“What will you remember from our class?” I asked my English class in May, during the last month of their senior year. My students sat quietly considering the question.
“I will remember that we didn’t agree, but we were still very respectful and I loved it. “I loved the respect we have for each other,” said one of them.
I nodded to show that I understood and that this was important to me too. I was also surprised by the cleverness with which my students disagreed. In a year filled with tumult, geopolitical conflict, and a widespread COVID hangover, I often marveled at how my 17- and 18-year-old students calmly and respectfully disagreed on a variety of topics, including their perspectives on the Black Lives Matter movement. and the nuances surrounding it, Donald Trump’s decisions during his presidency and the moral complexities surrounding George’s decision to shoot Lenny in “Of Mice and Men.”
How did this happen? In short, I decided to experiment with Spider Web Discussions, a strategy that leverages the web of connections between students as they bounce a discussion idea back and forth. I learned about this revolutionary classroom practice in Alexis Wiggins’ 2017 book, “The Best Class You Never Taught.” The idea is simple. The teacher coaches students before and after the discussion, sharing norms and modeling opening statements, but during the discussion, the teacher remains silent.
We practice this strategy regularly throughout the year. During each discussion, we placed a piece of paper in the center of our circle that said, “The goal is for us to understand this work and ourselves more.” This constant goal drove our conversations and the development of a set of standards we used to foster a culture of respect and ensure all voices were heard.
Over time, students developed social skills and strategies to listen and express disagreements effectively. I started hearing my students say things like, “I see what you’re saying, but I don’t agree because…” and “I understand where you’re coming from, but can I ask a question?”
I had been teaching writing and English at this rural public preschool through 12th grade school for almost five years, but this year felt different. My students developed a real respect for civic discourse and the skills to engage in it.
That was the last class I taught in high school before taking on my new role as an assistant professor at Peru State College in Peru, Nebraska, where I teach a course for future teachers on educational technology.
Apply this strategy to my work with pre-service teachers
Working with pre-service teachers is quite different from teaching high school students. One of the challenges is finding ways to model excellent teaching while also delivering the content my students need. As I reviewed the content of my undergraduate educational technology course to prepare for the fall, I couldn’t help but think about how there were so many complex issues that required open dialogue, one of the most obvious and timely being pedagogical and instructional. . Changes related to the emergence of artificial intelligence tools. I wanted to leverage my experience with Spider Web Discussions to engage my students in thoughtful discourse about ai in the classroom and recreate that environment where students could safely disagree as some raised concerns and difficulties, while others embraced possibilities.
I was wondering if you could use the strategy to not only experiment with ai tools, but also talk about ethical issues and questions that were on our minds. I decided to use the practice with a text we read, “The ai Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to artificial intelligence in the Classroom,” which included practical step-by-step instructions that can allow both teachers and future teachers to delve into the waters of ai.
Before our first discussion about the spider web, we saw a video of high school students who used the strategy, which offered a clear view of what this type of discussion is like. He illustrated students holding up their text, “Romeo and Juliet,” pointing to specific sections, asking questions, and respectfully disagreeing. At no point in the video did the teacher speak. Instead, she trained her students before and after they started.
When my students began to discuss the text, I found myself wanting to say a lot. But I held back and was surprised again and again to see that my students brought up all the points I had been eager to talk about.
The importance of creating safe spaces for open discourse
As a social constructivist, I was not surprised that, in addition to student learning, this form of discourse led me to learn a lot as well. Over the next few weeks, as we continued to use the strategy, students, without my direction, began sending me articles, video links, and movie recommendations related to our ai discussions. It was clear that the conversation was taking place outside the classroom and curiosity was piqued. What surprised me most was how the ideas they shared differed so much from mine and how that created learning opportunities for me. For example, if I didn’t allow my students to take the lead, I wouldn’t be thinking about the environmental implications and morality of graduating high school students who have never used ai. This strategy allowed me to make space to learn from and with my students.
As a former high school English teacher, I can’t help but think of Frankenstein: the moral dilemma that emerges as a theme and author Mary Shelley’s warning about the unbridled pursuit of science and technology weigh on my mind. Similar ethical questions have arisen in our discussions about ai. What gives me peace is that we are talking about these topics in our class.
We’re talking about the challenges and consequences of using these tools, such as how these technologies can perpetuate racism, the impact of implicit bias on decision-making, and the risks students face due to ai. hallucinations and immediate drift (the decline in a generative ai tool’s ability to follow instructions over time). We are challenging the fairness issues that arise as ai tools move behind paywalls. And as we explore tools, students openly discuss how this is impacting their pre-service teacher education. For example, is it a bad thing that, just as these aspiring teachers are learning to write lesson plans, we’re exploring tools that create them, and quickly?
As a teacher and facilitator, these questions can make me dizzy, but what I have discovered so far is that even when we focus on the existential questions, we find our way back to the practical aspects of the classroom. The reality is that some of my students will experience frustration when they get jobs in districts that ban ai tools. Others will feel pressured to use tools despite their questions and doubts. While discussions about Spider Web can get rocky at times, they have created a space for us to explore difficult conversations with less fear and prepared us to learn and grow together.
