Best Practice

Handling challenging student conversations and questions

Pastoral issues
The regularity of difficult conversations in the classroom has increased over Sanum J Khan’s 13 years in education. In this article she describes how to facilitate these discussions – whether planned or unplanned – with respect and clear boundaries in place
Image: Adobe Stock

As an RE teacher, dealing with challenging conversations in lessons was a core part of my training and I practised this every time I stepped into the classroom.

I thought carefully about how to encourage enquiry without belittling people’s identities and how to foster scrutiny of views without disrespecting individuals.

However, young people’s experience with political rhetoric and social movements has changed dramatically during my time in teaching. Not only has the regularity of these conversations changed but the nature of them has, too.

I wrote last year in SecEd about capturing meaningful student voice and appeared recently on The School Should Be Podcast discussing how we have addressed the Israel/Gaza conflict in my school (see further information).

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