," Fred admits later. "Many of these kids are already concerned about the world and need to talk." On my final visit, I get Fred's permission to hold a discussion with his sixth grade class. For several years I have been exploring the development of social consciousness, and I sense that this group of energetic young people may have something interesting to say. They settle down and look at me with friendly, expectant faces, and I ask if they have any concerns about the way the world is today. I am unprepared for the shock of the rapid, almost matter-of-fact litany of problems that they call out in response to my question: the danger of nuclear war, conventional war, racism, countries competing to be the best, cancer, AIDS, pollution, the destruction of the Brazilian rain forests, the Greenhouse effect, the depletion of the ozone layer, the lack of thinking ahead, competition ("always having to be better than someone else"), consumerism ("always wanting more"), cruelty to animals, extinction of animal species, the ''I don't care" attitude people have, being "macho," not seeing the consequences of our actions on others and on the world. Sixth graders. Sixth graders with knowledge and depth I little expected. "We used to be more insular," Fred says, "but now we are world citizens. The world is a lot smaller now, and we're a lot more interdependent, for our needs and our survival. We have to learn a lot more

Page 202 about collaboration. Kids will have to think in more global terms now." But where do these concerns fit in a math curriculum? Fred believes that numbers are a powerful political and social tool and that students can learn to understand and question the statistics they are confronted with. "They are going to be faced with numbers all the time. They are going to be given news reports filled with statistics. They are going to have numbers thrown at them in both commercial and political advertising. Numbers can be manipulated in several different ways so that they communicate what you want them to. At this age kids can begin to understand how statistics are put together." For the past several years, Fred has been experimenting with new ways to develop this mathematical literacy. Fred has his students pay attention to statistics in the news. One section of the bulletin board—"Math in the News"—contains articles as varied as "Retirement Money Problems" from Woman's Day , "Redstone Seeks to Increase Stake to 25% in Viacom" from the Boston Globe , an article on South Africa detailing the percents of exports and imports and the impact of a potential boycott from U.S. News and World Report , "How Digital Says It Avoided Federal Taxes" from the Globe , and a wide selection of advertisements. Fred integrates discussions of elections and polls into his unit on percents. He integrates into the unit on decimals a world economy game he invented that deals with surpluses and deficits. To teach graphing he has his students simulate a debate between the fishing and oil industry about off-shore drilling on Georges Bank, cropping their graphs and adjusting the x and y axes to dramatize their arguments. "It was interesting how the world economy game brought all these elements of social responsibility together," Fred comments. "Math content, working relationships among groups, awareness of how math is used, awareness of world

issues, the interrelatedness of so many factors. At the end of the game—after they had almost gone to war with each other over one country hoarding the wealth—I asked them how this game fits in with mathematics. They said, 'We needed the math to understand the information and to make decisions.' I thought it was interesting that they started to see a relationship between math and how it might be useful to them. I need to teach more of how the math they get in my classroom relates to society as a whole, particularly current events. Right now we're in a trade war with Japan. Some of my seventh graders understand that and understand why it happened." Fred says he would do more of this kind of teaching if he had the time to create the lessons and if the curriculum provided the space to implement them. For the past two years he has been working with a group of math and social studies teachers who, like him, are members of Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR). They are developing an innovative

Page 203 curriculum that can be integrated into middle-school mathematics classes. Entitled The Power of Numbers , this curriculum focuses on the development of mathematics skills through the examination of ways charts, graphs, and statistics are used in debates about political issues. "I would like my students not to be afraid of numbers," Fred says. "I want them to be able to say, 'Wait a minute, is that true? What is the base they are using?'" As students grow to understand social and political issues, Fred believes they need opportunities to experience themselves in socially responsible roles. In his previous position at a private middle school, he organized an internship program in which students could both observe firsthand what people did in their lives, and then contribute in some small way. He continues to look for opportunities for his students to take responsibility. "In general, these kids are responsible to themselves. They bring their work in on time. They bring the necessary tools to class. They don't destroy or damage things. Yet, although they're very self-centered, they're at the prime age for involving themselves in socially responsible activities. They just need the guidance and leadership of adults to get started. I started a canned food drive—it had never been done in this school. I took three kids from Lincoln down to see the shelter when we delivered the food. They were blown away by what they saw in that soup kitchen. We need more of that. "Kids need to know that they have a purpose in society that's meaningful. Whether it's a canned food drive, or raising money for a cause, or considering people's feelings when making a decision on student council, or waiting your turn while someone else is speaking, or standing up when someone is laughing at someone else and saying, 'That's not nice, that's insensitive,' we need to get kids more involved in society. The more involved they are the more invested they will be; the more invested, the more productive, constructive, and caring they are going to be." "The next one is rough," Fred tells me before the eighth grade math class enters. "It's tracked as the low-ability math group, and most of them are the METCO kids—the kids bused in from Boston. As if the black kids from Boston don't already feel singled out enough in this school, now they get to feel labeled as dummies as well. It's a setup and they know it. We've talked about it a couple of times in class and I'm making sure it won't happen next year, but it's a constant reminder of their difference in social status and it doesn't make it any easier to teach them math." Tyrone, a tall, stooped fourteen year old, saunters into class, looks around, and walks out again. Students begin filing in, joking with each

Page 204 other. Jarrell, a very tall boy who carries himself with pride and authority, takes a seat at the center table directly in front of the blackboard. He quickly becomes the center of conversation. Tyrone walks in again and sits at the table behind Jarrell. He looks around until he is sure he has the attention of the group and then asks, "Mr. Gross, do you got

rats in your house?" "No," Fred responds as he finishes writing in his attendance book. "Roaches?" "No." "We got 'em both. Roaches even bigger than the rats." The class laughs. In spite of the patience and encouragement Fred tirelessly provides, the anger and resignation of these students is evident. It is difficult to direct their attention to the task of simplifying equations. "This class is a struggle," Fred tells me after class, "but I made a commitment to them early on. I spend a good deal of time being a cheerleader. They came in unempowered, lacking confidence, and having low self-esteem. They've come a long way in believing in their ability to do some math well but the tracking makes it much more difficult." The issues of lower achievement scores for African-American students and the lack of acceptance of Boston students into suburban settings have just begun to surface in the communities participating in the METCO program. Lincoln, with twenty percent of its student body from Boston, is particularly pressed by these issues. "It's a one-way street," Fred points out. "The expectation is that you've got to come out to us, to do what is out here. People don't understand what it's like to grow up in Boston, to get up at 6:00 A.M. and be on a bus by 6:30 for an hour, and then to get off the bus in such a different kind of environment. There are no METCO parents on the School Committee. All meetings and events take place at the school, not in Boston. Teachers are not required to go into Boston to meet METCO parents. Some teachers have stereotyped views of Boston students and lower expectations for them. There's rarely any acknowledgement of or time spent on understanding the communities from which these students come." In the next year Fred will make some inroads into this problem. Through his advocacy the math department will move to heterogeneously grouped classes and begin experimenting with cooperative learning. Fred will participate in a systemwide initiative to address lower achievement scores through programs enhancing students' self-esteem and raising teacher expectations. None of these initiatives will be problem free however. Fear of lower achievement for students from Lincoln and of diverting so much attention to Boston students will provoke

Page 205 community resistance and limit these efforts. Although the immediate situation will improve for these students, it will remain a challenge for the school district and community. "I always feel I could be a better teacher," Fred tells me in the last interview. "I could be more concise and clear in my explanations. I could have more involving activities on each concept. I could be more consistent—I'm terrible with paper work. I struggle with not having enough time to develop materials the way I want. Teaching is so timeconsuming that I don't have time to do the developing I want to do. I feel kids get cheated, but I hope not too much. I struggle with, well, am I doing the right thing? Is what I am saying to you right now really coming out in my teaching? I often feel so isolated, so alone. How do I convince other teachers and parents to look at education differently and get involved in education differently? Education is so constrained. I would love to know if other people agree with me and what we can do to change the school structure and what it produces. My superintendent and department head are supportive but I wonder if people say, 'There goes Fred Gross yakkin' away again.' I'm really grateful I have ESR as a support group."

Fred cares. He takes his vision for social change into the classroom. He looks around him and finds entry points for change within the existing framework. He pushes the boundaries of teaching into new terrain, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. Fred has already stretched his teaching, his curriculum, and his school structure; and still he assumes a personal responsibility for doing more. Sometimes it is exhilarating, as when his sixth grade math class works as a unit to understand different number bases. Sometimes it is discouraging, as when his eighth grade math class of METCO students is not able to attend to his math lessons because they are preoccupied with issues of class and exclusion. But through it all, Fred is still in the process of discovering how to teach social responsibility. His notion of what it means to teach social responsibility is a broad one. It encompasses the thinking and decisionmaking skills that give students the ability to consider different perspectives and deal with complex issues. It gives students the social skills that help them work cooperatively and resolve their differences. It brings the real social and political world into the everyday life of the classroom and gives the curriculum a larger sense of meaning for young people. It empowers students by developing their confidence in their abilities to think and participate in classroom and school communities. But for Fred teaching social responsibility is more than what he teaches, it is a way of being with children and a way of participating in the school community that models care and commitment.

Page 206 In spite of the support he has from his administration, Fred feels the institutional constraints that come from an educational tradition of texts divorced from the real world, demanding curriculum requirements, and authoritarian ways of being with children. Yet, Fred has found the courage to act on his convictions. He is cutting a path that blends developing students' academic competence while at the same time nurturing a sense of social responsibility. He is finding new ways of being with and teaching young people that empower them to make a difference in the world.

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13 The Arts: Imagining a Better World DAVID M. STUART How does global consciousness influence teachers working with the arts? Does a desire to awaken in children an awareness of the dangers and opportunities posed by global interdependence demand particular practices or subject matter? I found answers to these questions in visits to the classrooms of various teachers in the arts and at a conference on nuclear age education where teachers discussed their approaches to work with the arts. Some teachers see their work as addressed primarily to individual children's need to express the conflicts they feel in their lives. Others understand their work more broadly in terms of cultural transformation and the development of global awareness. Whether they focus primarily on the individual or on the culture, the artists and educators I interviewed share a sense of the transformative power of the human imagination. Their conviction that the imagination, nurtured in the arts, can envision change gives these teachers a powerful sense of hope for the renewal of the world.

Music: Rambo, a Karate Kick, and the Firebird Jill Borenstein, who teaches music to elementary grade children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, does not explicitly

address social issues at all. Rather, she uses music to surface and process feelings and inner conflict, to expose students to different cultures, and to help them transcend themselves through a call to universal human experience in music and story. Jill described her work to a group of teachers. "I begin by asking," she said, "What's your idea about what you would like to be today?" or, "Can you show me in the way that you dance how you would look if you were feeling sad?" Then I will improvise some music at the piano to go with the feeling or character that they are expressing.

Page 208 Sometimes they come in and ask me if they can pretend to be this or pretend to be that. I ask them if they know some music or a song that goes with their idea. "Sometimes when I have them all on stage together, I get them to move around and around until they find their own little space. Not an isolated space but one where they can turn around and move without hurting anybody. Then each person gets a chance to dramatize what he or she would like to be and I try to improvise appropriate music or I ask them if there is any particular song that they like." "What do you do if one of the children says that he wants to be Rambo?" asked a skeptical teacher listening to Jill's presentation. Like many other teachers, she was concerned by the way in which children's lives are shaped by the popular culture's promotion of violence. "I say that I have a prejudice against that," Jill replied. "I am surprised," the skeptic countered sarcastically. "I thought you were inviting your students to express themselves. I have a real problem when a four year old points his pretend gun at me and says, 'Bang, you're dead.'" "I think your question is important," Jill said. "Let me explain how I deal with it. I ask them if they are feeling angry and invite them to show me how that feels. Then I improvise some music for them and ask them whether it is angry enough or do they want something even stronger. I haven't actually had anybody ask me if he could be Rambo. I do get boys who want to show me their karate, and I encourage them to show me their moves as long as they do not involve anybody else." A drama teacher who worked with seventh graders listened sympathetically to Jill's presentation. She reported an inclination, particularly among boys, to resort to violence in acting out scenes. She didn't find this surprising since drama exercises are frequently structured around the efforts of two or more actors to achieve objectives that bring them into conflict. She allows boys to wrestle as long as they make sure that no one gets hurt. She also works to help them recognize that they will not be able to resolve the dramatic problem of the scene in this way. She urges her students to look for other capabilities in their character to address the conflict in the scene. Another technique this teacher reported using successfully was the use of stylized actions that allowed students to project violence without actually engaging in it. Jill recognized this as a technique she used when choreographing the Nutcracker Suite , where the soldiers and the mice do battle with one another. "The boys definitely wanted to have a good fight. We gave them swords and had them direct clear and obvious blows at each other, but without actually striking. There was no question that there was a fight. This was an example of stylized action." These suggestions

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for how to deal with expressions of violence seemed to satisfy the skeptical teacher. Jill stressed her belief in the emotionally transforming power of music and noted that she taught all her students the round of the seventeenth century composer, Henry Purcell:

You merry minstrels, sweet music enjoy; Oh, music doth hatred and malice destroy. We sing so sweetly we drive away care, And with our hum we banish despair. Then hale, sweet son of heavenly sound; No pleasure like music on earth can be found. Harmony is a central goal and metaphor for Jill's work. "It is not an accident," she says, "that kids working together in my class with a common intention don't create cacophony. They create one sound that is pleasing to the ear or, if not pleasing, at least it suggests some tonality, some organization. A sound very different from noise on the street or everybody just talking at once." Harmony transcends the sound that each individual makes, but at the same time is constituted out of individual expressions. Jill stressed, however, that conflict and tension, which are intrinsic to music, are necessary preludes to transformation and harmony. She described choreographing the Bach chorale, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," as one of a group of pieces chosen from different cultures appropriate to a Thanksgiving celebration. "This chorale has two parts to it. One is a very slow, hymn-like melody. The other is in triple meter and is much more a weaving and dancing melody. The children representing the slow melody were dressed in one color and the children representing the dancing melody were in another color. The purpose was to suggest that harvest or Thanksgiving celebrations, which are part of cultures all over the world, express two human emotions. The slow melody symbolized the more solemn feelings of grace and gratitude that one has for the food that allows one simply to survive. The dancelike melody showed the other side of the holiday, the expression of joy in dance and celebration." Music can depict the realities of a community in their full range—some painful, some hopeful. "It is very important," said Jill, "for the kids to understand that the realities they see cannot be explained away. They cannot escape these realities through drugs or through the over-simplifications that they see on television where the bad guy gets blown away." Jill contrasted the oversimplications of popular television culture with some of the classic fairy tales. She introduces her students to the

Page 210 traditional Russian tale of the Firebird through Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite . In this story Prince Ivan travels across the land in search of the beautiful Princess Vasilissa, who is destined to be his bride. One morning, he awakes to music so beautiful he believes he is in heaven. Above him in a tree that bears golden apples, he sees the magnificent and elusive Firebird, whose name derives from its practice of bathing in fire and rising renewed from the ashes. He captures the coveted bird, a symbol of freedom and majesty. The Firebird pleads for release, singing a song of infinite beauty. If the prince will free her she offers to come to his aid whenever he is in need. As a token of her promise, she gives him one of her golden feathers. He releases the bird, who disappears in an instant. As the prince travels on his way, he comes upon thirteen princesses dancing in the forest. The most beautiful of them is the Princess Vasilissa. He falls deeply in love with her. She warns him that the forest and the princesses have been enchanted by the evil wizard, Kostchei the Deathless. His palace is inhabited by monsters, headless ogres, witches, and demons. Should the prince follow the princess he too will be caught in the spell. Kostchei will suck his blood, deprive him of his soul and transform him into a hideous monster, enslaved for eternal service.

