Embracing Our History: Empowering Students to Be Active Citizens

This workshop equips educators with tools to teach “hard history” while fostering student voice, critical thinking, and civic engagement. It emphasizes creating reflective classroom spaces—shifting from “safe” spaces to “brave” spaces—where students can process difficult topics and perspectives. Teachers learn how to integrate strategies such as perspective-taking, questioning, journaling, and structured discussions to help students connect history to their own lives and communities. The session also explores methods for encouraging active citizenship, highlighting student agency in classroom, school, and community decision-making.

• The difficulty of teaching sensitive or challenging historical topics, often avoided due to discomfort or lack of strategies.
  
  
• Student disengagement when history feels disconnected from their lived experiences or current civic issues.
  
  
• Lack of structures for promoting student voice, agency, and courageous dialogue in the classroom.

1. Facilitating Courageous Conversations: Participants will learn how to build reflective, brave classroom communities using contracts, norms, and communication tools that help students engage in honest and respectful dialogue about difficult topics.
   
   
2. Empowering Student Voice and Agency: Educators will develop strategies for guiding students in questioning, journaling, and perspective-taking, encouraging them to connect personal experiences with historical events and current civic issues.
   
   
3. Linking History to Active Citizenship: Teachers will explore ways to engage students as citizens—through decision-making in class, service opportunities, and community connections—so that history becomes a foundation for active participation in democracy