"Discussion of Democratic Society"
    In reading this article, I was struck by a notion on page five. The author argues that there are differences between discussion, dialogue, and conversation. Conversation is thought to be a bit less formal while the others require "mutual responsive" participants and exploration of new ideas and opinions. One philosopher, Richard Rorty, believed that conversation created a "we" in a group instead of "they." This is what struck me. In my own practicum school, there is a bit of us and them. There's students vs. any authority whatsoever. There's cool kids vs. really poor kids. There's general ed kids vs. non-general. Our responsibility as teachers is to help these kids learn 1) to be tolerant and respectful and 2) to learn how to think and communicate. When we ask our students to discuss an idea with their table partner after thinking it through themselves first, they often struggle with showing that respect. Most commonly, I see students copy another student's work. Sometimes, I see one kid trying to share his idea and his partner cuts him off to say how wrong he is. We may think that discussion and conversation is easy. But it is not. They do not know how to share and build ideas naturally. Politeness and higher level thinking is mostly foreign. As we practice having conversations with our students, building relationships, we can model the type of discussion we hope for them to have. But we also need to give opportunities for them to take a complex idea, and stretch their brains as they pull it apart and build it back up together.
    I know that my students have told me they do not give their best effort in school because our class is pretty much on repeat of what they have learned before. The work we receive reflects that they do not have the skills (or are choosing not to demonstrate the skills) that would allow the class to move onto new material and ideas. In discussion, need to show mindfulness and deliberation. To reach a goal or come to a conclusion, they need to listen and work with others and they need to be greatly open to the thoughts of others. I wonder how to close the gap between what we teachers are trying to do (scaffolding, collecting data, teaching skills, etc.) and what the students think is happening. I realize we can provide them with practice and we can model behaviors. We can correct their methods as they work, but how can we show them that each lesson and skill (at least in language arts) is deliberately chosen to teach them a skill they will truly need later in life?