Teaches students to ask different types of questions — clarifying, build-upon, and more — that show genuine interest and deepen conversations, building on a physicist’s story about the value of well-framed questions.

A 20-25 minute exercise, framed by Einstein’s advice to spend most of an hour defining a problem, that teaches students to dig past a surface complaint to find the real, underlying issue.

Helps students discover that their own key issues aren’t the only ones worth caring about, and that others may frame a shared issue very differently, through a process adaptable to national, state, or local topics.

Sparks discussion about the pros and cons of students’ own community, revealing how people can view the same facts differently, using Force Field Theory to identify what helps and hinders positive outcomes.

Prepares students to navigate difficult conversations by identifying pitfalls in advance and reframing them as opportunities to learn, rather than to win or avoid entirely.

Helps students identify the range of values Americans hold and recognize how those values can come into tension with one another, not as good versus evil, but as competing goods worth discussing.

Guides students to recognize the “bubbles” — social, cultural, geographic — that shape their worldview, and to identify strategies for stepping outside them to learn from people and experiences different from their own.

A suggested pacing guide for the Can We Talk? curriculum, organizing all five units and their exercises in recommended order.

A 40-80 minute exercise where students assess how well a system or organization is working, applied to anything from their school to a historical situation, to practice fair-minded, evidence-based evaluation.

An introductory slide-deck exercise reviewing evidence that political polarization is reaching crisis levels, inviting student discussion at each slide. Materials are provided as a downloadable PowerPoint and PDF.