On Thursday, Dec. 6 I attended the Animas High exhibition “Willing to be Disturbed.” The semester-long humanities project of Jessica McCallum’s juniors was an invitation to examine a political topic from all angles, while developing the capacity to listen to other points of view, allowing oneself to be surprised, unsure, disturbed, and possibly even to have a change of heart.
The students demonstrated their skills of dialogue by conducting a Socratic seminar in which some agreed upon norms were: “don’t talk over each other,” “hard on content, soft on people” and “inquiry, not dogma.”
The students spoke about immigration, historical monuments, racism and abortion with care for each other even through fundamental differences in opinion.
I was touched by McCallum’s students’ willingness to examine their biases and publicly celebrate the internal shifts that occurred over the course of the semester.
Kudos to McCallum for her courage to tackle a project that adults haven’t proved capable of mastering. I am thankful these are our future leaders.
Rachel Turiel
Durango
