How to Facilitate Healthy & Respectful Conversations from a Presentation for the Tarrant Foundation

Why Harkness Posters and Stickers? 

 We developed Harkness posters and stickers as one way to  expand and reference our Harkness practice  this year. This idea came from our Harkness PLC, where one teacher mentioned,” If we had a set of posters in our classrooms that highlighted the essential skills of Harkness we could refer to them during discussions.” Another  masterful Harkness practitioner in our PLC had the idea of creating stickers  to  give to students who demonstrate  Harkness skills during a particular  discussion.

 

 The “method behind this madness” is  this:  Harkness discussions- conversations where students feel comfortable  sharing their ideas, taking risks and asking probing questions  is grounded in a classroom climate based on trust,  mutual respect and collaboration.   Only when students feel that their voices are valued, respected and acknowledged will they feel safe to share their curiosities and questions with one another.

Harkness  Posters 

The  Posters  highlight some of the essential  skills of Harkness:

  

Ideas for using the posters:

Begin by going over these skills and discuss examples of what each of these skills looks like ( we have  lots of resources on the Strategies in  Classroom Dialogue  website to help with introducing and teaching Harkness skills)

Put the posters in the middle of the table or in the middle of circle discussion so students  have these  visible reminders:

 Identify one or two skills that you want to work on during a particular discussion, hold up the  poster and ask, “What does this look and  sound like?” Discuss this prior to the discussion

( remember to debrief after-”how did it go?”)

(Harkness discussion in a French class )

When a student does an exemplary job or demonstrates a skill,   give credit by pointing to the poster.

Display the posters  in  your room!

Harkness  Stickers 

 The Harkness stickers  are designed to practice and reinforce some of the essential skills of Harkness. You, as the teacher, can decide who might be rewarded with a particular sticker after a Harkness discussion, OR students can give “shout outs” to one another  as to  who has earned a sticker for a particular discussion

The  Harkness Table sticker can be  used for a number of purposes:

You can “customize” the  gift of the sticker to represent whatever you wish to reward for a particular student, For example, you might say to a student, ”You  were 100% present during our  discussion,” or ”Your comments were  extremely insightful today. ” We can recognize students who may struggle with Harkness by acknowledging  what they HAVE done well, “ You were prepared today!” “You were a great listener” are just some of the examples  of what you might say to students to give them some positive reinforcement when it is warranted. .

 What is most important about this stickers is  how this can help students to become more aware of the dynamics  in Harkness discussions 

Using stickers  is a way of working with intention to highlight  exceptional moments in a Harkness discussion.  The stickers are used to  highlight actions and contributions, not  personalities.  Most importantly,  the stickers can be one way for students  to be cognizant of the dynamics of the discussion and  become keen observers of the contributions of their peers. The more they can take ownership of the discussion and work to encourage the engagement of all students, the better.

 Try using the posters and the stickers- and  let’s see how this is working. I will reach  out again at the end of the second quarter to get your feedback and suggestions.