Teaching for the essential struggle of Civil Discourse

Program Overview

Learning is not an insular exercise; it requires us to engage with the world around us. However, in an era of polarization and misinformation, authentic dialogue is a struggle.

Discover practical strategies for teaching and supporting students’ civil discourse skills through respectful dialogue and engagement with diverse perspectives. Participants will build knowledge to create supportive classroom cultures, learn ideas for implementing interdisciplinary civil discourse practices, and apply strategies to facilitate meaningful conversations on complex and diverse topics. Participants will receive free digital resources to support their work moving forward.

ABOUT OUR PRESENTERS

Sarah Lane is an Educator Engagement Specialist for Sphere, focusing on Sphere on the Road efforts and Sphere Alumni engagement. She has K-12 experiences that include being a teacher, instructional coach and facilitator, member of administrative teams, and curriculum writer. She has taught in three states and across urban and rural spaces. Sarah enjoys partnering with educators and administrators to foster spaces of civil discourse and community.

John Snoad, Senior Manager at Sphere Education Initiatives, is a career educator with nearly 40 years of highly effective teaching, coaching, and professional development leadership in secondary social studies.  His experiences include working with multiple learners in urban, suburban, and rural settings. Relying on his diverse teaching experiences, as well as years of coaching high school football, John has a diverse skillset grounded on inquiry, civil discourse, and collaboration across the curriculum.

Sphere Education Initiatives is a nonpartisan professional learning organization that works with grades 5-12 educators and administrators to provide them with the knowledge, experience, professional development, and viewpoint diverse resources to foster and facilitate difficult conversations on the most pressing issues to the classroom and equip our country’s students to engage in civil discourse. We work across disciplines and subject areas to provide pedagogical and content-centered civil discourse strategies with a firm eye towards reducing polarization and helping the next generation learn to engage peacefully to overcome differences, rekindling the founding principles of our democracy and building a more civil society. Headquartered in our nation’s capital, Sphere has a national reach with a network of some 20,000 educators across all 50 states and U.S. territories.