Jennifer Gonzalez, Cult of Pedagogy, Growth Discourse: A Framework for Discussing Hard Topics with Students (December 7, 2025).

This article offers concrete suggestions for facilitating conversations about challenging topics drawing on the work of the School for Ethics and Global Leadership. It details four strategies for facilitating hard conversations: creating a community where all students feel they belong, valuing both intent and impact, using support from peers to process difficult conversations and then re-engaging in those conversations, and focusing on understanding and not judging. But I cannot do the model justice; read the article.

The article quotes extensively from Noah Bopp, who founded SEGL in 2009 and currently serves as the Head of School. Below, I offer two quotes from Mr. Bopp that I hope will entice you to read more.

We believe discourse that helps you grow is essential to our meaningful lives and is also central to a functioning civic ensemble. Calling it growth discourse also shifts mindset: For students, I am about to engage in discourse that may or may not be civil; the point is it’s discourse that’s going to help me grow. For teachers, the goal is not just keeping everybody being nice to each other; the goal is what can I do to make sure that this conversation helps students grow?

We’re trying to teach students how to think, not what to think. If we err on the side of teaching students what to think — which is so easy to do — we shortcut the critical thinking process and we make that kid susceptible to the next demagogue who comes along. And there are a lot of demagogues in this world right now.