Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to insightful questions, the podcast where we dive deep into the big ideas shaping Eastside Prep's community and beyond. I'm your host, Sam Uswak, and in this series, we're exploring the theme that's at the heart of our school year, leading compassionately empathetic dialogue. Each episode, I'll be sitting down with different members of our eps community to unpack what this theme means in their world, whether it's in the classroom, on the field, in performance spaces, or even behind the scenes.
Together we'll uncover how empathetic dialogue isn't just a concept, but a practice that informs leadership, strengthens relationships, and creates meaningful connections. So join us as we ask the insightful questions that help us lead with compassion and listen with intention. Let's get started.
Our guests for today are Caitlin McLean, social science discipline lead, and Cheryl Schenck, our director of enrollment management. Thank you so much for joining me today. So real quick, how is the start of the school year going for you?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Well, I've only been in the classroom for a week, so it's hard to put my finger on the exact pulse. But it seems that the school year is much like the world around us, quickly evolving, and kids are really excited to engage with everything that is on the news and coming down there their pike. But it's been a great start to the year. A lot of energy, more than I expected.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: One takeaway that I have so far is that during our fall orientations, I heard a lot of sentiments about just how kind EPS students were being in the various spaces where we host these activities. We always get a lot of feedback from our program partners. And while there are still preteens and teens, and there are all sorts of things that come along with that, it's nice to consider how students are relating to one another and the outside world with some curiosity and kindness, even amidst some challenging things like launching school and being in an election year.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: For example, Sam, you chose leading compassionately empathetic dialogue as the theme for the upcoming Inspire magazine and for the entire series school year. Can you tell us why you chose that theme?
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Well, this is one of, this is a conversation that's been brewing for a long time, and it really gets down to sort of a fundamental question about what is school for?
In my view, you know, school is a place that we create so people can test out ideas, they can gain new perspectives, and they can work with one another. And that's a tall order to be able to inhabit someone else's perspective and to consider your own to think about how identity might play a role in the conversations we're having. These are a lot of complex concepts on their own that we're bringing all together at once. So Eastside Prep has always been about being able to talk about ideas, putting a lot of ideas on the table, and yet we have this election year coming up, and we want to be able to engage in conversation about the issues, the policies, all the things that go into a presidential election year. But to be honest, this is really much more about the long term. One of the things I learned at a conference we'll get to this summer was you don't just sort of spin up the capacity to have a productive conversation.
It's a set of skills, maybe even a way of being a habit of mind. And if we can equip our kiddos with that capacity before they leave our campus for their next chapter, we have done them a wonderful service. So that's why we chose it.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: So with that timing of the election year that you already mentioned, I'm curious.
You talk about those enduring skills, but what specific challenges do you foresee for Eastside Prep and maybe other school communities right now?
[00:04:31] Speaker A: I think the enduring challenge for Eastside Prep and other school communities are the times we find ourselves in. And that is kind of a cliche, but schools work to create their own cultures, but we're always in the context of the greater societal culture.
One of the questions I hope to get answered this last summer was, are things really more polarized now than they've ever been? Or does every generation sort of end up feeling that way? And from our partners at the close up foundation, we were given real data that would suggest that, yes, it is factually accurate that America is far more polarized now than we were 40 years ago. That creates an incredible challenge for our young people to learn these skills when perhaps what they're seeing being modeled is not what we would hope to teach them.
[00:05:32] Speaker C: And I think that what you're highlighting about the conference that you all attended, similarly, learning from the global education benchmark group that co hosted the conference that for EPS community members, including myself, attended right after that one, getting the specific data points along the lines of what you're discussing, that this type of engagement, this type of conversation is all the more challenging because of that climate, I think heightens why it's all the more important that we in our school community be not just doing this work, but instructing on this work, really engaging in it in educational ways.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: It makes it all the more urgent in some ways. So actually, let's start there. Cheryl, why don't you tell us about your experience?
