I feel more comfortable participating in class and less defensive when other students disagree. And because I learned more from my fellow students about their views, I now feel less competitive with them than in other classes.

As a former rebel, I really believe that if we had known about dialogue, perhaps we would not have had a civil war.

The past few years in our country have been the most divisive and alienating in my lifetime, which can be a tremendous challenge in the classroom that aims for community, shared experience, and listening with empathy to opinions that are different from one's own. The Essential Partners workshop I attended provided invaluable tools to meet the challenges of teaching today. It helped me reimagine the classroom as a place to help students learn the essential tools of living and learning in community and interconnection, skills that are necessary in every single area of life. I have no doubt that my teaching has been dramatically reshaped in light of my introduction to structured dialogue and I feel like I have so much more to offer my students because of that.