Prince Ivan uses the magic feather to call upon the Firebird. When the bird arrives everyone is put into a deep sleep. The Firebird leads the prince and princess to a hollow tree deep in the forest. In the tree there is an egg that contains the spirit of Kostchei the Deathless. By cracking the egg the spell upon the forest is broken. The monsters, captive in Kostchei's spell, regain their human form, their souls, and their freedom. Prince Ivan and Princess Vasilissa fulfill their destiny of love and benevolent rule. In one version of the Firebird story Prince Ivan has to slice the Firebird open with a golden sword in order to retrieve the egg in which Kostchei's death is found. The prince has great difficulty striking the bird he cherishes, even though the Firebird provides the golden sword, reveals the secret of Kostchei's mortality, and urges the prince to act. The prince does slay the Firebird, release Kostchei's death and free the land from the evil enchantment. (The Firebird, of course, rises again from the flames of his death.) In this profund version of the story, evil is intertwined with goodness and majesty, and beauty with death; the hero must kill what he prizes to reach a greater prize, the death of evil. Jill contrasted the deep insight of this telling of the Firebird tale with the good-guy-bad-guy oversimplifications of our popular culture. The Firebird is an archetype, one of many that appear in classic tales and myths, symbolizing one or another aspect of human experience.

Page 211 Archetypes have resonance for us even when they appear in stories from outside our culture, and Jill finds them a particularly valuable way to introduce students to cultures that are not their own. For her, too, the Firebird is an important figure because it suggests the transformative power of art and the artist's ability to offer a deeper understanding of reality. Art has the power to wake a student's soul from the deadening enchantments of our violent culture and to kindle hope and beauty out of the flames of violence and oppression that often seem to consume the world. Art, like the golden sword of the Firebird story, can cut through taken for granted assumptions about reality; cut through prevailing myths like the superiority of one culture over another or the necessity of nuclear weapons.

Story: An Invitation to Participation Miriam Kronish, a principal from Needham, Massachusetts, whose background is in the elementary classroom, is more explicit than Jill Borenstein in the way she uses the arts to raise social issues with her students and to involve them in social action. For instance, she has used The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss as a springboard to discussions of conflict. In this rhyming story a conflict develops between the Yooks and the Zooks about whether it is better to butter one's bread with the butter side up or the butter side down. As the hostilities escalate over this critical question of culture, each side builds more and more elaborate weapons to impress upon their adversary their determination to defend their way of life against those who differ from them. In the final pages the entire populations of both the Yooks and Zooks are underground while their leaders confront each other with the largest and most destructive weapons in their arsenals. At this moment one small Yook emerges from the underground shelter to intervene in the conflict. With the leaders precariously poised atop a wall and one small Yook choosing to challenge them the book ends with a blank page. This blank page invites students to offer their response for resolving the ridiculous yet seemingly intractable conflict between the Yooks and Zooks. For Miriam Kronish the simple device of leaving the story openended embodies the essence of using the arts to educate for social responsibility: Students are called upon to participate. Using their imaginations they are asked to picture a future in which their own actions might help to bring peace to a divided world. For Miriam, the arts enable children to imagine that things could be different. They empower students to try to change things that they feel should be different.

Page 212 She described four learning styles that she characterizes according to the questions they ask about the object of study. The first asks ''Why is this the way it is?" focusing on reasoning. The second asks "What is this?" calling for analysis. The third asks "How does this work?" demanding concrete, hands-on learning. The fourth asks "What if this were different?" requiring an imaginative process to envision the outcome of change. For Miriam the third and fourth styles are characteristic of learning through the arts. They stimulate those parts of the brain related to spontaneity and nonverbal, imaging processes. The arts contribute to wholistic, concrete, tangible learning. They deepen and accentuate the learning process. Her understanding of the role of the arts has led Miriam to advocate integrating the arts into the elementary curriculum. She has written a book about the process, "Integrated Arts in the Elementary Classroom." (National Education Association, 1989, Washington, D.C.) Making the arts a part of the curriculum requires a commitment throughout a school community. It takes the collective effort on the part of teachers, administrators, and parents. It requires finding extra resources and reaching into the community to find parents and others who are willing to help. Asked about teachers who may not have a facility for the arts or an inclination to use them, she explains that an extra commitment is required to encourage them. She uses school department resources to send teachers to a program called Exceptionally Ready where they learn various techniques and projects that bring the arts into the classroom. She also provides them with time during the work day to develop their material. She teams up teachers who are less experienced in the arts with colleagues who can help them get started and lend support. Finally, Miriam notes, when a school uses the arts widely in its curriculum, they become part of the culture of the school. Teachers who are not using them have to answer to parents who wonder why their children are not getting as much exposure to the arts as other students. At the Hillside School in Needham, where Miriam is the principal, the arts seem to touch every hall, every room, and, presumably, every student. At the front desk the visitor is greeted by a poster adorned with an array of handprints in bright colors. Spread out over two large tables in the first hall the visitor finds the Needham community constructed out of cardboard, cotton, twigs, leaves, an an astounding collection of found objects. Like the elaborate, miniature worlds displayed in store windows at Christmas, this model invites the observer into fantasy, but it reflects the real world, too, with depictions of the dump and a homeless shelter. While it was clear to me from the beginning that the arts are central to this school, it became evident that the creation of

Page 213 a sense of community is at the core of what goes on here. Miriam describes her approach to fostering an inspired community at the Hillside School as thematic. She and her teachers have used the sky as a unifying theme in all of the curricula at the school. To a visitor, the wide open sky seems to have touched the school at its heart, reinforcing a sense of infinite possibility in the imagination of each child. The handprints on the front desk are a sign of Miriam Kronish's faith that each child will have a hand in writing part of the unfinished story of our suffering earth, a story as open and full of possibility as the vast sky.

Drama: Community on Stage The teachers of two drama programs I visited use plays created by students to bring to life students' concerns about violence and power.

The Loon and Heron Theater Company The sound in the aging, brick lunchroom of the Joyce Kilmer School in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, was deafening. A large group of children was standing on the small platforms that passed for a stage, talking and jostling each other. Several students at the center of the room were playing various percussion instruments and a saxophone, in a way that evoked the first meeting of an aspiring heavy-metal rock band. Others were painting a pattern of bricks on large sheets of cardboard laid out on the floor. A number of students were racing around the room, apparently at random. "Let me explain how the program works," said the education director for the Loon and Heron Theater Company, aware that I found the scene chaotic. "The urban-suburban program brings two classes from different schools together once a week. In this case they are fourth grades. They meet either here or at the Baker School in Brookline, where the other class comes from. There are eight staff people who work in four pairs on acting, on the music, on the sets, and on costumes and props. The costume and prop people are meeting upstairs and the musicians are working in a room down the hall. You can talk to each group yourself." A shrill voice pierced the din. "Okay, let's get started here." If the decibel level fell at all it was not by much. Again the voice sounded like a brass instrument at the opening of a piece of march music: "Can we have quiet?" Other adult voices supported the request. "We're going to do scene one." The shrill voice was less shrill, its tone more conducive to meaningful communication. I knew from a discussion

Page 214 with Mark Smith, executive director of the Loon and Heron Theater, that the theme of the play was nonviolence and the lives of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Mohandas K. Gandhi. The first scene opened on a playground with a group of boys playing basketball, while a disgruntled girl explained to her friends that she should be allowed to play. With the support of her friends, she asked the boys to include her. They chose instead to ridicule her for presuming that she could play with them. She responded angrily and was preparing to strike the most vocal and obnoxious of the boys when the action froze. The scene changed, and she and the others found themselves in the "peaceful zone." Here they encountered Gandhi, Parks, and King, who asked the girl to consider the consequences of resorting to violence. They urged her to try a nonviolent approach to resolving her conflict with the boys. In the peaceful zone the children relived the stories of Gandhi, Parks, and King. In the final scene, they found themselves back on the playground where the girl opted not to punch the arrogant boy. The boys recognized the pain their exclusion had caused and chose instead to include girls in their game. The two teachers whose classes were involved in the project, Cheryl Clausen and Mary Barret, described how the play was developed. The students and the staff of the project created the story and script out of discussions among the students in which they aired their feelings about issues of concern to them. One student had been excluded on the playground and many others identified with her experience, so it became the starting point for the play. In discussing exclusion the children identified Martin Luther King as someone who had worked against it. The theme of nonviolence emerged from the discussion of King and led to Gandhi. The students chose these elements as the subject of their play. The acting staff worked the material into a usable script, often using the students' own words as well as their ideas about what should happen. The students titled the play "Hand in Hand." This process of beginning with open discussions among students about their concerns is much like the method that Jill Borenstein used when she asked students "who they wanted to be today?" This freeranging and apparently undirected

discussion can often appear to be pointless but it works to create an atmosphere that encourages children to express their ideas and builds a feeling of participation and cooperation among all the students. Participation and exclusion are core issues for students that theater provides an opportunity to address directly—and redress—since the process of creating a play builds a powerful feeling of community among all who participate, whether as actors, dancers, costumers, or stage hands.

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The Freelance Players Another theater program for young people, The Freelance Players, an after-school program that produces original musical theater performed by twelve to sixteen year olds, recently mounted a play that addresses the same issues of individual dissent and participation and the use of power. In the opening scene of "Power Play" students arrive for their after-school theater group. A big logo on the wall lets the audience know that these are members of the Freelance Players. The players portray themselves. The Freelance Players discuss the day's events at school: the various successes and failures, the nascent romances and other goings-on typical of the lives of students. A number of clear characters emerge: the ardent political activist, the self-satisfied glamor girl, the most-wanted boy, the overachiever. In this process a number of cliqués become evident. As they mill around, waiting for the whole group to gather, an actor secretly seated in the audience stands up and in a loud voice tells his dumbfounded mother, also portrayed by an actor, that it was a dumb idea to come to this dumb play and he's leaving. His mortified mother responds by demanding that he stay, sit down, and stop embarrassing her. As he argues with his mother, and the audience watches in bewilderment, he gets support from the actors on stage and is invited to join them, to offer his criticism of the play. He mounts the stage and enters the play. The players question the newcomer about his discontent and explain that the value of the play is that they can express their feelings by acting them out. They offer him a chance to try. He sets up a scene in which he depicts what he hates about school. The good students get all the attention and he gets blamed for everything that goes wrong. He portrays the teacher who shouts at him and treats him with disdain. The players assure the newcomer that it's not like that in the theater group, everybody is treated with respect and, though there are different roles, each person is valued equally because the play only works as a whole. Every part is important. The players go about constructing their world through a process of casting and scripting as the play within the play unfolds. As they begin work on the script that they were preparing before the new player arrived they find a role for him. His attitude to the play changes now that he has become part of it. As the play progresses, the new player pushes for an expanded role and manages to get his way. First he becomes the manager of a rock star. Then he parlays the success of the rock star into a political career for himself and eventually manages to get himself elected president of the nation. At this point a large red rendition

Page 216 of the "button" is hung around his neck, representing the position of ultimate power he has attained. At this point he is faced with much discontent and opposition. His press secretary, played by one of he youngest actors, slips up and exposes him to criticism. He responds by attacking her in the the same tone and using the exact words that he had used in the earlier scene to characterize what he hated about the way his teacher treated him. The spell of the play within the play is broken as he hears himself. The other players recognize that something has gone wrong. The spirit of the group has been violated by the ambitions of the newcomer. At this point the players decline to continue with the script. They shed their costumes and begin to disperse quietly, leaving the boy by himself with his symbol of ultimate power, the button, hanging around his neck. He sits dejected and alone, aware that he has embodied the very things he resented in

his teacher. A few of the players stop to assure him that he is still welcome in the group, but that at the next rehearsal they will have to begin again to redo the script and that the play will not work if one person needs to dominate. Now accepted, he goes off with them as a friend. In this story the actors portray themselves. They depict the theater group as a community where the power they encounter in their world can be transformed by improvisation, by creating a new script. The ambition to power is exposed by the group decision not to play the script any longer because vulnerable people are being hurt. The theater company becomes a metaphor for a world in which people can reject the domination of the powerful in favor of a cooperative, participatory process designed to build community. Theater is an excellent way to help students reflect on their own experience. In playing themselves, students can give concrete form to issues that interest them. They can depict both sides of a conflict, requiring them to imagine the feelings and motivations of others who see the world differently. More generally, theater can be used to explore social issues in a curriculum or bring history to life. Although it takes time out of a curriculum and requires extra energy to involve the students in a play, teachers do it because students always remember the experience and they develop a feeling of community from working together, whether as actors or stagehands, toward the shared goal of performance.

