Ken Futanic brings together people who disagree deeply about the issues that most divide school communities these days, such as education about gender and sexual identity and America’s history of racism.
And he records the conversation.
You might think that arguments involve shouting matches and verbal fireworks. But Futernik, a longtime educator who has served as an elementary school teacher, teacher educator, and leader of the National Center for School Renewal, aims to keep the conversation as civil and productive as possible. To do this, he uses depolarization strategies such as “looping,” having each person repeat the other person’s argument in their own words, and then asking the other person if he or she is hearing exactly what he or she is saying. . The goal is to highlight areas of agreement rather than inconsistencies.
Futernick shares these recorded discussions on his podcast.Courageous conversations about our schools.”
The conversations unfold slowly, but many are engaging.like one episode Regarding support for LGBTQ students. One of the guests was Willie Carver Jr., who was named Kentucky’s 2022 Teacher of the Year and is gay, but he has also spoken out about hostility toward LGBTQ educators and students in gay schools. With the situation increasing, I quit my job out of fear. Another guest was Dov Fischer, a law professor, Orthodox Jewish rabbi, and political conservative who wrote an op-ed in 2022 opposing school policies that require students to specify their gender identity.
After talking for more than an hour, “they started to realize that they didn’t really disagree that much,” Futanic says. “Fisher said, “Actually, I’m starting to identify as a Jew who grew up in New York, and was sometimes teased and bullied for being Jewish, and as an American, completely American.” ‘I’ve never felt like that, and what am I doing?’ I hear you really say that. [that] As a gay man, you’ve had to quit your job because you’ve felt like the other person. ” So by the end of the conversation, they started calling each other friends. ”
We connected with Futernick on this week’s EdSurge Podcast to hear what we’ve learned from over 20 episodes of his podcast and advice on how to de-escalate the often heated and toxic discussions that have erupted in schools in recent years. I did.
Listen to the episode of apple podcast, cloudy, spotify Listen to podcasts anywhere or use the player on this page. Or read the partial transcript below, edited for clarity.
EdSurge: I understand that your interest in this issue stemmed from your work advising low-performing schools.
Ken Futernick: It’s rather common for relationships to become strained and trust to be lost between administrators and teachers, and even between teachers.
Not only is there no collaboration, but sometimes teachers stop talking to each other. And that’s never a good thing and ultimately causes some teachers to leave the profession.
why don’t they talk to each other?
Sometimes I can’t remember.
You can usually trace it back to the incident. An issue arose where there was a disagreement about school policy, and people lined up on one side of the issue and another, but it was not resolved. And they couldn’t say, “Let’s agree to disagree.” And it becomes just a matter of wedges.
Or you may have an administrator with a philosophical approach that some teachers agree with and others disagree with. And they will line up on either side and remain divided.
So you started this because you felt like this was an issue that needed more attention, and this challenge of talking to each other about the issue?
right. I was concerned that so-called “culture wars” were erupting everywhere. Initially it was about critical race theory, but it has since expanded to other issues. The idea was that somehow teachers were talking about things they shouldn’t talk about with young children. There were many things that didn’t go well. People will show up to school board meetings, line up, get three minutes, and accuse teachers of doing things that are often not true. But there is no other place that most school districts have created to have civil and productive conversations. So the podcast I created is a place to do that.
How do you explain how these culture wars have expanded in schools in recent years?
Of course, there have long been concerns about things like books that children have access to. But what’s different these days, thanks to social media, is that there are people who fit into Amanda Ripley’s category.Conflict Entrepreneur.These are people who promote conflict for the sake of conflict, simply because they have political or economic interests.
And all you have to do is convince the parents that the teacher is doing something wrong and is inciting fear. And if you haven’t been to school lately or are a parent of any kind, you’re probably thinking, “That doesn’t seem right.” So even if hackles are raised, there’s no easy way for people to know if it’s actually true. So when you hear it so many times you start believing it. And a lot of people get motivated and start saying, “I don’t want that, I’m going to vote for a law to stop it.”
But you never get to actually have an honest conversation with an educator and say, “Yay!” I’ve heard this before. Is it true that you are indoctrinated? ”
And I think teachers will say, “Please come to the classroom and take a look.” Stronger relationships between parents and educators, through courageous conversations and a little empathy and curiosity, rather than approaching the conversation with suspicion or contempt, often result in stronger relationships between parents and educators. Such problems will be solved. He is called a left-wing educator.
For schools, teachers, and school leaders, have you ever found something that can change the atmosphere when the discussion becomes toxic?
I mentioned earlier that I’ve worked with some of the lowest-performing schools in the country. And what we found was that people were kind of polarized in those schools. They were on either side. People stopped talking, showing that there was little trust. So before we could focus on teaching and learning and curriculum to turn these schools around and strive to deliver better outcomes for students, we needed to repair relationships within the schools.
There is an elementary school in Stockton, California. In a survey of all teachers at an elementary school, we asked how much trust they felt among school staff, administrators, and the entire school community, and found that the level of trust was very low. is. I asked them how much they enjoyed coming to work. Not many people enjoyed it.
So we got everyone to agree to come together spontaneously for an after-school meeting, and we said, “Hey! “What if instead of going back and trying to change the past, we could define a different future for all of us? Is that possible? But what values do we want to live by as a school community? I wish I could list them.”
And they listed honesty, integrity, and trust. Something like that. And I said, “What does that actually look like in terms of what you do and what you don’t do?” It is said that it was not possible. Say hello, wave and don’t ignore each other. It’s a simple thing, but they made the list.
And almost all of them said, “I’d be happy to work on that.” And, you know, I’ll be back again in a month.
And I guarantee you it will go off track, or it will appear to go off track at some point, [so] Sometimes you have to go back and talk, how do you have that conversation?
When we did this for a few months and then surveyed them a year later to see how much trust they felt, 90 percent of them said they enjoyed coming to work. And what’s really great is that academically he had 50 schools at Stockton Unified. And we hadn’t even started focusing on teaching and learning, we were just repairing relationships.
listen to the entire conversation On the EdSurge Podcast.
