As an educator, it’s both normal and important to guide your students through challenging discussions in class. Your students are affected by social, political, and other topics both in and outside of school. Although they can be difficult at times, conversations about these topics can help students come to a deeper understanding of and respect for those with perspectives different from their own. This workshop will engage in topics of social studies, history, current events and digital media to craft ideas, lessons and skills for educators to be confident handling sensitive topics.
Event Overview
Start 9:30 am
10:00 am - 12:00 Dr. Diana Hess - The Civic Power of Discussion in the Classroom
12:00pm - 12:45 pm Lunch (provided)
12:45 pm - 2:45 pm Julie N. Smith - Media Literacy and Digital Wellness
2:45 pm - 3:15 pm Reflection
DR. DIANA HESS - The Civic Power of Discussion in the Classroom
The purposeful inclusion of controversial issues in the school curriculum, when done wisely and well, can communicate by example the essence of what engages communities is civic discourse while simultaneously building the skills and dispositions that young people will need to live in and improve such communities. Diana Hess provides teachers a spirited and detailed argument for why curricula and teaching based on controversial issues are truly crucial at this time. Through rich empirical research from real classrooms throughout the nation, she demonstrates why schools have the potential to be particularly powerful sites for civic education and why this form of education must include sustained attention to authentic and controversial political issues that animate political communities.
JULIE SMITH - Media Literacy and Digital Wellness
Building on the work from the morning, we will acknowledge that teaching in a politicized classroom in a time of trauma is the challenge of our time. What role do the media play in this, and what difference does it make?
Join professor and author Julie Smith as she shares the latest research on how media literacy skills can help students (and their parents!) with news coverage, doomscrolling, social media drama and digital forensics. You'll leave with a list of tips and tools to help our students navigate their digital worlds.
Cost
FREE - for employees of the School District for the City of St. Charles
$185 - General Admission
Facilitators
Julie Smith
Julie Smith is on a mission to make the world more media literate. She is on the faculty of the School of Communications at Webster University and is the author of "Master the Media: How Teaching Media Literacy Can Save Our Plugged-In World". Julie has presented in fourteen states and nine countries to student, parent and teacher groups about media literacy, social media and digital forensics.
Julie co-hosts the podcast "What the Media" on KMOX and actually thinks we 'd be better informed with ten minutes of news a day rather than 24 hours. She has three adult sons, a dog who doesn't know she's a dog and an addiction to Diet Coke.
Diana Hess
Diana E. Hess is the dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison and holds the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education. Dr. Hess’s research focuses on civic and democratic education. Her first book, Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion (Routledge, 2009), won the Exemplary Research Award (2009) from the National Council for the Social Studies. Her second book, co-authored with Professor Paula McAvoy, titled The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education (Routledge, 2015) won the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award (2016) and the Grawemeyer Award (2017). Dr. Hess also received the Jean Dresden Grambs Career Research in Social Studies Award from the National Council for the Social Studies (2017). In 2019, Dr. Hess was elected to the National Academy of Education. Her research has been funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. Dr. Hess is currently the principal investigator of a multi-year study of The Discussion Project, a professional development program that aims to help instructors create inclusive, engaging, and academically rigorous discussions in higher education courses. Formerly, Dr. Hess was the senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school teacher, a teachers’ union president, and the associate executive director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. Dr. Hess received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1998.