Conclusion The use of the arts in educating for social responsibility can be as simple as the storytelling of Miriam Kronish or as elaborate and expensive

Page 217 as the extensive urban-suburban program of the Loon and Heron Theater. Teachers can have goals as modest as helping a single student express his or her conflicts or as ambitious as transforming the culture of an entire school or nation. Some teachers, like Jill Borenstein, use imaginative methods to surface and process feelings and inner conflict, to expose students to different cultures, and to help them transcend themselves through a call to universal human experience in music and story. Other teachers, like Miriam Kronish and the staff of the two theater groups, explicitly use the arts to open questions about nuclear age issues, such as the use of power, exclusion and domination, the potential of nonviolence and social protest, and the possibility of building community. Whatever techniques these teachers use, and whatever resources they have available, their work reflects a conviction that the human imagination, nurtured through the arts, offers reason to hope for a future in which inclusion and participation allow the conflicts that afflict our world to be resolved without resort to force.

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14 Educating for Democracy and Community: Toward the Transformation of Power in Our Schools1 SETH KREISBERG It's like stepping out of this school. When I come out of this classroom it's

almost like I'm in another school because the way he teaches is so different from other teachers. It's good. —Student in Keith Grove's tenth grade Geometry class at Dover-Sherborn High School. In all other classes, the teacher is in charge, you come in, sit down, you can't be late and you have to sit and listen to a teacher lecture and take notes but in this class it's like everybody teaches everybody else1 — Student describing Keith Grove's Math class. Two low red brick buildings and their adjacent green playing fields nestle in the lush New England woods of Dover, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. In this pastoral setting 430 high-school students, in grades 9 through 12, attend classes at Dover-Sherborn High School. Keith Grove's classroom is a second-floor room. Save for a couple of posters on one wall and in the corner harboring Keith's desk, the room is bare. It is one of those crisply bright early spring days. Nesting birds can be heard in the distance. A group of tenth graders sit in a tight U formation, facing the blackboard. Keith sits with his Geometry students in the U. A student facilitator asks for a volunteer to go to the board to begin solving one of the homework problems. Leaving her book behind, the volunteer approaches the board. Another student reads the problem to the class and explains her understanding of the question. The student at the board writes down the important information and begins to work on the problem, thinking out loud about the assumptions of the problem and the theorems and process that may be used to solve it while

Page 219 writing each step on the board. When the student at the board begins to have difficulty, other students raise their hands to offer suggestions. Another student goes to the board to show how he would proceed. When he has made his point clearly, he returns to his chair. The first student finishes the problem and returns to her seat. Another student summarizes the problem-solving strategy used and then asks if everyone in the class understands how the problem was solved before moving on to the next. The path to this and the other Mathematics classes Keith teaches has been a long, exciting and sometimes painful one of growth and experimentation. After six years of teaching high school mathematics, Keith was increasingly dissatisfied with his teaching:

. . . what I used to do is go in with a lesson plan and I felt that it was up to me to keep the class on track, to keep control, to motivate students. It felt like there were all of them and then there was me . . . and I knew what was best, and it was up to me to get that across to the students in some way. . . . And it was boring . . . the students said it was boring for them as well. It was boring for me . . . I heard myself talk a lot. Upon close examination of his own classroom and of his students' educational experiences he came to see that:

Students, occupying the bottom rung of the hierarchical ladder, often are not taught to listen, are not asked to develop their own voices, are not taught to respect the perspectives of others, and are not asked to think critically about classroom issues or to participate in classroom decisions that affect their lives (Grove, 1989, p. 10) Keith felt the need to change his approach to teaching. While he knew he was a competent and caring teacher, he did

not feel that his work as a teacher was connected directly enough with his concern for the future of the world. He also knew that his teaching was failing to fully engage his students and himself. Underlying Keith's pedagogical transformation was his growing understanding of two central themes of our times: the importance of individuals' participation in devisions that affect their lives and global interdependence. He came to believe that he should and could be doing much more to empower his students. If he could help them develop their voices through the creation of a truly democratic classroom, he could best prepare them to be effective future citizens in a democracy. His thinking was congruent with the point of view of two educators, G. Grambs and L. Carr:

Page 220 That democracy can, and should, be operative in education is based on the assumption that citizenship in a democracy demands practical, longstanding training in how to function in such a system. To deny students this training is to restrict their personal growth and thus to limit the resources of society&. . . . Democracy is learned behavior. We are not born with it. And many do not learn it at all, or learn it only partially. Citizenship is so much more than knowing how a bill becomes a law, or voting on Election Day. Democracy is an array of behaviors which regulate how we behave in the privacy of our homes, in our neighborhood, on the job, and in public places. It is only when young people in school experience over and over again, in thousands of individual incidents, the ways in which democracy works and feels that they are going to be able to act democratically. (Grambs and Carr, p. 73) At its core, democracy is a set of social institutions and social relationships in which people participate in the decisions that affect their lives. Democratic participation calls for a specific range of skills, dispositions, and behaviors that allow people to engage in dialogue, disagreement, and decision making as equals. Learning to govern oneself as an equal member of a community also means developing the ability to be both assertive and open to others. It requires people to have the capacity to listen to others with care and sensitivity. Democratic citizens must be willing and able to work with others cooperatively and to integrate different viewpoints into their own positions. They must be firm enough to stand up and be heard, yet flexible and secure enough to continue growing and changing. Keith began to explore approaches to teaching that could nurture the skills and attitudes on which a democratic community depends. He helped students to develop concrete skills in cooperation, critical thinking, and group problem solving, as well as the willingness and ability to take responsibility for themselves and for others. In particular, Keith came to focus on the dynamics of power and the structure of social relationships in his classroom. These have been boldly described by Theodore Sizer in his analysis of the American high school, Horace's Compromise . Sizer carries us through an average day in the life of the average high school adolescent, outlining what he calls a "systemized conveyor belt" process where the "clock is king." In Sizer's school day, fictional but all too familiar, a student named mark shuffles from one class to another, reading aloud, memorizing, responding repetitively to factual questions, and listening to teachers talking. Mark's school life is controlled by the various adults in whose rooms he sits for fifty minutes at a time. Mark is rarely encouraged to think for himself, and he has little

Page 221 control over his experience in the classroom or the school. Sizer argues that the situation today in schools has worsened: authoritarian teaching pervades education in the United States. The nature of authoritarian education is most fundamentally defined by the dynamics of power in the classroom. Power in the authoritarian classroom is power over —a relationship of inequality in which an individual or group (i.e., teachers and administrators) has the ability to control the behavior, thoughts, and values of others (i.e., students).

Power over manifests itself in the lives of students in two central ways: in students' relationships with teachers and administrators and in their relationship to the knowledge they are asked to consume. The result is an educational system that preaches democracy but models and teaches the opposite. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator, accurately describes the dynamics of pedagogical relationships characterized by power over . He points out the "teacher/student contradiction" which is based on relationships of domination and submission. In these relationships:

The teacher teaches and the students are taught; the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; the teacher talks and the students are disciplined; the teacher chooses the content and the students who were not consulted adapt to it. (Freire, p. 59) Students are alienated from the material studied: it is not grounded in their experience. It is someone else's knowledge about what someone else thinks is important. Nevertheless, it is presented as truth, to be stored by the students and regurgitated on demand. Students experience knowledge as imposed from above, absorbed through an act of submission. Schools, says Sizer, are cultivating docility. He quotes Charles Silberman, who wrote in the early 1970s about docility, powerlessness, and schooling:

Docility is not only encouraged but frequently demanded. . . . The tragedy is that the great majority of students do not rebel; they accept the stultifying rules, the lack of privacy, the authoritarianism, the abuse of power—indeed virtually every aspect of school life—as The Way Things Are. (Sizer, p. 56) Authoritarian teaching encourages passivity, conformity, obedience, acquiescence, and unquestioning acceptance of authority. It is antidemocratic and undermines the most basic ideas and principles embedded in our political system.

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Creating a Democratic Classroom Keith was uncomfortable with his authoritarian role. He sensed that his teaching methods cultivated behaviors and values contrary to his democratic ideals. This realization led him gradually to transform his approach to teaching Mathematics. Undergirding the new approach he forged are four key themes: community, shared decision making, cooperative learning, and individual and group problem solving. From the first day of school Keith addresses these themes. He works hard to build a foundation for the kind of learning he hopes to nurture, gradually and patiently helping students develop the skills necessary to function successfully in a democratic classroom. While he has clear goals for the class, he remains flexible, attentive to pacing, and responsive to particular individuals' and groups' needs. First, he asks his students to sit in a circle, which is both symbolic and functional. The circle symbolizes his desire to change power relationships in the classroom. Functionally, the physical structure of a circle encourages students to interact as equals with one another as well as with the teacher, in contrast with the traditional placement of the teacher at the head of the classroom. But he goes much further in challenging the traditional dynamics of the classroom:

We make rules together. We make decisions regarding discipline together. We decide on evaluation techniques. . . . It's hard to decide curriculum together—I tell them that some things are outside of my control or their control. It's an Algebra class so we are studying Algebra. But as far as possible I allow

them to determine the speed with which we cover the material, the length of the homework assignment, and things like that. He begins by clearly explaining his goals for the class: the central reason the group is together is to learn Mathematics. To do this he believes that it is essential for them to develop a sense of community and the ability to work cooperatively, because the best results in learning come about when individuals and groups use all of the resources available within the group as well as those from outside it. He offers his definition of a classroom community:

A group . . . which values and appreciates differences of opinion, whose members share a commitment to common purposes and procedures, whose members are responsible for their own learning and for the learning of everyone in the class, which operates Page 223 on consensus, which sees itself as a group of leaders and which deals with conflict constructively. (Grove, p. 10) He is clear that he would like them to be able to take increasing responsibility for their own learning. For this to happen it is crucial that everyone in the class develop mutual respect and trust because they will be teaching one another. These attitudes are just as important to students' growth and learning as the specific skills and knowledge of Algebra or Geometry. He stresses the importance of a relaxed atmosphere where everyone feels valued and able to try new ways of teaching and learning. Finally, he emphasizes that Math class should also be fun. Next, Keith engages the class in a series of community-building exercises, which he continues throughout the semester. His goal is to help students get to know one another as individuals with different priorities, needs, and values. He begins by involving the class in an exercise to help everyone learn the names of all group members. He then has students interview one another and present their interviewee to the group as a whole. Another community-building activity he uses is the ''Mystery Game" in which he presents each member of the class with a piece of information necessary to solve a mystery which can only be solved with full group participation and careful listening. These activities begin to forge a community out of a group of individuals, creating a feeling of familiarity and comfort and offering practice in the skills necessary for supportive groups to function effectively. Keith also makes it clear that the students will help determine the rules:

In the beginning of the year we brainstormed what one rule would be necessary in order for all of us to achieve our objectives. We decided that only one person may talk at a time. There was consensus on that the first day. While agreeing on this rule is an important first step, both for the content of the decision and the process by which it was reached, following through is not easy and takes time. Keith helps students to develop the patience and mutual respect necessary to adhere to the rule consistently. Increasingly, he relies on cooperative learning techniques to help students develop the sense of connection and the ability to work together that are so important to the process he is seeking to create. He begins with frequent small-group work, building gradually from pairs to trios to groups of four or five. Throughout he reinforces the goals, skills, and attitudes necessary for effective group work.

