Embracing Diversity

by Mary Ellen Daneels, Lead Teacher Mentor

A few years ago, students in my class participated in Project Soapbox, a program sponsored by the Mikva Challenge in which students give a two to three minute speech in response to the prompt, “What is the biggest issue facing your community?” We heard heartfelt pleas to end bullying, respond to racial and religious discrimination, address the gender gap, and promote acceptance of the LGBTQ community. Each speech ended with a “call to action” that implored the audience to address the essential question, “How should we live together?”

The students and I invited administrators, police resource officers, school board members and county officials who worked with at-risk teens to listen and provide feedback to the speeches. The adults in the room valued the passionate, heartfelt pleas for change and encouraged the students to present their findings to the school board. The students did some further investigation and presented a six-point plan of action at a school board meeting. This resulted in policy changes, the development of a more comprehensive plan to address bullying and a new school touchstone created by the students to articulate what kind of school climate they wanted. The touchstone was created through student body input and now hangs in every classroom as a foundation of how all members of our school are to conduct themselves, in short, how we as school community should “live together.”

In crafting the school touchstone, the most animated conversation involved how we should respond to our “deepest differences”- the very topics that were highlighted in the Soapbox Speeches. Students considered using the word tolerance until one student exclaimed, “Well, I would not feel very good if someone told me they ‘tolerated’ what made me unique, I want them to EMBRACE DIVERSITY!”


The Illinois Civics requirement promotes the proven practice of current and controversial issue discussions in part to “embrace diversity.” It is only when we dialogue about our deepest differences that we can (as Shawn stated in a previous blog), “seek to understand the values that underlie often deeply personal contrasting beliefs through deliberative dialogue, with a commitment to identifying areas of agreement.”

There are many resources available to teachers to help students understand multiple perspectives on the most compelling questions facing our communities and promote purposeful discourse.
  • AllSides.com provides current events articles from multiple sources on the political spectrum.
  • ProCon.org provides lesson plans and primary sources related to controversial issues.
  • Deliberating in a Democracy provides Structured Academic Controversies on a multitude of issues, local to global. Many are in multiple languages.
  • The New York Times Upfront Magazine provides current and controversial deliberations monthly.
  • Teachers can sign up for the Student Government Affairs Program newsletter that curates a current events issue each month that culminates in proposed “informed action” that students can take.
Do you have any resources to share to help facilitate current and controversial issue discussions in the civics classroom? Please leave a comment to this blog. Together, we can prepare Illinois students for college, career and civic life.

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