Lakeside School

This project is a part of Hope in Action: An Empowering Strategic Plan for Lakeside School. Learn more.

In much of the world today, there is a lot of either/or thinking. You're either in this camp or that camp; you either believe this or you believe that. It’s very much a debate model, where you have to prove yourself, provide evidence, and show that your vision or your perspective is the correct one. This approach may be effective in a courtroom setting, but it does not lend itself to building community. When we work to build community, we connect through understanding, compassion, and openness. I think the overuse of a debate model may be why we, as a society, are struggling to connect; it doesn’t support the goal of listening and centering humanity. If we're working through things that impact our lives — whether it be an interpersonal situation or a larger community conversation — it's important to consider the complexities of a situation, and recognize when we are approaching things from a place of judgment so that we can lean into curiosity. 

That’s where dialogue comes in. Unlike debate — in which a different perspective or experience might be “less than” and there is a superiority dynamic built in — there is no correct answer in dialogue. You're trying to understand each other better, and you are doing so from a place of compassion: Where is this person coming from? What does this mean? How does this intersect with my thoughts? Where do we diverge? Where are we similar? What commonalities do we hold? And what haven't I thought of before? When we engage in dialogue, we are invested in our relationships and the community we can grow into, and we are committed to our own openness and willingness to understand. That’s how we can show up for each other. 

I want to be clear: Dialogue does not ask us to abandon or betray our values, rather it is a practice we choose when we want to engage with ideas, perspectives, and experiences that are different from our own. In this year’s Upper School Martin Luther King, Jr. assembly, Asha Youmans (beloved educator T.J. Vassar’s daughter, and Lakeside Class of 1989) shared the importance of building community at Lakeside. She noted to the students that while you are a student at Lakeside, you will spend more time with the people in this community than you will with those in your neighborhoods. That point resonated with me because we talk a lot about how as individuals, we contribute to the culture we want to create, and we have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to build the community we want. Dialogue is a pathway to that. We don’t have to give up or suspend what we believe or think, we can stand firm in our values and know that our peers, colleagues, and community will engage to understand and learn more, not to shut down or silence each other.

Dialogue, discussion, and debate are all useful tools, and there's a place and time where each of these modes is important. We need to be able to determine the right modes for the purpose of our engagements. A lot of what happens in the classroom involves discussion, which involves exploring commonalities, coming to a shared understanding, and reaching a certain endpoint. Dialogue has an open-ended nature to it. It’s not about changing someone’s mind; it’s just about wanting to learn more. Where does this idea come from? Why is this so important to you? Because if it's important to you, and we're in community together, then it's important to me, too. 

In the Pacific Northwest, there’s this desire to be polite, to be respectful. We have this idea that disagreement is not polite. But disagreement just means that we have different ideas. This goes back to that either/or thinking. But it can be a “both/and.” We can be polite and respectful and have different perspectives on things. It’s the opposite of call-out or cancel culture. Instead of calling someone out and judging them, we would be asking questions with a true, authentic curiosity. You have to be open, be willing to listen, and think about things in a different way. That's a skill that requires intentional practice; it's not going to happen naturally.

Building our skills in intergroup dialogue is part of our strategic plan, as part of our work to foster belonging and model meaningful relationships. This fall, we hosted two webinar trainings for parents and guardians: The first focused on adult-to-adult dialogue techniques and practice, and the second on dialogue between adults and kids. (You can find recordings of both trainings on the parents and guardians webpage, under “Webinar and Event Recordings.”) Building our skills takes time, and we need to be patient with each other in this process. Our team is thinking about the practice opportunities we want to provide for our community next year to continue building on this foundation. 

Fostering community and belonging means that a lot of difficult conversations will happen. It's easier to ignore complexity or pretend our differences are not there, but if we really want to achieve belonging, it means diving into the challenge. It means we show up for each other with generosity, patience, compassion, and care.

Debbie Bensadon is Lakeside’s director of equity, inclusion, and belonging.