Discussions Over Serious Matters

 There are many serious matters that are being had in schools today and sometimes they are hard to have today also. There are sometimes roadblock that are not administration because sometimes it is the students in the classroom, not being able to talk about the topic themselves. Creating an environment where you students are comfortable to share their thoughts about both small topics and big controversial topics. I think that by starting by have classroom discussions about small topics that are either covered within the content or something that is happening in their lives personally. Having personal conversations with you and their peers in the classroom opens the classroom to have more important conversations in later on. Believing that little conversations are as important as big conversations, will allow your students to become more comfortable in your classroom and presence. 

Before I truly did not understand what that meant besides having your friends in the same classroom as you, but this semester I got to experience being comfortable in a classroom without any of my friends in it with me. The class was my RDG 4320: Language and Literacy in Diverse Communities and during that class I able to have small conversations that allowed that me and others to have big conversations about race and equality. I had also felt like my voice and opinion mattered in the conservations that I was having both individually with my peers and as a community with them. Nothing was really limited in our discussions because the teacher was there to teach us where we were either lost or understand the topic. We as teachers need to remember that conversations need to be had and more controversial that they are, the longer it can take if the environment does not allow for differing opinions to be spoken.