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Well, I mean, first of all, I feel really lucky that as eps, faculty and staff members, we can attend these kind of professional development opportunities, because it acknowledges that we are learners at every age and every stage, and that we also, if we're going to be doing any sort of initiatives that are challenging professionally or challenging within a school community, we need to build capacity there. And doing that in a small cohort fashion, I think is invaluable. I was with John Stegman, our head of upper School, Bess McKinney, who's our co coordinator of EICL Equity, inclusion and compatibility, leadership, and also part of our social science faculty. And then Matt Delaney, who's our director of academic design and integration. And so, being able to be in dialogue with one another while we're grappling with this content, it was a marked difference from colleagues that could only attend with just one member of their school community, for example. But we really got into the whole nature of how dialogue differs from other forms of discourse. And this is gonna sound really jargony, maybe, but I would love to unpack that if you feel like we've got space and time for that.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things I learned as well, is there are a lot of ways of going about having conversation, and being intentional about that is part of the key.
[00:08:01] Speaker C: Yeah, because there are so many manners in which we can be part of these discourses with one another.
You can think about debate, for example, taking a position, and you're trying to convince others of it, or maybe you're having a discussion and it's more about just exchanging ideas and information and getting opinions out there. If you're having a conversation, then it can be about doing that exchange for the purposes of achieving a goal. Like, we have to make a decision about something, or we have to go somewhere, do something. How is that going to come about? Whereas dialogue is counter to all of those different forms of discourse in which we are engaging in this free flow of ideas and meaning, and a lot of times from a personal kind of eye perspective, with no particular end in sight, so having a bias towards action, in which conversation fuels decisions or further actions, dialogue is countercultural to that form, all those other forms of discourse. So if we're really trying to truly listen and be heard, what kind of space does that take? How do we create that in the smallest one on one kind of ways, as well as in a classroom or advisory or a meeting space? What is that all about. I think that was really one of the key takeaways that I had in terms of how dialogue can be a tool for building understanding between diverse members of a community while also inherently challenging because of that.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: So it sounds like having an understanding of why you're having the conversation, heading into the conversation is really important.
What do you see as the chief differences between, say, I'm going to debate you and I'm going to engage in a dialogue with you?
[00:10:21] Speaker C: Well, fundamentally, the goal of convincing somebody of one's stance, maybe it's an actually held opinion, maybe it's a stance that you're just taking as a form of an exercise.
But I think really getting into that desire for multiple perspectives to be heard and for there to not be an inherent judgment of this is the best perspective because this is the one that wins the argument. That is the biggest difference in my mind between debate and dialogue.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: So one thing that I think is important to mention is we already teach these skills at our school and we do it really well, and we do want to have students engage in challenging topics. I think one of the goals of this effort is to try to knit those efforts together and really have a unified approach. So, Caitlin, I'm going to ask you about the civil discourse lab in just a second. Cheryl, how do you already see dialogue in action at eps?
[00:11:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I loved thinking about this when confronted with this construct of what is dialogue? Cause I was like, oh, this is already happening in harkness discussions and tela discussions that are happening, especially in literature and social science courses around particular topics. I knew from personal experience, I co teach a seminar each spring that this is something that happens in our seminar program, where it's really about floating ideas to the surface, a lot of times based on a common text. But it's really about creating a space where that small group like six to eight was really an emphasized point in the intercultural Dialogue Institute, that that's the sweet spot in terms of being able to get every voice included around the table in a dialogue. And our seminar program already has that sweet spot in action in terms of the ideal number of participants. I also think that education beyond the classroom is a great example of dialogue happening, because sometimes when we are giving students really novel experiences that they have to process debriefs about those experiences will really be that just open sharing time where it's coming from that I perspective. Depending upon a student's own service or travel or cultural experiences, they may be encountering that from a totally fresh perspective and being able to have those perspectives spoken into a space is a really important part of students making meaning of things like education. Be in the classroom, EBC, and then the other two that come to mind are the affinity groups. So we have these for both students in middle school and upper school. We also have faculty, staff, affinity groups. And I think that fundamentally sharing a common sense of set of identities or lived experiences that the group members share, that eye perspective, there's going to more likely be a really easy flow of ideas because of that shared sense of identities or perspectives, lived experiences. But I think that dialogue can be seen there. And then finally, the groups that we have through are accompanied for caregivers program. And I know we're kicking that off again in October. For our parent guardian community, that is really about supporting our students through first supporting ourselves as adults and caregivers. And so that experience of, again, just really hearing each other's lived experiences and reserving judgment and really seeking to find, you know, what's that personal truth in there for this person who's really vulnerably sharing right now? I think dialogue is present there as well. So those would all be examples of where dialogue is already happening in our school community.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Wonderful. Thank you. So the week prior to the Institute on Intercultural Dialogue, which Cheryl attended, there were four of us, including Caitlin and me, who attended the civil discourse lab put on by the National association of Independent Schools.
