In Pursuit of Community

This past summer, two of my colleagues and I had the pleasure of attending a virtual workshop hosted by AISNE called: Pre-Election Clinic: Workshopping Responses to Challenging Scenarios. As the title suggests, the workshop focused on how to guide our students through an election season at a time when political views are dividing communities and creating hostility. Rather than attempt to avoid conflict, the workshop’s host, Jason Craige Harris, acknowledged the inevitability of conflicts, disagreements, and debates this fall and offered educators strategies to help mediate those difficult times by keeping the “pursuit of community” as the guiding principle. He urged “interacting versus transacting” and “modeling intellectual humility” by always being willing to listen and learn. As I listened to him speak and participated in small-group discussions, I thought to myself, “This has Brimmer Core Values written all over it!” How fortunate that the messages the speaker articulated to his audience were right in line with how we lead our community at Brimmer every day.

 

As a Brimmer parent myself, I look to the School to partner with my family in helping our children become people who can form opinions on important topics based on the information they seek and to which they are exposed. With our younger learners, the process of explaining how an election works in developmentally appropriate and accessible language may pique their interest in learning more and participating in our democracy once they are old enough. By encouraging our older students to dive into news sources and ask questions, we are fostering thoughtful discourse among students on campus. Curiosity breeds knowledge, and I want more than anything to nurture the curiosity of my own children.

 

To be sure, though we will encourage conversation among students, we will intervene if discussions turn uncivil or to rhetoric that is against our Core Values as a School. It’s a difficult time to disagree politically, but we feel confident that it can be done with respect.

 

During this election season, we will lead with the dignity and integrity of the Brimmer community at the forefront. The intended outcome of any political discussion at school should be to hear one another’s views and let the understanding of one person’s perspective inform the thoughts of another. In his talk, the speaker emphasized being “in right relationship over being right,” and it is that kind of mutual respect among peers and colleagues – and an important Core Value – that will help guide us through this important time.