Page 224 In order to model his belief in the importance of human connection to the learning process, Keith begins every class by endeavoring to greet each student personally. He begins each class with a brief "connections" period in which students

engage in discussions about events and issues from their lives inside or outside of school. One student reflected on the value of this sharing time for her, "I realized that everyone else had the same problems that I did, and somehow it helped to make the day better." Keith also involves students in developing a grading system for the course. Students develop innovative and sometimes very complex grading systems. For instance:

In one of the classes they decided on bonus incentives for the group to work towards. If every member of the group mastered the material and completed all their homework, bonus points would be earned. The method of grading is different from class to class, but what most classes have in common is that students are asked to offer self- and class-evaluations on a regular basis, usually every other week, and to participate in giving themselves a grade, usually through some form of negotiation with Keith. His goal has always been to move toward a point where students not only participate in developing rules and grading methods, but also share responsibility for facilitating class activities. Generally, however, he takes responsibility for introducing new material, standing at the blackboard as he asks questions, presents new ideas, explores the connections between ideas, develops an understanding of the concepts behind the procedures, and walks through some sample problems, emphasizing key points. It is in the reviewing of problems and material after new ideas have been introduced and initially worked with that Keith sees the greatest opportunity to involve students in leading class problem-solving sessions and working together as a student-led group. He begins by modeling how to facilitate group problem solving of mathematical problems. By the middle of the year students begin to facilitate classes on their own:

In the latter part of the year I would ask if someone wanted to facilitate the class, which means that they would be in charge of keeping us on track, summarizing ideas, deciding how many problems to do, and involving as many students as possible. They were facilitating the conversations around the problems. Page 225 Keith described the kinds of interactions among students that occur in this kind of classroom:

The kids would ask their questions and the student would put problems on the board and they would help each other. The student at the board would get stuck, and turn and say, 'I'm stuck; can someone help me?' And someone would say, 'Yeah, do this: divide both sides by the same number." Oh yeah,' the student at the board would say, and they would go on. A few times it was touching to me, kids would get up there and would get halfway through and say, 'I can't do it' and head back to their seats and the class would say, 'No, no, no, stay at the board, we all have trouble with problems. This is the way you learn.' Keith continues to play a key role in guiding and centering the class. For instance, students rely on him to monitor, advise, and maintain the pace of the course. They ask when he wants to present a new topic. When they are actually facilitating classes, one of his key roles is to act as a resource for the facilitator. For example, one day when a student was facilitating a problem-solving session it became apparent that the class would not achieve its goals for the day. With about five minutes left Keith approached the facilitator. This student suggested to Keith some ways they might adjust to these new circumstances. Keith agreed and offered some advice on how to wrap up the class. The student then

completed her class facilitation.2 When the class is facilitating its own problem solving, Keith also serves as a resource for the content to be learned. As the class works through problems, he encourages them to tap their own knowledge and expertise before they turn to him. However, if the group becomes truly stuck, he is available. Students describe how "first he will try to see if someone in the class can figure it out for themselves, then if not, he will guide us toward it. He will give us hints on how to solve it. It is good because it will get everybody thinking, and giving ideas." For the most part, students understand the process Keith is encouraging and, in fact, they often do find that they can solve a problem among themselves, without his help. The level of trust, mutual respect, and risk-taking that occurs in some of Keith's classes is striking, as is evident in this incident in an Algebra class of ten students:

At the beginning of class one student asked who was going to facilitate. Another student suggested that somebody new should give it a try. One student responded to this by suggesting that a particular student take on the role . . . who hadn't done so before. That student Page 226 believed that he still wasn't ready and said so. Finally another student said, "I think you'd make a great facilitator; why don't you give it a try?" The student who had been reluctant agreed to go ahead and try. I then watched the best facilitator I had the opportunity of seeing during my observations. (Yardley, p. 6) Keith discusses why he feels these kinds of classroom dynamics are so important:

I think that kind of working together and that way of being connected to each other is something that doesn't take place when the teacher is in charge, when the teacher has the answers, when it is up to the teacher to help each individual student to understand. Even in a class where it is safe and students can ask anything they want of the teacher, there is something lacking that is important. The word that can be used is community, but it goes deeper. It gets into human connectedness. I think the structure of a class like this where the teacher isn't in charge and doesn't have all of the power allows more power . . . between students and between teacher and students . . . the issues that come up are so much more real. They are the issues human beings deal with all the time, issues of trust and respect and support. Keith attains many of his goals. The nature of his authority shifts from the authority of position or prescribed role—authority based on institutionally sanctioned and reinforced control over students—to the authority of expertise. Students come to respect and listen to him not so much because they must, but because they value what he knows and what he has experienced. This occurs, first, because he includes students in the decision-making and teaching process, and second, because of the quality of the relationship he has worked to establish with his students and among his students. Keith respects their voices and their expertise, and they in turn respect his. This is a relationship of mutuality. While teachers will always have power over their students as long as they work in traditional public schools, Keith's classroom points to the possibility of mediating this power and creating another basis for teacher-student relationships and learning. One student eloquently reflected on his experience of Keith's classroom, suggesting the considerable benefits of restructured authority:

I don't know when I am going to have to know that when two parallel lines are cut by a transversal, then its opposite interior angles are congruent. Or that a triangle's angles add up to one Page 227 hundred and eighty degrees. But I think I have learned more than just Math in Math class. I have learned how to cooperate with other people. How to present a statement to a group of people and ask for their advice. I have learned how to work with other people in a community where everyone is equal—how to disagree with someone's statement and not argue using words like stupid, dumb, and idiot. For me Math taught me how to be in charge of a group of people and respect them and hope they respect you. Math was the first class where people actually listened to what I, Steve Shea, had to say. What Steve Shea learned in Keith's class was the skills and attitudes basic to functioning effectively and responsibly in a democracy.

"Rough Edges" in a Democratic Classroom Successful though Keith has been in creating a more democratic classroom, he has found the process full of rough edges. He recalls three female students who fought the process for the entire year, accusing him of "group therapy." He remembers their comments:

•

"What is this? I thought you were the teacher?"

•

"You are supposed to be in charge. That is what you are paid for."

•

"We learn best from you."

•

"It's too confusing."

•

"I learn best when the class is organized and quiet. We change the rules too often."

The typical high school student has spent his or her life in classrooms in which teachers make most, if not all, of the important decisions and are the source of all academically important information. He or she comes to accept this as the way schools are. Most adapt and learn to play the game. Thus, there is no reason to expect all, or even most, students to respond favorably or immediately to teaching that offers them a share of decision-making power. Keith's students expressed their feelings very honestly and their responses indicated wide initial discomfort. "I don't think anyone here liked it at first," one student reported. Another said, "We were used to a really structured Math class. Last year my teacher—I really liked him—went through things step by step." At least some students, however, were also aware that much of their initial discomfort had more to do with their own socialization in schools than with something inherently wrong with Keith's

Page 228 approach. One said, "Usually it's like, you ask the question and the teacher answers, so that's why it didn't work at first.

In here we were all just waiting for him to answer, no one wanted to jump in because we weren't supposed to. That was the teacher's job." However, the students quoted above, who were so uncomfortable at the beginning of the year, talked about the class very differently at the end. When asked how they felt in Keith's class in comparison with other classes they responded that they were "more comfortable," and "not as tense." One noted that: "If you ask questions in other classes, a lot of times the teacher will look down on you and say, 'You're stupid.' They don't say that, but you know you can kind of see it in their faces, but in here no question is ever stupid." Given students' initial expectations of teachers and their past experiences in school, how should a teacher committed to a democratic classroom deal with the paradoxical situation in which students may choose to give up their voices to the teacher, choose to have a teacher-controlled and teacher-centered class? Keith faced precisely this issue in two of his classes. In one:

There were five girls in the class who really wanted me to teach, come in and present the problems and so forth, and although we stayed in circles and the evaluation model was slightly different from a traditional class, the class as a whole was very traditional and I presented the problems. In other words, Keith modified his approach to meet their wish. However, just after the decision was made to abandon the collaborative problem-solving model in this class, he suggested that perhaps they might want to work in groups of two or three following a cooperative learning model. "Just at the point where they said they wanted me to make all the decisions," he reported, "I said well here is something we can try, and every kid in there said we'll try it, and they loved it." What Keith initially perceived as a student rebellion against democratic teaching in general was, in fact, a rebellion against his imposition of a particular teaching method that he preferred. He realized the problem:

It had something to do with my process, with what I have to learn about including them. They felt somehow not heard and I think it was because the way I wanted to run the class wasn't working and I think I kept forcing it rather than saying, "Tell me what is not working. How would you like to see it?" I needed to have more of a blend of what I wanted and what they wanted. I needed to meet them where they were. Page 229 The lesson Keith took away from this experience was not that some students are not capable of democratic learning and teaching, but rather that he must work harder to listen to them and include them:

Perhaps it had to do with levels of responsibility, levels of maturity, or different ways of thinking and learning on their parts. I think kids do learn differently at different stages of development. I think I didn't listen hard enough and include them in the process enough. As soon as I did that this one class turned around immediately and we hit on a cooperative method that I thought was highly successful and they really seemed to enjoy it. As a result of this experience Keith has integrated small group cooperative learning much more centrally into his teaching.

Innovation and Personal Risk Teachers committed to creating a learning environment of the kind Keith created face an array of obstacles: skeptical

administrators and cynical colleagues, as well as students adapted to teacher-dominated classrooms. For Keith, changing his approach to teaching took courage. A Math teacher for six years, he had honed his skills. Reflecting back, he notes that: "It was a little boring but it was real secure." The first year he tried his new approach was often a lonely and risky time:

I felt like I was taking risks all year long . . . it was hard, it was a struggle . . . I was very vulnerable, both inside and outside the classroom. Within his classroom Keith experienced the personal doubt and questioning that always comes whenever an individual explores new territory or challenges the status quo:

. . . the feeling of taking risks, those three or four girls in one class rolling their eyes saying, "This is stupid. We don't want to talk about it." It really affected me. I had to think about the class from their perspective. . . . It was real hard. I felt vulnerable in the sense that maybe we weren't covering enough material, maybe they weren't learning enough Math. I couldn't tell. I had never done this before. Was it okay to cover only three problems instead of six with the kids at the board helping each other? Did they learn as much that way? Or would it Page 230 have been better for me to cover six problems so that they could ask me questions and I could answer them real clearly and share my thinking with them? Then I realized that those weren't my only goals any more, that my goals had expanded. But maybe I was still doing them a disservice, in terms of SATS, getting them into college, competition with other students. In particular Keith felt vulnerable as he worked to share power in the classroom with his students:

When you give up your role as sole authority in the classroom and try to share it, the relationships in the class change. There is a connection between caring about these kids, giving them a chance to make decisions and trusting them. When they show, in small or large ways, that they aren't up to it, and they make mistakes and they violate trust, it hurts. It makes me feel taken advantage of. It makes me think, maybe these kids need more structure. Maybe I'm doing them a disservice by letting them draw the lines too much and creating their own boundaries, their own limits. Keith's self-questioning was intense and emotional. However, it was an essential component of a creative and ultimately positive experience:

I have never felt better about my teaching and the fact that I was a teacher. I never felt that I was more creative in the classroom. Whether I was highly successful or not is open to debate, but in the past I just never felt that my thinking was going into the creation of something or the exploration of something as I did this year. More painful and less positive an experience for Keith was the vulnerability he felt in relation to his colleagues and his students' parents, who only heard of his teaching second-hand:

My vulnerability outside of the classroom was even harder to deal with. What would happen is that guidance counselors, other teachers, the head of the Math department, and administrators would hear bits and pieces of what I was doing and it sounded bizarre to them—for example, they would hear that the students were teaching themselves. In fact, five students in one particular class went to their guidance counselors and said, "He's not teaching. We're teaching ourselves."

Page 231 Then three of these students' parents called the guidance counselor, who went to the head of the Math department, telling him that students were saying Keith was not teaching. The head of the Math department then came to Keith. While she assured him that she didn't believe the accusations, she still was unclear as to what he was doing and asked him to explain his methods. Keith was hurt that the guidance counselor had not come to him first to discuss the students' and parents' concerns. He felt isolated and misunderstood by his colleagues:

I felt we weren't working together as a team, and I got a little paranoid and I started to see myself as outside the system because I was trying to do something different. . . . Keith met with the head of the Math department, the guidance counselor and the principal. This led to long discussions with colleagues about the goals and methods that were guiding his teaching. He wrote his principal a letter explaining what he was trying to do and inviting him to visit a class:

He was fairly impressed. He said some positive things afterward. He suggested some ideas and suggested that we should talk more about this way of teaching. As word spread to other teachers of what Keith was doing, colleagues began to express interest:

I had some private conversations with teachers, where they heard some stuff and we started sharing ideas and they said, "Oh, that sounds interesting." Just a little reinforcement here and there. And after getting through the rough times with those people it felt better, the connections were stronger. We understood our philosophies of education and our goals a little better, and we could trust each other a little more because we had a chance to work on some of these issues and actually have some discussions that had some substance to them. Since these first-year experiences Keith has also reached out more directly to parents, communicating regularly, inviting their participation and keeping them informed about their child's successes and progress. Throughout this process Keith relied on a network outside of school that was grounded in his participation in ESR and the relationships he had developed over a period of years within that organization

Page 232 with like-minded educators who provided him with encouragement and support. These individuals helped Keith conquer his doubts and continue with his work.

However, it was the reactions of his students that most sustained him in his commitment to democratizing his classroom:

There were enough students and enough times when I was touched by what was going on in the classroom, when I sensed a connection between people. The relationships touched me and moved me and I felt they moved the kids, too. His students described the sense of reciprocal respect, mutual trust, and shared responsibility that he has created in their classroom:

•

"He gets everybody involved. . . ."

•

"He will make everybody get their idea out so finally we figure it out and everybody understands it, instead of maybe only five people out of twenty understanding it."

•

"We were used to teachers telling us what to do and he made us realize that we were going to have to be responsible for what we do in the first place."

When asked by Keith what she will remember about the class twenty years from now, one student wrote:

I will remember that one teacher had the faith in us to let us make up the rules. I will know that someone else realized that we were capable of creating something magnificent if given the chance and we were, and we did. Ultimately, it is these kinds of reactions from students that make the risks and the work necessary to create democratic classrooms profoundly worthwhile.

Conclusion: The Movement for a Democratic Classroom Keith Grove's work is innovative but not without precedent. For at least eighty years, since the days of John Dewey, there has been a consistent undercurrent in educational theory in this country arguing that for education to respond most effectively to the interests and needs of both our children and our democratic culture, schools and classrooms

Page 233 must embody democratic values and processes. They must do more than preach about constitutional rights and democratic responsibilities. They must become participatory communities—communities based on the premise that they are created and maintained by students, parents, teachers, and administrators working together and sharing decision making. While this idea has never achieved wide acceptance, it is gaining new momentum as contemporary educators face the limitations of current educational practice—limitations which Theodore Sizer points to in Horace's Compromise and Keith Grove surpasses in his classroom. In a middle school classroom in Harlem in New York City a class discussion on ''Whose country is it?" is led by a husky thirteen-year-old boy who asks questions, acknowledges fellow students wishing to speak and summarizes statements. In a rural fifth grade classroom in eastern Kentucky, students vote to write a history of their community.