So, Caitlin.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: What surprised you about that experience? What'd you take away where you were like, huh?
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Well, what's interesting is that hearing Cheryl talk, there's actually a lot of overlap in the fundamental perspective shifting that happened for me, based on what you just shared in that it decentered the notion of debate and even just discussion in an open ended format.
And it complicated that term. And I hadn't really sat with that for a while. You know, I really, social science and humanities based classrooms constantly are using the phrase discussion based learning, and I hadn't really interrogated that concept in a while. I had interrogated how I support students engaging with it, but not the actual term itself and the many different ways that could be challenged or stretched in the classroom. So I came into the conference really thinking about the election and the political nature of the conversations we would be having. And what I found is I left really thinking about the format of the conversations. And while the election was helpful as fodder for those conversations, you could almost put any somewhat controversial or multi sided topic in there. As long as the format was sound and the skills were sound, then it could be almost anything. That the students were engaging with.
So that decentering of debate and discussion was really helpful for me as an educator. I also think every time I step outside the walls of a school that I'm at and I engage with other educators, my ability to rethink my own practice, rethink the own culture in my classroom, that just gets expanded so much more than my daily practice when I'm sort of in the zone at school allows. So that was also very refreshing and a little therapeutic as an educator to be in a room with a group of people doing this work. I forgot how powerful that was.
On top of the sort of interrogation of debate and dialogue and discourse and discussion and all of the different terms that emerged for engaging in these topics.
I was just really taken by the developmental ways in which teenagers in particular are primed for tribal groupings.
You know, they are in some ways, really sort of picking teams, making teams, identifying with teams, using symbols of in and out group culture. And when you think about that developmental stage as it relates to tribal politics, which is a lot of what we're seeing emerge in the two party system right now, it makes tons of sense that kids are being inundated with tribal political, performance based information and news and social media, and that's a language that speaks to them. And part of the work in the classroom is decentering the team based narrative and really trying to emphasize the issues and get kids to see there's actually a social and a public problem in front of them. And we need solutions, informed solutions, and creative ideas to move forward.
What does that actually look like? Let's dive deeper into the issue rather than the political discourse around that issue or the tribal identity that's emerging in this sort of team winner loser dynamic that we're seeing in the political performances. So that was really cool to engage with at the conference and has very much been a part of my thinking in the classroom.
[00:19:36] Speaker C: And that's tough developmentally for teenagers. I just think about how much they want to feel, quote unquote, normal, and, like, belonging comes from feeling this sense of, like, I'm not sticking out within these group identities that I see constructed in front of me. So even when we want to give them multiple pathways to success and multiple opportunities to express their individuality, it's so hard if they feel like, ooh, my sort of social survival, which feels like my survival in a teenage brain, depends on belonging to one of these groups.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: So that's what I was going to ask you. So it sounds like, Caitlin, what you're describing is needing to push through this idea that in this conversation I'm advocating for the team I'm on and sort of shedding that allegiance or identity or what have you, and embracing a conversation about, okay, what is it that the teams are actually fighting over or advocating for? What is the substance of that so that those issues move to the forefront as opposed to whose side you're on. Am I getting that?
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Definitely. And I think that is hard work for adults. So to ask teenagers to do it when they are peak developmentally primed for that type of thinking is really, really difficult. You know, it's counter cultural, it's counter developmental. And so the skills and strategies have to be that much more tangible and overt for teenagers to grab onto and to see value in it. Also, I think, is really challenging to exist in nuance.
And that's really what we're asking them to do, is to recognize that they can have a variety of opinions on different issues. It doesn't have to fall into two buckets, you know, and they don't have to wholesale adopt an opinion just because it's in one bucket. And that level of complexity is, it takes work. You have to be informed. So it's more than just saying, this is my slate of views. And it's also sometimes it feels unnatural for teenagers and for adults because it feels like they might be betraying a particular team or group that they identify with.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: So I'll open this up to both of you all. How can schools in general, and eps in particular, better equip our students for the kind of conversations we hope them to have?
