Sensitive Topics in the Classroom

Guest Blogger: Heather Bennett

November 8^th 2016, a day that will live in infamy.  We elected Donald Trump as our next president. While some celebrated, many people were terrified.  For months the world watched as Donald Trump reduced races of people to negative stereotypes, marginalized many minorities and women, and indirectly promoted hate amongst American citizens.  For many, the election of such an individual to the most powerful position in the country brought about fear and terror. 

For many of my students, 60% of them international students, 98% of them women, and all of them African American, the election of Donald Trump instilled a deep fear, anger, disappointment and an overall lack of confidence in the workings of our government. My students seemed a little more discouraged the day after the election when they walked into class. It seemed awkward not to mention the election, as I could clearly see that my students wanted to discuss what they were thinking. I was hesitant to open up for discussion such a sensitive topic. I did not want lecture time to be consumed with discussion on the presidential election or the topic to lead to a hostile environment. However, I did not want to minimize their feelings, or fail to acknowledge the validity of their emotions. Simply not mentioning the election, I felt sent a message that I did not care how my students maybe feeling. I wanted to give students a safe space to share and elaborate on these feelings of fear and disappointment. I also wanted to encourage and support them.  I decided to address the “elephant in the room” and encourage students to disclose their feelings. I asked for students to take a few minutes and to quietly write down what emotions they were feeling after learning the results from the presidential election.  I then left it open for students to share, if they felt comfortable, their feelings with the rest of the class. I stressed that students must be respectful and listen to their classmates. I challenged them to try to understand each other’s views. After sharing, I had students ball up the paper with any negative emotions and throw them like a snowball at the front of the room. I then challenged the students to share how they could use these negative feelings for something positive. The activity only took 15 minutes of class time and several students thanked me for giving them an opportunity to voice their feelings. One student said prior to my class no teacher had mentioned the election results and it seemed as if no one cared how the students may be feeling or perhaps they too should just get over it.     

For many of us our performance on any task is tied to our emotional well-being. As an educator, I think it is important to realize that our students will be greatly affected by what may be happening in society.  We must learn how to engage students in meaningful discussion and try to understand how the emotions of our students may influence their learning. I am curious, how do more experienced educators discuss difficult and sensitive topics in the classroom? What are some techniques or strategies teachers use in the classroom to help students handle emotional topics? 

An Engaging and Exhilarating Introductory Activity

by Guest Blogger Malcolm Bonner

Years ago, as Director of The University of Pennsylvania McNair Scholars Program, I invited Dr. Mary Heiberger from Penn’s Counseling Department to make a presentation to our McNair scholars. Dr. Heiberger opened with a unique and engaging introductory exercise thatI continue to employ on the first day of class. (Dr. Mary Heiberger departed this life in November 2003.)

After students have settled in and you have taken roll, assign (or have students choose) partners. Students should be prepared with pens and notebooks. Show instructions on the Smart Board or blackboard:

Please interview your partner in order to glean information which will allow you to introduce your partner as the Keynote Speaker at a (relevant) National Conference Ten Years from Now.

I have found it useful to make it clear that the activity is an interview process; much of the richness is lost if students scribble their own information and push it across the desk at their partners and say “read this.” Some of the information will be factual; a good deal will be flights of optimistic fancy.  I usually do a brief demonstration with a student, which could proceed thusly:

“Good Afternoon. Welcome to the 2025 National Conference for Family Professionals in sunny Orlando, Florida. I am honored to introduce our Keynote Speaker for this evening, Dr. Bill Blank. Dr. Blank earned his BA at Lincoln University in 2017, went on to earn his Master of Human Services Degree at Lincoln in 2019, and earned a Doctor of Human Services degree at William and Mary in 2022. Dr. Blank has established Family First, a network of counseling services and family therapy centers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He is the author of Love is the Answer (2024), which was on the New York Times Bestseller List for 67 consecutive weeks. He was named Time Magazine Man of the Year, and has been prominently mentioned as a candidate for a Cabinet post in the administration of President Elton Brand. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Bill Blank.”

Following the demonstration, the student returns to interview and be interviewed by a partner. Once each pair has completed interviews, I call the class to order and the first pair of presenters to the front of the class. I have found it important to emphasize that each student is to be given “our most courteous, most rapt, and completely undivided attention” while speaking. I remind students that it is not crucial to have introductions written perfectly; since the future remains unknown, presenters can ad lib and have fun. Some students will be more relaxed and confident than others. It is probably better to permit the occasional stumble, and allow the process to flow as it will. Inevitably, one or two pairs of presenters will generate raucous laughter and much applause.

What has been consistently gratifying has been watching the beaming faces and proud postures of students as wonderful statements are made about their achievements – real and projected.  The interviews and introductions help students to learn about one another, and set a positive and energetic tone for the class.

Engaging Students

Some of my summer beach reading (ok, it was really reading done sitting at home in my upstairs office but I was thinking about the beach…) included books on pedagogy that had been recommended on a mailing list for faculty developers. 

One book, Teaching At Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors by Linda B. Nilson, presented a thought-provoking list of principles that researchers have discovered about how people learn and the teaching strategies that build on those principles.

If you glance at this list, you’ll see that the ideas are not new to any of us—learning takes place when students are actively involved, learning something that has relevance to them and is within their “zone of proximal development.”

What stood out for me, as I thought about the concepts on this list and those presented in other books like Elizabeth Barkley’s Student Engagement Techniques and Ken Bain’s What the Best College Students Do, was the importance for student learning and retention of emotion (“affect is just as much a part of the brain’s neuronal network as cognition,” Barkley, p. 34) and metacognition (“You don’t learn from experience; you learn from reflecting on experience,” Bains, p. 163).  

I realized that I am probably not giving these two things the attention I should if I design my courses focusing primarily on the content.

I would love to hear some examples of assignments or activities you have used that get your students emotionally involved in their learning, and/or  improve your students’ metacognitive skills, helping them understand what they learned, how they learned it, how they could learn it faster/easier/better next time.