Together they write a grant proposal, then secure and manage a grant from the Foxfire Foundation to publish it for local sale. In a rural high school in Sheffield, Massachusetts, student representatives are the majority in regular school Town Meetings with teachers, school secretaries, school custodians, and bus drivers. They participate in making decisions as varied as establishing smoking rules, changing study hall policy, and building speed bumps. Today, students lead discussions, work in cooperative groups, participate in the grading process, monitor their own homework, and establish the rules of the class. In each of these situations the roles of students and teachers contrast dramatically with those traditional and predominant in American classrooms since Europeans built their first schools on the continent. Put simply, these teachers and students have begun to transform the power relationships in their schools and classrooms. They are creating schools and classrooms that give students (and teachers) a greater voice in the decisions that affect their everyday school lives. Together, they are making schools more caring, more mutually respectful, and more democratic. Echoing John Dewey, they are putting into practice a very simple, yet potent idea: that the best way to learn how to participate in a democratic community is to live and learn in a democratic community. In the the process they are creating more supportive learning communities that engage students' minds and hearts. The result is an educational experience that is more meaningful and empowering than the traditional classroom can provide, and one which prepares young people in very basic ways to build and participate in a democratic culture. Keith's work has led him to conclude:

Page 234 I am more convinced than ever that our schools can be democratic communities—places where young people learn about and experience what it means to live in a democracy and to act in socially responsible ways. I have discovered that providing students with opportunities to think critically about issues helps them develop the skills, values, and attitudes necessary for participation in our democracy and in the cooperative resolution of the problems which challenge our world.

Notes 1. This chapter is based, in part, on an article, "Creating a Democratic Classroom—One Teacher's Story," by Seth Kreisberg, Democracy and Education 3 (Winter 1988): 2. 2. This scene is based on an observation reported in an unpublished paper entitled, "An Example of Empowering Students in a Mathematics Classroom" by Dan Yardley (see references).

Bibliography Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed . New York: Continuum: Seabury Press, 1970. Giroux, Henry. Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Grambs, Gene D. and Carr, Larry C. Modern Methods in Secondary Education . New

York: Holt, 1979. Grove, Keith. "Creating Community in the Context of a Democratic Classroom," The ELNA Newsletter . Cambridge, Mass.: Educators for Social Responsibility, 1989. Kreisberg, Seth. Transforming Power: Domination, Empowerment, and Education . Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1992. ———. "Creating a Democratic Classroom," Democracy and Education 3 (Winter, 1988): 2. Macy, Joanna. Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age . Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1982. Miller, Jean Baker. Toward a New Psychology of Women . Boston: Beacon Press, 1976. Sizer, Theodore. Horace's Compromise . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Page 235

Starhawk. Truth or Dare . San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987. Yardley, Dan. "An Example of Empowering Students in a Mathematics Classroom." Unpublished paper. University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1989. Page 236

15 Teaching for Global Responsibility through Student Participation in the Community DALE A. BRYAN Imagine you are teaching about, or class discussion turns to, hunger, homelessness, racism, environmental destruction, or the threat of war. Intentionally or not, you are contributing to the citizenship education of your students. What you choose to say—and not say—conveys messages about how and what a citizen should think and do about these issues. This is true whether you teach civics or social studies, a foreign language, math, science, literature, or even physical education. It is true whether you simply state the facts as you know them, instruct students in civic pride and responsibility, or encourage them to imagine the most utopian possibilities. Teachers are role models of adult citizens whose ideas and information describe and interpret the world. Teachers embody what it means to be a member of the

community, the state, the nation, the planet. Teachers are citizens in action, and they educate students on this level every day. The good citizen has been a traditional concern in teaching for responsible citizenship. Over time this concept has expanded beyond notions of legal and/or political rights, duties, and expectations, to include the notion of membership in the community (Conrad and Hedin, 1977). The good citizen is someone who willingly fulfills the duties and expectations of political democracy and contributes to the affairs of one's community. Community has usually focused on its national character. That is, our students are formally socialized first of all as Americans, citizens of a country, a nation-state. From the point of view of local politics or regional culture we may also identify ourselves as San Franciscans or Californians. Today, however, as never before, citizenship education is being reformulated to include the concept of global responsibility or citizenship.1 The realities of social and ecological interdependence and interconnectedness among all people on the planet are shaping our image of the good citizen, and citizenship education.

Page 237 This article focuses on three teachers, Ginger Crawford, Linda Nathan, and Laurie Jo Wallace. All three are contributing to the reframing of the priorities of citizenship education to include the concepts of global responsibility and citizenship. These teachers rely upon student participation in the community to accomplish their objectives. Each goes beyond traditional academic or content objectives, and beyond the classroom and textbook as well. They do not settle for an approach in which students simply become better informed about a "controversial issue," but set out to nurture an increased sense of social responsibility, that is, "a personal investment in the well-being of our society and the planet." They strive to have students participate in democratic decision-making and problem-solving processes, not just talk about issues in the classroom. They also want students to see and understand themselves in relation to society and social concerns. The promise of these practices lies in the potential contribution each makes to the formation of a new generation of citizens with global responsibilities. In modern times education has helped liberate children from the parochial limits of family, local elites, and tradition (Touraine, 1988). Increasing numbers of scholars and activists see the twenty-first century as an era of "cultural shift," a "new age." This cultural transformation will include new ways of thinking, seeing, and acting which emphasize global responsibility. Education will necessarily contribute to the definition and formation of these new ways, and how they are to be enacted (Capra, 1982; Berman, 1981; Smoke and Harman, 1987; Giroux, 1988). I believe that the teachers I describe here are already contributing to this process. Their views suggest a perspective that is integrative or holistic in nature. They encourage their students to observe and engage the world in ways that attempt to account for a broad range of social, political, economic, and cultural interconnections and interrelations. Rather than limit students' sense of allegiance to the artificial boundaries of a nationstate, Ginger, Linda, and Laurie Jo expose students to a worldview which includes the entire planet. Their students make sense of the world by integrating information, facts, and situations into a larger, more synthetic awareness (Berman, 1987).

Thinking Globally and Acting Locally in the Seventh Grade Ginger teaches social studies to seventh graders at a junior high school serving a predominantly white, middle and upper-middle class community in Swampscott, Massachusetts, a town near Boston.

Page 238 Recently she added a systematic community service-learning component to a unit on hunger in Africa which is part of her World Geography and Culture course. She wanted her students to explore possible links between world hunger and

local unmet needs. As the capstone to the unit they served a dinner for "guests" at a soup kitchen in a neighboring town. Ginger decided to attempt this type of project for several reasons. A summer professional development institute, "Teaching for Global Awareness," sponsored by ESR and Tufts University, inspired her to teach about hunger from a global perspective. But she was concerned about the impact of this new information and the questions it would raise for her students:

I said to myself, there's no way I can present this information without having the kids have a place to go with it. I mean, how do you deal with the awareness about hunger and suffering in Ethiopia? How will the kids respond? How do you link it to the kids' lives? A curriculum unit in which classroom analysis was combined with community-based participation was the answer to her questions. She chose action-learning2 because she wanted her students to learn more than simply information about suffering, but to have it feel relevant to their experience. Her goals were clear:

Of course I wanted them to acquire information about geography. But I wanted them to consider the interrelationships among economic, political, and cultural groups within each African country. Then I wanted them to see some of the connections among institutions across the international, national, and local levels. And I wanted them to see that there is enough food in the world for everybody to eat, but that it isn't happening. She offered students different perspectives for interpreting the data and facts involved, and then invited them to discuss moral dimensions of the issue. She has always believed that it is her responsibility as a teacher to go beyond the textbook and expose her students to materials and perspectives they might not otherwise encounter. She put it this way:

From experience I knew that students had to be rattled, they had to be stirred. I felt that it was my duty to bring them information that perhaps they had been shielded from. I wanted to compliPage 239 cate their thinking about this controversial and emotional issue to get them to handle it and make something out of it for themselves. However, throughout her many years of teaching she had often experienced student "anger and helplessness" when they discussed world problems. She knew that her seventh graders would feel "moral outrage" as they began to understand how starvation and deprivation were outcomes of human decisions and practices. Sensitive to what she foresaw as their feelings, she knew she had to be careful when suggesting that social and political change are possible, that the current situation of hunger and starvation is neither necessary, permanent, nor natural:

I wanted to have something that they could do, so that they would feel they were, in whatever way, contributing to help the situation in the world. By studying world hunger while they were doing something on a local level for those who were hungry and unable to provide for themselves, they would have both a concrete and practical activity which addressed the problem. Ginger was able to discuss and thereby reinforce academic content since the learning experience directly involved a social response to dimensions of hunger.

Ginger used students' practical involvement at the local level to extend the boundary of their everyday experience. Through in-class lectures and discussions she connected hunger in African countries with local deprivation and hunger. By linking hunger to real people, both abroad and at home, she "wanted them to see reality, not just the TV-screen, but to see how some other people live." But not only people halfway around the world, for it was especially important that students make real-life connections with the neighboring, more working-class town:

I wanted them to know that this was not something totally out of their world. I wanted it to be their world. I wanted to break the boundary of what their community was, and to expand their concept of community. These kids have traveled. They've been to Paris, they've been to London. But they haven't been to (the neighboring town), which is five thousand miles away in terms of their experience. And I thought that was incredibly important. That was one of my goals, to show them that this is their community also. There isn't a real boundary line there. Page 240 Her deepest purpose was "to develop in students a sense of conscience." To accomplish this goal she challenged them to think critically and fostered their critical awareness of the present in the light of historical memory. She usually discusses a current event by using first-person accounts, or explores historical controversies through original, primary sources such as slave narratives. Through this she wants them to come to believe, as she believes, that people and their future matters:

I want to communicate to them how important our choices and behaviors are in creating our future. I want them to be conscious of their power to help others and influence change. She hopes this value will develop into a strong conviction and that students choose "not to allow travesties of human dignity to happen again. . . . That's my point, in the end. I want them to carry a conscience through life . . . and to widen their concept of 'my town' for life." Ginger carried out the classroom and community-based components simultaneously. Lectures and reading exercises were evaluated by traditional quizzes. An English teacher who supported the project helped monitor their participation by reading student journals. Prior to the activity itself, Ginger was careful to talk with the students about both the content and action dimensions. She guided them with directions for observing the people and the setting. For example, she instructed them to look, while they provided such services as cleaning and sweeping, at how the staff ran the organization, and to think about whether the staff had everything they needed. She told them to watch the interactions among those being served, to observe their arrival and departure, and to think about what their everyday experience was like. As Ginger explained this guided observation process,3 she also encouraged students to voice their concerns and impressions about hunger, people who are hungry, and the need for a soup kitchen. A couple students expressed their fears of violence, fearing a "knife fight" might occur. Ginger then discussed the assumptions and stereotypes embedded in their fears. Following the community-service activity she continued to discuss their experiences and asked them to consider parallel ways hunger is created in global and local situations. Although Ginger assumed responsibilities for the major planning, students contributed to the decision making and implementation. They helped prepare the menu and dinner, calculated the amount of ingredients to be purchased, and reviewed the logistics for serving and clean-up. To help raise money for the expenses, and to add to the experiential impact of the activity, students agreed, at first somewhat

Page 241 reluctantly, to a one-day fast and to donate their lunch money toward the provisions.

Ginger's principal and superintendent gave their full and active support. She encouraged the students' parents to participate, especially in supporting the sometimes anxious children as they carried out new responsibilities in unfamiliar circumstances. Parents also had the opportunity to express any reservations and concerns. For example, one parent felt that the students were too young and feared psychological harm. Ginger faced this concern with integrity and the conviction that she was doing her best work as a teacher:

I was aware of the delicate balance of feeling between parents and children. In this case I encouraged the parent to decide for herself once the experience was over. She agreed and participated on one of the work crews. Afterwards, she heard the kids' reflections and then admitted she changed her mind. At last, under the lights of local media,4 forty-six students and twenty-eight parents served two hundred and fifty spaghetti and meatball dinners to a number of "needy" people from the area. Ginger looks back on the pedagogy design and concludes:

The students' initially had "field-tripitis," but the actual experience at the soup kitchen was such a sobering thing. Field-tripitis was knocked right out of them. They now feel so good about themselves, that they were good people, that they did something good. But they were also humbled. They knew that the actual experience was the key, and not just book-learning. Several of them have continued on their own (including one parent!) to contribute time and service to the soup kitchen. A few initially skeptical teachers have since come to me to share their ideas and get my opinions. I am perceived as someone open to new ideas and projects. And my principal not only wants me to repeat the project, he wants me to apply for a state fellowship to develop a one-year project. The personal rewards were so great and unexpected that I will definitely continue to include empowering experiences in my curriculum and in other parts of my teaching. It was so exciting. It really has empowered me. I've gotta continue. Ginger felt certain that "after twenty years of teaching, the last semester was my most effective ever." The systematic action-learning component was "the missing piece" which had eluded her the previous

Page 242 years, the absence of which had hindered her from meeting the needs of her students more fully. Now she sees experiential education as "vital to my concept of teaching."

