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Listening to and learning from high school youth inspired the author to recognize the possibilities, and not only the problems, of conflict in classrooms
The school day had just ended, and I headed back into school from the parking lot to get something I had forgotten in my classroom. It was near the end of my first year (2007-08) teaching high school English in a semirural, small Midwestern town. Buses were entering and leaving the parking lot, with students scattered across the sidewalks and a grassy hill near the main entrance. I was saying hello as I walked by when, from a few feet away, I heard a loud voice yell, "If it isn't the gay lord himself!," a title I seemingly earned through coadvising the Genders and Sexualities Alliance (GSA) club. Students fell silent and looked toward the two of us. I turned my head to see the student staring at me, waiting for a response. My heart stopped for an instant and then began to race. Unsure of what to do, I sensed the tension quickly building to a fever pitch, tension I didn't want to face.
Rewind to a few months before this incident, when the GSA students were preparing our school's first National Day of Silence event. A consistent stream of community complaints had flooded the main office, and the principal called a staff meeting to discuss how to navigate the event. I sat in the library listening to conversations among colleagues as they waited for the meeting to start. I remember one teacher declaring her opposition to the Day of Silence, stating that she planned to force every one of her students to speak, and this meeting wouldn't change her mind. I felt my body getting nervous, sensing that a contentious debate was about to unfold.
These brief snapshots represent a pattern across my first year of teaching, during which I cofounded and co-advised the school's GSA with my colleague and friend Ariel Uppstrom, another first-year teacher. There were countless moments of small conflict with students, colleagues, parents and families, and administrators. It felt like these clashes were nonstop, coming from every direction. As these instances accumulated across the year, it made the work hard, even exhausting. I believe...