[00:22:24] Speaker C: I think the idea of facilitation that certainly, Caitlin, you're touching upon here in terms of how do we sort of get them away from these group identities and into the actual fodder of the discourse itself, the dialogue, the discussion.
I think that facilitation is something that was really emphasized in our conference that I can see as being so key, whatever age group we are interacting with. So if a facilitator can provide an understanding of the framework for the dialogue, here's the amount of time that we're going to spend with this topic. Here is the set of conversational norms that we have that we can mutually agree upon. Take some time to go through those conversational norms and then really being able to. I think one important thing is saying that silence on the part of a facilitator is not an inherent endorsement of a specific viewpoint. And I think that's really important for students who might feel like, oh, my identity could be easily marginalized by this discussion, by this dialogue, or those who feel like their viewpoints are not well represented in our school community or in a classroom space or whatever it may be. I think that that facilitation and being intentional about the norms of that form of engagement is one of the most important things, and that takes time and intentionality. So I think really being able to say, okay, we could just launch right into this, but if we take five to ten minutes to go over norms, how much better is that experience going to be for everybody involved? I think that's a question we can ask ourselves in any sort of meeting, classroom group configuration.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: To that point, I've really thought about what does effective and intentional class norming look like given the context of this year?
And I've actually waited a week or two to do class norming with my 11th graders and my 12th graders and my 9th through 12th in public speaking because I needed to understand what our organic culture was and that needed some time to develop before we then put boundaries up around it. And it's the response from students in the class norming conversations and exercises feels less cookie cutter this year because they aren't primed to just say respect in the classroom. You know, they have a sense of what the boundaries of respect might look like within this set of students and with these topics, so their ability to be a little more nuanced in what boundaries they ask for.
I've noticed that this year, just by pausing the other piece in the classrooms that I'm really committed to making sure I give space for is encouraging the students, but actually making time for listening to understand.
You know, so much of the discussion or debate culture is when do you get in next and preparing that comment? And you're sort of listening, but you're also processing and responding in the moment and planning for your contribution. And structured academic controversies and other styles of dialogue actually build in phases where you have to listen to the other perspective, repeat what you've heard, and get their consent on your understanding before you can move on. And that, to me, is really empowering of the dialogue method because you're asking students to hear with empathy what the other side is to hear without judgment and to get their consent for how they were heard. You know, if that could exist in the adult world, you know, those are therapy and counseling skills for life. And I hadn't really made dedicated space in a lot of the conversations, structured conversations we were having before. And so that is a goal of mine this year to really play around with what does listening to hear and gaining consent from those who feel heard look like in these conversations.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: That's a powerful paraphrase, not just a I'm reflecting what I heard right back at you. But if I am saying this, did I get that correct? Did I gather your meaning correctly? Obtain your consent for it? Wow. I love that.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Well, and I think, too, I hesitate to add more structure into both conversation amongst adults and students for fear of it maybe feeling contrived or it'll take too long. And yet it is by doing that that you're able to help everyone slow down and really emphasize that listening piece. I got to tell a quick story about how hardwired I am to not necessarily do that. We started our summer leadership team meetings with a revisitation of our own norms, and Cheryl was modeling how to do a dialogue.
So we did a dialogue, and then at the end of the dialogue, I had this sense that, well, we're not doing our meetings very well and we gotta fix it right now. So. All right, everyone give me some feedback. And I need a 15 point plan by 10:00. And Cheryl was like, you are missing the entire point of that exercise. And I went, oh, great. So I do think in terms of bias towards action or in terms of trying to win the point, that is for many a default mode. And so it's going to take multiple reps, multiple repetitions, multiple times through to kind of push through that a little bit.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: Yeah. And just making that culture visible of Sam, what you were doing there, trying to move to solution that has a place in time. But that's not dialogue. Exactly.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Well, thank you so much for being here today on the first podcast of this year. I really appreciate it.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it was great.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: To gain more insights, check out the eps weekly news each Friday.
[00:29:27] Speaker C: Sadeena.