Recreating Community It is one thing for students to learn about people in other communities, whether they are next door or on the other side of the planet, from a social position of relative stability and opportunity. It is another thing altogether for young people to learn about the suffering and deprivation of their very own community or neighborhood. In any discussion of students taking action, or participating in order to learn about or affect the community, the class and racial context of the students must not be overlooked. Many of Linda Nathan's students live in public housing developments, where poor, female headed families are the norm along with substance abuse and drug trade, crime, out-of-wedlock births, teenage pregnancies, unemployment, and welfare dependency (Wilson, 1987). When students in her Social Issues course at The Fenway Program at Boston

English High in Boston, Massachusetts, participate in community service, they serve themselves and their families. Their service-learning exercises are engaging them in recreating their community:

Customarily, youth participation in the community focuses on the amelioration of social issues and problems that affect someone else . For these students taking action is a conscious change in behavior as they relate to each other. Like giving each other support and encouragement in the face of abusive conditions in their family or in the city—or attending school when all else works against having the conviction that it is worth doing. For them action is not just doing service at soup kitchens to support people in need. It is coming to school. It means changing truant behavior, and coming to school everyday. This is often overlooked. Taking that action makes a powerful statement: "I can get out of my house (which may be abusive with alcoholism), get on a bus and come to school and be present in a positive manner." I think this is admirable. And I give my kids credit for it everyday. The concrete reality of her students' lives is the starting point for all the participation activities basic to the schoolwide Social Issues course Linda and her colleagues implement. And from that reality Linda

Page 243 attempts to connect her students to their immediate community, and then to the rest of the world. Linda works at an inner-city school which houses a specially designed school-within-a-school. Originally, the program was conceived as ''a bargaining chip" of last resort for students "extremely alienated from the traditional high school setting." The program now includes students with a wider range of academic capabilities and different class backgrounds. The Social Issues course is a requirement for all two hundred students in the Fenway program. Moreover, every student is required to take it each year she or he is at the school. It is offered during the first period, Linda says, "as a way of saying to the students 'we want to involve you,' and 'you're going to be involved. Get to school, get here. Be with us.'" Each day begins with simultaneous classes run by individual teachers like Linda or, occasionally, a team of teachers. Each class combines students from grades 10 through 12. During the year between eight and ten units are completed, covering subjects as diverse as the history of Boston, the former Soviet Union, hunger, AIDS, and friendship. All of the units are designed to bridge local, national, and international issues, as well as issues of adolescent development. Unit topics are selected by teachers and students who compose a curriculum committee. Student committee members are empowered to choose topics of their interest. Invariably students choose topics reflecting immediate personal concerns, including sexual development, or, more broadly, lifestyle chances, stress factors, teenage roles, and youth who have experienced war. Linda believes the opportunity to select topics is important to the effectiveness of the course:

They have to have ownership in the class for it to work. They have to feel invested in it. Because half of the units are their choice (teachers choose the other half), they have some control over it. And this contributes to their motivation. They want to talk about issues that directly affect them. The unit they created on friendships was probably the most powerful one. They spend a lot of time developing their units, and they will even arrange to teach a unit with a teacher. It's important to see that developing a unit is taking action. It's not social action in the traditional sense,

like going out and doing someone a good deed, but taking initiative and being responsible for the unit is significant action for them. Units designed by teachers on the curriculum committee are intended to broaden student awareness of social issues and focus on

Page 244 topics which have regional, national, international and global dimensions. Especially powerful for the students have been units on immigration, with a focus on Boston's ethnic heritage, the civil rights movement, and "Facing History," a curriculum resource which examines genocide in the twentieth century. Every unit includes an action component linking the student to his or her community. For students whom Linda describes as "the have-nots of the have-nots," the goal of the course is at once its challenge and its promise: to educate them "to be better citizens, to vote, and to participate in the system." But this has to happen, she adds, in ways that are meaningful in the light of their circumstances:

Typically we attempt to make links to Boston. For example, we bring in guest speakers, create or go to events in the city, and they write letters about issues that affect them. And we address the specific and direct ways they can use city services. For example, for finding jobs and for health care. Because it isn't going to help to continue to live in public housing, especially if it happens to be a negative environment, and not know how to do something about their situation and take some control over it. However, she feels it is just as vital for students to be able to see and understand themselves in an international context as well:

Our biggest goal is for the students to make the connections "from me to the world." For example, after studying "Facing History," can they make the connections between the issues of today, like civil rights, with Cambodia, or South Africa without our spelling out the links? She emphasizes the importance of connections between historical and contemporary experience and stresses her intention to help students relate to the world around them and the ways in which it affects them in everyday life. If students can make the connections, if they can see themselves in the context of their community, in their country, and then in the world, she feels they will be more likely to take better control of their lives. She thinks the reasoning and the goal for this is "simple":

My goal as an educator is to create a better society. And a reason I am doing this, the reason I work with young people is so that they can be citizens in a better world, so that they can work to make a better world. I want them to be able to understand what's gone on before, and understand what's going on now, and that Page 245 they can discuss it. If they can listen, if they can negotiate situations and discussions, instead of wanting to "knock off" the person that disagrees with them "just like that," then we may have found something. Yet it is in these very efforts to connect students with their community and with the world that Linda identifies her

biggest struggle as an educator. The course sometimes seems "nonacademic," and she and her colleagues experience a tension between developing basic skills and facilitating participation:

Some teachers argue that teaching basic skills would sacrifice the incredible nature of the course. If the emphasis was just on basic skills, the course would be less involving and engaging, and its scope would be diminished. These teachers want the dynamic activities and participation. She finds herself trying to move between the exciting experiential pedagogy and the basic skills approaches. Because she also serves the program in an administrative capacity, she sometimes tends toward basic skills. But because of the action-learning impact on students, and because "the kids see that as adults we care about each other . . . and we model the behavior we want for the them," she values the course and its dynamic structure as it is. Linda notes, too, that the intense interaction called for in the design and teaching of the combined experiential and classroom components has made all those involved better teachers:

This is really where our professional development occurs. The teachers in the course are so invested in it. We have all learned a tremendous amount, in terms of both content and teaching methods. I am developing a whole new way of teaching and thinking, and I am doing it with a group of teachers who, like me, are taking risks by trying things in new and different ways. I really am grateful because it gives me a chance to be my best as an educator.

Finding Power and Hope Within Laurie Jo Wallace has no doubt in her voice or her eyes as she speaks to me:

So much of what we do in this world—and I think it begins when we are in school—is to separate out the academic from the emotional. Page 246 We keep separating the two sides of the brain. We don't talk about our feelings. Our work is all the left brain side; it's all academic and cerebral. There seems to be this real lack of integrating the feeling side of us into who we are. I think that's what The Children of War Tour is all about for me: It's not that I think it's right, nor that I know it's right. I feel it. Laurie Jo's convictions are forged out of her participation with the unique educational experience that is known as Children of War Tour (CWT). During the last three of her nine years as a teacher she has been involved with the project, which brings young victims of warfare and U.S. students into contact. American youth hear the painful stories of their counterparts "who have suffered violence and oppression" in countries like Ireland, Kampuchea, Lebanon, Chile, and South Africa. The Children of War Tour functions as a speaking tour and operates at both international and local levels. A central office organizes a nationwide tour every two years. Laurie Jo is one of the adult coordinators of the Boston area chapter, which is one of several offices that arrange high school speaking engagements in their respective regions. She administers the activities of several refugees who have come forward voluntarily to tell their stories, and American students who have joined the project in support roles and to tell their stories. These students present their stories in

schoolwide assemblies and in individual classrooms. CWT is not an integral part of an established course or school curriculum. It is simultaneously a curriculum resource and an extracurricular activity brought into the school or classroom. When it is the feature of a school assembly, the project enhances general learning objectives. When it supplements an individual course or a departmental curriculum, it expands and reinforces the learning of specific academic content. In this second case, teachers use a resource packet developed by CWT and Philadelphia area ESRs to prepare students for the project speakers and activities. In both cases, however, the project also encourages students to participate in school and community activities which address social and political issues related to international conflict and refugees. For example, students are given resources on how to start a study group for exploring topics like refugee policy and available services. Other resources outline how students can arrange to bring to class community speakers to discuss regional armed conflict. Laurie Jo, stressing this dimension of the project, put it this way:

Children of War is a leadership development program. That's one of its main educational objectives, to help the young people who Page 247 are both in the tour and who are listening to the tour, to realize that they are powerful people, that they are leaders. And we want them to develop their leadership skills. These are goals as much or more than learning about other countries and their conflicts. Laurie Jo believes the catalyst for developing leadership and empowerment skills is "the gut level impact of CWT. It moves people." Most Americans have had no direct experience of war, and it is difficult for them to imagine the suffering and trauma involved. But it is not uncommon to feel compelled to act, to do something and do it now after hearing, for example, from a teenager who escaped the terror of the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea. At the age of 11 this teenager saw her father murdered, and she then found the courage to guide family and neighbors through the dark of night across mine fields and military zones to Thailand. And she made this harrowing trip on at least three occasions! It is no wonder that many American youth are moved to tears by such accounts. Nor is it a surprise to students newly humbled and motivated to contribute to the prevention of such suffering in the future. Typically, Laurie Jo says,

they start to ask questions and get in touch with their emotions. You can see them begin to feel more connected to other people. I believe their resistance to learning decreases. And as it does, they consistently want to do something. And when they do, they want to learn more. One works right into the other. She is equally certain and delighted that the objectives of empowerment and action go "hand and hand with the content goals. . . . The emotional is not at the cost of the intellectual in this project." The curriculum guide for teacher and classroom use provides material about each of the countries represented, the history of the U.S. relationship with each country, the current social and political realities of each country, and the impact of these factors on youth. After learning about these issues, and gaining specific knowledge about each country's relationship with the United States, students are encouraged to take action and become more knowledgeable about, as well as involved in, the decisionmaking processes which determine and sustain the United States' relationship with these countries. As Laurie Jo sees it, the objective of subsequent participation, whether in the form of a study group or volunteer service with a public interest group:

is for students to put into action what they are learning about themselves and about their relationships to other countries, to

Page 248 other people, and to their own government. We want them to see and know themselves as citizens of a country, but in relation to other citizens of the countries of the world. And to see themselves in relation specifically to refugees from other countries. The first step is to have the CWT speakers meet with students. CWT wants to create and foster face-to-face relationships among the refugees and students. As the adults encourage and facilitate a setting of personal interaction and intimacy based on trust and respect, the young refugees get the support needed to discuss the pain and suffering of warfare. This allows for a reciprocal healing process between the refugees and the American youth, during which everyone talks about and is supported in their feelings for their countries, whether of anger, guilt, or despair. As students learn something about the reality of violence, they often begin to consider opportunities and attempts for nonviolent mediation or negotiation, and as they become aware of the potential for developing conflict resolution skills, many begin to relate these to their own behavior and relationships. Although it is based on face-to-face encounters, CWT aims to develop an awareness that goes beyond the interpersonal. Laurie Jo encourages students to question what is responsible citizenship between different cultures and societies. She has students look at their relationships and feelings toward other countries and people that are different. She then has the students consider their feelings and relationship to their own country. She says:

Traditionally, citizenship classes have been teaching people to be citizens of their country. They teach about their own government and how to participate in government. We take it a step farther, and teach people to be citizens of the world as well, to participate in their world, to be a part of the whole world and not just one country.

The Promise of Participation In Ginger Crawford, Linda Nathan, and Laurie Jo Wallace's teaching students act on an issue or problem, make a meaningful difference or contribution, and move far beyond simple classroom discussion. Participation means direct student involvement in community-based "activities concerned with ameliorating or solving social issues and problems" (Conrad and Hedin, 1977). Participation can range from voluntary service in social agencies, to student initiated community development

Page 249 projects, to social and political action, to community study groups, and internships with public interest groups or social service agencies. Participation can be included as a "lab" component within an existing course as in Ginger's class, or as a full-fledged community involvement course like Linda's. It may also draw on the resources of a systemwide actionlearning center, or be part of an integrated sequence of courses and experiences (Conrad and Hedin, 1977).5 By adding an experiential element, participatory action facilitates the learning process, whatever the subject matter. Indeed, a substantial body of research indicates that an action-learning or action-reflection pedagogy is one of the most effective means for teaching and learning academic content, critical thinking skills, and social responsibility. Part of the promise of these teachers' practices is its impact on students in precisely these areas. But Ginger, Linda, and Laurie Jo help students reach even further, toward the development of an appreciation and sensitivity to social interdependence and a respect for human life and equality.6 Ginger's seventh graders who served

community residents at the soup kitchen came away with greater sensitivity to others:

I found them more open to discuss different kinds of culture and different beliefs. It totally amazed me how much these kids would draw parallels and see differences. I just didn't think they would be able to at age twelve. I was impressed by the sophistication of what they would come up with, and especially by the moral connections they drew. In Linda's Social Issues class one student was especially concerned that he accurately represent information about another country, because he "didn't want to screw up because it meant so much to a friend. It was her heritage." This youngster's conscious respect and investment in the story of his friend's background suggests that he truly values and affirms cultural difference. Action-reflection practices also increase students' understanding of social and political issues. Ginger's students acquired an enlarged and more critical awareness of the situation of people in poverty. During a subsequent unit on the nations of the Caribbean and Central America, she found they could make connections between poverty and personal troubles:

[the unit] set a tone for the whole year . . . they developed an assumption that "there's more to things than we might think. There are more sides to an issue than is obvious." They started Page 250 to put things together. For example, when they realized Haiti was the poorest country in the region they would say things like, "oh yeah, poverty, this is what happens with poverty. Of course they don't read and write." They would go on to link poverty with illiteracy and with a lack of birth control information. However, as Laurie Jo pointed out, critical thinking does not come easily or painlessly. She noted that students are often particularly upset "that humans can be so horrible to each other" and added that "thinking critically about controversial issues and social and political action is not something they are used to doing." The students gained confidence in their ability to act. They felt empowered by contributing to the improvement of social problems, as well as by working cooperatively with their peers. As a result of the Social Issues course, Linda noted that:

three years ago kids wouldn't know about marches, and now some go on the "Walk for Hunger" after a unit. First it was fun, now a contingent goes as a rule. Some are going on the "walk for AIDS." After the unit on AIDS, one girl became a "buddy," a caretaker for patients. Laurie Jo reported that sixty student groups nationwide—typically social action or study groups—were formed or reinforced as a result of the recent CWT visit. Empowerment, heightened responsibility, and new knowledge are positive gains from action-reflection learning. In general, the specific action is less important than the fact that students have had the opportunity to do something of help to others or themselves. Their participation in democratic processes increased because they linked knowledge with action. This experience leads them to rethink values and principles and act with greater self-awareness and a more critical ethical conscience. It appears that they take a more appreciative and cooperative attitude toward community. They now consider themselves and others valued members of society, because their ideas and contributions have been

heard and responded to with respect. By adding a participatory component to their teaching, Ginger, Linda, and Laurie Jo have surpassed the traditional objectives of citizenship education, promoting a far more active and engaged sense of social responsibility and a deeper examination of the issues. Moreover, as I suggested earlier, perhaps the most important promise of their pedagogy lies in the concept of global citizenship it embodies.

