ABSTRACT
Right at the end of a conversation yesterday about how princesses are portrayed in fairy tales, one of Hannah’s students brought up the movie Frozen. Conversation maps are preferred tool for analyzing patterns of participation. Figuring out how to listen is one of the challenging and interesting parts of getting started with Hands-Down Conversations. Christy’s comment highlighted the emerging disagreement for the students to think about, and it allowed the students to go deeper into the question of beauty and individual perception. Peter Johnston writes about the importance of setting up “symmetrical power relationships” in the classroom. It is a delicate balance to find ways to lift and extend our students’ thinking while maintaining everyone’s position as an equal contributor to the thinking work of a classroom.
