Handling discourse in the classroom especially for a history class is one of the hardest jobs as an educator. As the readings state history is inherently political there is no escaping that. You will eventually hit something some ones parent feels a certain way about. The way they feel about this may not align with the facts of the situation. But what do you do when you are approached like this in a classroom setting. You can flat out tell the student they are wrong shutting them down and solving literally nothing. You could agree to disagree as well, but as an educator that’s almost worse especially when the information they have isn’t true. These two options are oncourse not very good they don’t lead to learning and show that a teacher is either bad at there job or very very new. But how do you handle situations like that?

To put it simply tact using careful analysis of your language and thinking through the implications of your words. If you aren’t careful you could do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time. For the above situation the best decision to make is to have the student explain there view point, than after kindly dissect it to let them know they are wrong without offending there parents or them. Feed back as well is something else to consider as if you come off too nice and don’t say something is bad or wrong now than it will be wrong later on the test and you also shouldn’t be a righteous AP world crusader bashing kids into line and making them feel bad about themselves either. This is because that can lead to not only a loss of confidence but a net loss in retention, understanding, and scoring.

Tact is something to use whenever you talk but specifically its important to remember so when you are teaching a group of students. They pick up on more than people give them credit for, and will notice if you are being rude or a pushover. So the key to communicating with students is I think something that is also universal. Think through your speech and think through your implications.