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The Promise of Participation for Creating Global Citizens All three of the teachers I have described are preparing and nurturing the conditions for new modes of acting and thinking about how to live in the world as a global citizen (Giroux, 1988; Hurst, 1986). In making clear the links between local social issues which students come to know through the action-learning component of their studies and global versions of the same issues, Ginger and Linda introduce and legitimate the concept of global responsibility. (CWT brings the global issue to the youth; then teachers like Laurie Jo work with students to establish the local parallels.) Through action, commitment and reflection about conditions in their local community and in the wider world their students are learning to recognize and maintain connections among the diverse cultures of the planet. As they address specific local situations or talk with visitors from war-torn countries, they begin to be able to imagine that solutions for deep-rooted problems can be found and that peace and justice are in fact possible (Smoke and Harman, 1987). We should not underestimate the importance of making real the possibility for peace and justice and the role of actionlearning with social and political action projects in promoting it. To teach for global responsibility, educators should not be satisfied merely to help students become "well informed." Even the development of critical awareness is not enough. Students may be well versed in controversial issues and knowledgeable about contemporary problems (and historical memory) yet not necessarily commit themselves to the collective work and responsibilities needed to challenge the social forces which inhibit our full human and social development (Giroux, 1988). Students must be empowered with practical and strategic skills to resist and transform unjust social conditions. This often calls for a change in their own relationship to the rest of the world. Otherwise, they will not be prepared for the democratic responsibilities of living humanely in an age of increasing political interdependence and ecological fragility (Bryan, 1989). This concern has been well framed by the question of "whether it is preferable to act one's way into new ways of thinking or to think one's way into new ways of acting" (Byron, 1986). Given our planet's present condition and dilemmas, it should be clear that students must do more than learn to think about social problems and relationships in new ways. The unprecedented amount and availability of information has hardly solved our problems. Students must also learn to act in new ways to create preferable and sustainable conditions for humanity

Page 252 (Bryan, 1989). The task before our species, to live democratically and nonviolently, must be learned through actual practice of the kind Ginger, Linda, and Laurie Jo provide. Their students are learning to think critically about the competing interests surrounding social issues, and to act with experience and conviction for achieving just and peaceful solutions. Ginger, Linda, and Laurie Jo are providing "the central ingredient," an action dimension, in an appropriate pedagogy for social responsibility: youth participation in social and political projects in the community (Conrad and Hedin, 1977). The promise of their teaching lies in the quality of learning it facilitates, and in the new ways of thinking, seeing, and acting it encourages. But even more important, their work promises to set students on a path of a life-long learning which respects cultural diversity, and a path of life-long action suitable for achieving democratic values.

Notes 1. Global citizenship is a controversial term to conservative political analysts and educators. Traditional emphasis within citizenship education has focused on developing and promoting national character, practices, and values. Global citizenship, some would argue, is an unrealistic concept and a role which cannot possibly exist in a current world order characterized by competing nations. In actual practice, so the view holds, global citizenship education would eventually undermine national unity, sovereignty, and security. The fear is that American patriotism, competition, and potential citizen mobilization for international conflict, would be compromised if Americans seriously identified and found allegiance with other people and countries around the planet. The significance of this realpolitik perspective is captured well in the words of Henry Giroux. This view signals "a public philosophy which both resonates with and distorts the desires and experiences of many people in this country" (Giroux, 1988:4). The last decade has been marked with dual trends of increasing pride in our country and the incredible internationalization and interconnectedness of millions of Americans (if only in consciousness) with people everywhere on the earth. As expressions of popular culture tell us, with "hands across America" we take pride and take care of our own, while at the same time "we (too) are the world." Giroux offers a good introduction to some of the concerns and political discourse involved in this matter. He is worth quoting at length to put the political and cultural significance of the controversy succinctly: Citizenship, like democracy itself, is part of a historical tradition that represents a terrain of political struggle over the forms of knowledge, social practices, and values that constitute the critical elements of that tradition. However, it is not a term that has any transcendental significance outside the lived experiences and social Page 253 practices of individuals who make up the diverse forms of public life. Once we acknowledge the concept of citizenship as a socially constructed historical practice, it becomes all the more imperative to recognize that categories like citizenship and democracy need to be problematized and reconstructed each generation (Giroux, 1988:5).

My approach in this essay, and toward this controversy, is not to provide a definition for global citizenship. The perspective offered rests upon the emerging reality of global citizenship, as embodied in the practices and values of these teachers who are in fact problematizing the concept and practice, and in observed forms of citizen participation and global solidarity around the world too numerous to mention. As an educator and a

citizen, the value I place on constructing more humane governance on the planet, for all people and not just our nation, informs my position on this matter. 2. In this essay the terms ''participation," "service learning," and "experiential education" will be used somewhat interchangeably. Customarily, experiential education is the broader concept into which service learning fits as a particular form. Experiential education means that the learning activity directly involves the student in the subject matter under study. In service learning, the student is involved with accomplishing a task which meets some social or human need, while educational objectives are sought. Participation also means direct student involvement in community-based activities, but educational goals are not necessarily included. As you will see, these teachers are using student participation to accomplish learning goals and to contribute to the community. 3. For theoretical rationales and additional descriptions of guided experiential education processes, see Bryan (1989) and Weigert (1990). 4. The tendency for media professionals to fashion newsworthiness into an "event" poses several concerns. Will the subject of their report be the problem to which the servicelearning project addresses itself, or will it be the project itself? In the first case, will the focus be on social and political dimensions of the issue, say hunger or homelessness, or will it be the people currently in these situations? We cannot control for the manner or content of media reporting, of course, but we must always be concerned for the people for whom service learning is intended. Perhaps the last thing they need are reinforced stereotypes about the "needy," or another charitable "hand-out." Similarly, in the second case, if the subject is the project, will the focus be on the teacher, the students, or the innovative pedagogy itself? In other words, will the teacher become a star, the students a bunch of do-gooders, and the service project a catchy idea? All of these possibilities and more should be of concern in the design and implementation of projects such as these. Ginger found that she had to take time to channel student energy excited by the presence of the media. The exposure did in turn gain her recognition and additional support for her teaching efforts, but this spurious benefit may never be realized (if at all) should a Page 254

project suffer from an inquiring media. I am grateful to my colleagues Gene Thompson, at Brown University, and Roger Nozaki, with Campus Compact, for reminding me to point out this caveat.

5. In addition to the fine piece by Conrad and Hedin, administrators interested in a systematic internship or similar experiential component for their curriculum may want to read about the experiences of two programs at the university and college level for potential lessons: see Bryan (1989) and Bing (1989). 6. See Giroux (1988) for an important theoretical discussion concerning social interdependence and equality as a lived reality.

Bibliography Berman, Morris. The Reenchantment of the World . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. Berman, Shelley. "Beyond Critical Thinking: Teaching for Synthesis," Forum , 6 (1987). Bing, Anthony G. "Peace Studies as Experiential Education." In George A. Lopez, Peace Studies: Past and Future . (Special Ed) THE ANNALS, Vol. 504. Newbury Park, Cal.: Sage Publications, 1989. Brown, B. Frank, ed. Education for Responsible Citizenship . New York: McGrawHill, 1977. Bryan, Dale A. "Internship Education in Peace and Justice Studies: The Tufts University Experience." In Daniel C. Thomas and Michael T. Klare, eds. Peace and World Order Studies , 5th ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989. Bryon, William J. "Economics." In David M. Johnson, ed., Justice and Peace Education . Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986. Copra, Fritjof. The Turning Point . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Conrad, Dan and Diane Hedin. "Citizenship Education through Participation." In B. Frank Brown, ed., Education for Responsible Citizenship . New York: McGraw-Hill. Giroux, Henry A. Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life . Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Hurst, John. "A Pedagogy for Peace." In World Encyclopedia of Peace . Oxford: Pergamon Press Ltd, 1986. Johnson, David M., ed. Justice and Peace Education . Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986.

Shor, Ira and Paulo Freire. A Pedagogy for Liberation . South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey, 1987. Page 255

Smoke, Richard and Willis Harman. Paths to Peace . Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987. Thomas, Daniel C. and Michael T. Klare, eds. Peace and World Order Studies , 5th ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989. Touraine, Alain. Return of the Actor . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Weigert, Kathleen Maas. "Experiential Learning and Peace Education: On Visiting Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp." Peace and Change , 15, 3 (1990). Wilson, William J. The Truly Disadvantaged . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Page 257

Contributors Monica Andrews received her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she completed her dissertation on the goals and practices of peace education. Monica was a recipient of a four-year federal grant for curriculum development. She wrote and piloted curricula for elementary students newly arrived in the United States from many countries and diverse cultures. Barbara Beckwith teaches journalism at Emerson College. She is the co-author of Standing Up to the SAT (Prentice Hall/ARCO, 1989). She was a contributor to ESR's curriculum guides Dialogue: A Teaching Guide to Nuclear Issues and Perspectives: A Teaching Guide to Concepts of Peace . She has an M.Ed. from Tufts University and an M.S. in journalism from Boston University. Prior to her work in journalism, she taught high school English for eleven years. Sheldon Berman is President of Educators for Social Responsibility. While completing his doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he conducted research on the development of social consciousness in young people, on teaching strategies for developing social responsibility, and on the implementation of institutional innovation. He coordinated the development of three ESR curriculum guides: Dialogue: A Teaching Guide to Nuclear Issues, Perspectives: A Teaching Guide to Concepts of Peace , and the Participation Series . He is currently working with school districts in Boston and Portland, Oregon, to make social responsibility a core element in the curriculum. Prior to his work with ESR, he was a high school social studies teachers. Dale A. Bryan is Program Coordinator for the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Tufts University and Executive

Committee Co-chair of the Pedagogy and Curriculum Development Committee of the Peace Studies Association, a continental organization of college and university academic programs for the study of peace, conflict justice, and global security. He is a member of ESR's Professional Development Team and has co-led workshops on teaching for global awareness and social responsibility, and drugs, alcohol, and society. He is also pursuing a doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University.

Page 258 Janice Balsam Danielson has been teaching preschool and kindergarten for twenty years, the last thirteen in Brookline, Massachusetts. She received her M.Ed. from Bank Street College. She has taught at Wheelock College and has led workshops for teachers on various aspects of early childhood curriculum. She was a contributing author to Taking Part , an ESR curriculum guide on civil participation skills for elementary students. Beth Wilson Fultz is publications editor at the Center for Health Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was formerly the Publications Editor at the Education Technology Center and the Harvard Graduate Center of Education, and Assistant Editor of the Harvard Education Letter . While completing her doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she conducted research on high school teachers' thinking and decision making in the teaching of controversial issues. In her current position she continues to explore dilemmas of health and science education for health care professional and the public. Sara Goodman is a former elementary school teacher. She has led workshops and summer institutes in conflict resolution and cooperative learning. She is currently the Coordinator of Elementary Teacher Preparation at Dartmouth College. William Kreidler is the Director of Conflict Resolution Programs for Boston Area Educators for Social Responsibility and a nationally known author and workshop leader. He is the author of Creative Conflict Resolution (Scott, Foresman, 1984), Elementary Perspectives 1: Teaching Concepts of Peace and Conflict (Educators for Social Responsibility, 1990), and co-author with Dr. Deborah Prothow-Stith of the Violence Prevention Curriculum for Adolescents . Before assuming to his current position, Bill was an elementary teacher for fifteen years. Seth Kreisberg received his Ed.D. from Harvard University and was Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) until his death in December 1989. He had been involved with Educators for Social Responsibility since its inception in 1981, serving as a member of the Steering Committee and the Professional Development Team. His research focused on issues of empowerment and democratic classrooms. He is the author of Transforming Power: Domination, Empowerment, and Education (SUNY, 1992). Phyllis La Farge is the author of The Strangelove Legacy: Children, Parents and Teachers in the Nuclear Age (Harper & Row, 1987). She is a

Page 259 contributing editor to Parents Magazine and has written extensively about family life, child development, and education. Nina A. Mullen has worked as Program Coordinator for California Tomorrow and as a Research Associate on the Education for Diversity Project. She is co-author with Laurie Olsen on a California Tomorrow research project report Embracing Diversity . Laurie Olsen is the Executive Director of California Tomorrow where she also served as the Project Director of the

Immigrant Students Project and Education for Diversity effort. In that capacity she authored the policy reports, Crossing the Schoolhouse Border: Immigrant Students and the California Schools and Embracing Diversity . For the past fifteen years, she has conducted social and policy research and authored numerous reports on issues related to atrisk youth, public education, and youth involvement. Prior to her research work, she taught high school social studies in Vermont. Sarah Pirtle is the author of the national award-winning young adult novel An Outbreak of Peace (New Society Publishers, 1987) and has been involved in the development of peace education in western Massachusetts since 1982. She is currently a member of ESR's Professional Development Team and teaches a graduate course at the University of Vermont on cooperation and conflict resolution skills. She has created many resources for teachers including a manual, Discovery Sessions: How Teachers Create Opportunities to Build Classrooms and Conflict Resolution Skills in their K8 Classrooms (Franklin Mediation Services, University of Massachusetts, 1989) and two recordings of original music from environmental and peace education, "Two Hands Hold the Earth" and "The Wind Is Telling Secrets." Sheila Reindl is a counselor at the Bureau of Study Council, Harvard University, and a doctoral student in Counseling and Consulting Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is particularly interested in the processes of recovery (in particular recovery from eating disorders); the role of curiosity and delight in teaching and learning relationships; and the development of voice and authority, that is, in how people trust that they have something they can contribute to the world. Clarissa Sawyer has worked in educational organizations as a teacher, counselor, and administrator since 1976. Her interest in democratic schooling began in high school when she read A. S. Neill's Summerhill .

Page 260 Currently she is a doctoral candidate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a particular interest in women as leaders. Dennis Shirley is an Associate Professor of Education at Rice University. He received his Ed.D. from Harvard University. Formerly, he taught high school social studies and was a VISTA volunteer. He is the author of The Politics of Progressive Education: the Odenwaldschule in Nazi Germany , published by Harvard University Press, 1992. David M. Stuart is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Boston College where he has done research on public discourse, nuclear weapons policy, and covert action. He has worked for twenty years designing sets and lights for the theater and has served for fifteen years on the board of the Freelance Players Inc., a children's theater company that engages young people in the production of original musical theater. Anne Yeomans has an M.A. in Counseling Psychology and is a psychotherapist in private practice in Concord, Massachusetts. Since 1984, Anne has been teaching workshops on conflict resolution and nonviolence.

Page 261

Topic Index A

action-learning, 238 , 241 , 245 , 249 -53 administrators, 30 , 189 principal, 30 , 45 ageism, 34 arts education, 28 , 29 , 33 , 38 , 207 -17 music, 207 -11 drama, 213 -16 authority, 87 , 169 , 226 , 230 authoritarian education, 221

B believing exercise, 152 -53, 156 , 170 -71, 180 bilingual education, 124 -26, 159

C citizenship education, 3 -4, 164 , 165 , 220 , 236 -53 critical citizenship, 177 , 179 -81 global citizenship, 236 , 250 -53 class constitutions, 92 -94, 165 -67 class meetings, 13 -26, 33 -37, 77 -78, 94 communication skills, 13 -26, 104 -16 community, 5 , 158 -61, 161 -62, 214 -15, 222 , 242 -45

classroom, 46 , 79 -80, 129 -41, 222 -23 community meeting, 33 -37, 97 -101, 159 -61 issues, 97 , 101 participatory, 198 school, 40 -41, 198 -99, 212 -13 community service, 4 , 8 , 42 -44, 240 , 242 service-learning, 238 , 242 , 249 , 253 conflict resolution, ix , 5 , 9 , 27 , 28 -30, 72 -86, 108 -10, 143 -44 conflict management, 143 -62 contemporary issues, 5 , 6 , 216 , 244 , 251 current events, 30 -32, 42 -44 controversial issues, 13 -26, 107 , 152 -54, 237 , 250 , 251 nuclear issues, 152 -54, 155 , 217 cooperative learning, 38 , 50 -67, 75 , 169 , 187 , 204 , 222 , 223 , 228 -29 cooperative groups, 38 , 105 -7, 114 , 187 , 189 , 198 critical thinking, 30 , 105 , 153 , 182 , 249 -50 culture, 207 cultural awareness, 37 -39, 131 , 133 -41, 211 , 217 cultural barriers, 130 cultural diversity, 5 , 27 , 37 -39, 129 -42, 144 , 147 , 150 , 151 , 158 , 161 , 162 , 252

cultural identity, 129 -42 melting pot, 121 -23 minorities, 125 multicultural education, 8 , 120 -28 multicultural classroom, 108 , 110 , 113 , 126 , 129 -42, 178 -79 popular culture, 208 , 209 -10

D decision making: shared, 166 , 222 , 198 -99 skills, 92 -93, 96 -97, 98 -100, 109 -10, 200 values, 184 , 186 democratic practices, 10 , 30 -31, 218 -34 democratic classroom, 107 , 157 , 165 -67, 180 , 218 -34 dialogue, 45 -46, 151 diversity. See cultural diversity

E ELNA, 6 -7, 11 , 12 , 45 , 182 , 188 empathy, 21 , 112 , 114 , 155 , 164 , 180 empowerment, x , 21 , 27 , 30 -31, 36 , 98 , 102 , 148 , 150 , 155 , 157 -58, 161 , 162 , 196 , 206 , 211 , 247 English, 105 -14, 154 -57 ESL, 125 , 145 , 155

Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR), 6 , 7 , 11 , 45 , 106 , 107 , 134 , 138 , 202 , 205 , 232 Page 262

experiential education, 163 , 242 , 245 , 253

F feelings, 13 , 78 -79, 111 -12, 207 -8, 214 , 215 , 216 , 217 , 245 -48 foreign language, 121 -24

G global interdependence, 51 , 183 , 185 , 219 global education, 8 global responsibility, 236 , 255 grading, 105 , 188 , 224

H health education, 186 history, 72 -74, 150 -52 homelessness, 42 -44, 97 , 101 , 171 , 237 -42 hunger, 39 -40, 42 -43, 237 -42

I I message, 76 -77, 80 You message, 76 -77

imagination, 207 , 211 -12, 217 immigrants, 40 , 122 -27

L listening, 25 , 144 , 160 , 162 , 198 , 219 active, 76 nonjudgmental, 107 -8, 146 literature, 28 , 104 -16, 154 -57

M math, 192 -206, 218 -19, 222 -32 mediation, 83 -85, 145 -50, 158 -59 moral education, 4 -5 multicultural education. See cultural diversity

N nuclear age, 155 , 184 , 188

O oral history, 114 , 115

P paradigm shifts, 173 -74 parents, 31 , 241 participation, 10 , 211 , 214 -16, 236 -55

democratic, 3 , 4 , 165 -67 participatory community, 198 perspective taking, 8 , 9 -10, 25 , 26 , 28 , 47 , 107 , 112 , 152 -53, 155 , 156 , 170 power, 215 -16, 226 power over/power with, 221 powerlessness, 1 -2 perspective on zero-sum, 102 prejudice, 159 , 171 , 176 -79 prejudice reduction, 107 , 111 -12, 123 , 147 problem-solving, 77 , 219 cooperative or collaborative, 109 -10, 222 -26 process skills, 145 , 151 -52 process writing, 76 , 106 , 111 -12, 115

R racism, 34 -35, 112 , 115 , 146 , 148 -49, 201 role-playing, 169

S self-esteem, 125 , 148 , 149 science, 28 , 31 -32, 182 -91 school culture, 10

social responsibility, 4 -12, 105 , 108 , 112 , 168 -69, 178 , 182 , 192 , 193 , 202 , 203 , 205 -6, 237 , 249 -52 meaning of, 5 , 7 -8 social studies, 30 -31, 39 -41, 81 -82, 150 , 163 -81 student government: student council, 87 , 88 , 95 -101, 158 , 199

T theater, 38 , 114 -16 thinking skills, 8 , 30 critical thinking, 153

V violence, 29 , 146 , 208 -9 non violence, 81 , 214 nuclear weapons, 15 , 16 , 152 -54, 200 -1 war, 18 , 150 , 236 , 247 -48

W whole language, 76 , 109 Page 263

Index of Educational Researchers and Theorists B Borden, J., 32 -33

C Carr, L., 219 Conrad, D., 236 , 248 -49, 252

D Davidson, E., 36 , 51 , 65 Dewey, J., 51 , 233 Dishon, D., 52 -53, 61

E Einstein, A., 67 Elbow, P., 170

F Finn, C., 1 Freire, P., 221

G Giroux, H., 164 , 237 , 251 -54 Grambs, G., 219 Graves, N., 51 -52, 62 , 66 Graves, T., 51 -52, 62 , 66

H Hedin, D., 236 , 248 -49, 252

Hewlett, S. A., x Holubec, E. J., 61

J Johnson, D., 51 -52, 61 , 63 -64 Johnson, R., 51 -52, 61 , 63 -64, 121

K Kagan, S., 51 , 53 -54 Kreidler, W., 64

L Lakoff, 121

M Male, M., 60

N Neill, A. S., 87

O O'Leary, P., 52 -53, 61

R Ravitch, D., 1

S

Shapon-Shevin, M., 65 -66 Schniedewind, N., 36 , 51 , 64 -66 Seelye, N., 121 Sennett, R., xi Sharan, S., 51 Sharan, Y., 51 Silberman, C., 221 Sizer, T., 220 -21, 233 Slavin, R., 50 -51, 55 -56, 62 -63 Page 265

Index of Teachers, Administrators, Students, and Schools Referred to in Text Names of Teachers, Administrators, and Students A Akzam, J., 130 , 131 Ambrose, A., 139

B Baron, B., 130 -31 Barret, M., 214 Beaulieu, C., 10 , 165 -67, 180

Bebelaar, J., 9 , 129 -41 Berman, S., 150 -54 Bernstein, J., 207 , 211 , 214 , 217 Bilal, Z., 113 Burt, L., 9 , 154 -57, 161 , 162 Bury, L., 9

C Chav, M., 130 , 135 Chrisco, I., 62 Clausen, C., 214 Crawford, G., 9 , 237 -41, 248 -52

D Danielson, J., 9 Dennis, G., 133 Dieringer, L., 148 -49 Drummond, E., 39 -41

E Easley, A., 129 -30, 133 , 135 , 141

F Figuera, M., 131

Fixler, M., 9 , 72 -74 Fong, M., 130

G Gagnor, C., 148 -49, 161 Gibb, D., 171 -74, 180 Gilton, M., 136 Goldman, J., 186 Goldsmith, S., 37 -39 Gordon, A., 130 Greeley, K., 158 -61 Gross, F., 9 , 192 -206 Grove, K., 10 , 218 -34

H Hall, T., 9 , 185 , 188 Harer, K., 129 -40 Hogan, P., 149 -50 Hoorng Lu, S., 133 Hughes, S., 41 -44, 46 Hunter, C., 149 -50

J

Johnson, A., 135 Johnston, D., 62 Jones, F., 132 Jordan, F., 62

K Kirkpatrick, C., 169 , 180 Kronish, M., 211 , 216 , 217

L Lambert, K., 105 Lemon, L., 40 Lieber, C., 169 -71, 180 Lilequist, E., 73 , 74 , 80 -82 Little, M., 62 Lob Sok, V., 133

M Madruga, D., 139 McGiffin, P., 53 -55, 59 -60 McGillicuddy, E., 148 , 161 Mehlhop, P., 62 Messias, E., 28 -33

Meyer, L., 135 Moritz, C., 183 -85 Mosher, C., 137 Page 266

N Nathan, L., 237 , 242 -45, 248 -52 Nutter, R., 94 -97, 102

P Paul, P., 176 -79, 180 Po, Kien, 138 -39, 141

R Raffel, L., 73 , 74 -77, 83 -85 Read, W., 60 Roupp, F., 63 Rousse, V., 120 Rudolph, S., 110

S Sadowsky, E., 10 , 97 -101, 102 Saslow, S., 188 Scrofani, R., 174 -76, 180

Shatles, D., 108 Sievers, B., 131 Silva, J., 147 -48 Simmons, B., 183 Solo, L., 10 , 158 -61 Svendsen, G., 121 -24

T Taylor, G., 183 , 186 -87 Travers, K., 88 -94, 102 Trierweiler, J., 9 , 50 , 55 -59, 63 -64, 187 -88

V Vu, Le Ann, 124 -27

W Whang, G., 10 Wallace, L. J., 237 , 245 -52 Wadden, A., 124 -27 Washington, J., 141 Weathers, L., 184 Weltman, J., 33 -37

Z

Zarlin, D., 107

Names of Schools A Aldo Leopold School, Madison, WI, 73 Arlington High School, Arlington, MA, 154

B Baker School, Brookline, MA, 213 Berkeley High School, Berkeley, CA, 174 -76, 180 Bodine High School for International Affairs, Philadelphia, PA, 176 Boston English High (The Fenway Program), Boston, MA, 242 Bromfield High School, Harvard, MA, 152 , 184 Brookline High School, Brookline, MA, 150 Brunswick High School, Brunswick, ME, 165

C Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Cambridge, MA, 147 -50, 184 Carlisle Middle School, Carlisle, MA, 50 , 55 -59 Catlin-Gabel School, Portland, OR, 188 Comptche School, Comptche, CA, 107 Crossroads School, St. Louis, MO, 169 -70

D

Deerfield Valley Elementary School, Wilmington, VT, 62 Dover-Sherborn High School, Dover, MA, 33 , 218 Dulce High School, Dulce, NM, 110

E Elbridge Elementary School, Elbridge, NY, 73

F Fletcher Elementary School, Cambridge, MA, 88 -94 Freelance Players, Boston, MA, 215 Fort River School, Amherst, MA, 53 -55

G Galileo High School, San Fransisco, CA, 129 -40 Graham and Parks Middle School, Cambridge, MA, 158 -61 Page 267

H Hawthorne School, Oakland, CA, 73 , 79 Heath Elementary School, Brookline, MA, 97 -101 Hillside School, Needham, MA, 212

J John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 50 , 55 Joyce Kilmer School, West Roxbury, MA, 213

L Lakeside School, Seattle, WA, 171 Loma Vista School, Vallejo, CA, 73

N Needham High School, Needham, MA, 28 , 120 -24

P P.S. 230 , Brooklyn, NY, 108

S San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, 60 Solomon Lewenberg Middle School, Mattapan, MA, 113 State University College, New Paltz, NY, 51 Summer Street Elementary School, Lynnfield, MA, 94 -97

W Walnut Street School, Brattleboro, VT, 62 Wayland High School, Wayland, MA, 185 West Linn High School, West Linn, OR, 167