Meet the middle school set on uniting students beyond partisan lines

What’s more, research shows that when it comes to both academics and student experience, diversity and inclusion aren’t merely nice to have; they’re essential. Students of all races who attend thoughtfully integrated schools report greater feelings of physical safety, score better on math and ELA (English language arts) assessments, and show a greater willingness and ability to understand other points of view. However, creating a school community that is intentionally diverse and inclusive is far from easy. 

First, there is the problem of segregation in American schools. According to the most recent economic and demographic data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 45% of Black students attend high-poverty schools compared with just 8% of white students, and about 60% of Black and Latino students attend schools where they make up at least three-quarters of the student body.

And then there is the question of inclusivity. Lawmakers across the country are proposing or enacting legislation that limits classroom discussion of certain topics—usually those related to identity, such as race or gender. With emotions on both sides of the political aisle running high, many teachers fear making a misstep that could cost them their jobs.

“Forty-two states have proposed bills that would limit what teachers can say as far as racism and sexism,” said Amy Vetter, professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro School of Education. “Even words like equity or diversity, these can be hot-button words that schools don’t want to say. Everybody’s playing it very safe.”

And yet despite these realities, some schools manage to both cultivate an integrated student body and hold diversity and inclusion as core tenets of their school philosophy. 

University Middle is a public middle school affiliated with the University of Memphis in Tennessee. Founded in 2019, the school intentionally recruited a diverse student body by holding information sessions at community centers across the city and opening admission to all interested families (there is a lottery to select students, but there are no admissions criteria to enter that lottery; families need only submit a nonevaluative lottery application). University Middle now serves students from over 35 zip codes, including the wealthiest and lowest-income in the area, and its population is about evenly split between white students and students of color. 

“In a district where public schools are largely identified as economically disadvantaged, and private schools are comprised of largely white and wealthy families, we hold a special space,” said Sally Parish, the associate vice president for educational initiatives at the University of Memphis, via email. “We have students of different languages, cultures, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic statuses. We celebrate those differences and use them to create intentional opportunities for learning and understanding.”

University Middle uses an approach called project-based learning, in which students work in groups to complete semester-long projects centered around a complex question—called a driving question—that encourages inquiry and often surfaces divergent opinions. 

For example, a recent driving question for eighth grade students was: How do food and water impact our community? Students partnered with community organizations and departments across the University of Memphis to research pesticides affecting farmland, racial disparities in access to safe water and nutrition, and the link between crime and food deserts, among other topics. They then proposed and implemented solutions to the problems uncovered in their research, such as a canned food drive to address hunger in certain Memphis communities.

Groups meet weekly—Fridays are largely devoted to project-based learning, and University Middle has a more traditional class schedule the rest of the week—and change each semester. Teachers and administrators intentionally create heterogeneous groups that allow students to work with others from different backgrounds, which sometimes leads to conflict.

Kerrith Griffin, executive director of University Middle, recalls a situation where two students in a project-based learning group initially found themselves offended and frustrated by the ideas and beliefs of the other. Their differences at first seemed so intractable that they requested to switch groups. Fortunately, University Middle has a counseling program to help students mediate such conflicts.

“We discussed that just as Memphis is made up of many different ethnicities, religions, and lifestyles, so is our school,” Griffin said via email. “Each student was asked to share a trait they valued in the other student. They then began to own their roles in the conflict. [Afterward] they shared with their teachers that they appreciated being grouped with someone who had different thoughts than their own.”

Eighth grade student Aura Kumar views these group conflicts as essential to preparing students for the realities of the adult world.

“It’s natural to have conflict when we’re different,” Kumar said. “When we work [in our project-based learning groups], we don’t all share the same opinion. You’re not always going to work with people you like, but you grow in these groups because you’re around people who aren’t like you.”

In Kumar’s experience, project-based learning isn’t the only thing that fosters connection across lines of difference. Unlike her previous school where students were expected to be silent in the hallways, students at University Middle are encouraged to continue discussions outside the classroom, and the school intentionally sets aside time for students to talk and connect throughout the day. 

And because teachers are skilled at facilitating classroom discussions that are inclusive of all viewpoints, Kumar and her classmates on the debate team have been able to delve into weighty topics that might otherwise have felt intimidating, such as racism, sexism, and the legalization of drugs in the U.S.  

“Teachers make sure that a discussion isn’t out of control, but they know it’s important to make all voices heard,” Kumar said. “It’s a delicate balance between not shutting the conversation down and making sure it doesn’t get centered on any one student.”

Facilitating this type of discussion takes skill and practice and may require teachers to shift some of their own mindsets. Vetter and her colleagues have studied strong classroom discussion practices, and they found that participants’ humility and willingness to listen and remain open to others’ perspectives is foundational to a productive discussion. Teachers must be able to both adopt this mindset themselves and help their students learn this way of thinking. 

Facilitating a good classroom discussion also means letting go of the notion that teaching is solely about filling kids’ minds with knowledge. Rather, Vetter said, teachers should be aiming to help students construct meaning of the world and develop their own point of view. 

“You’re there to help [students] become critical thinkers so that they can then become better citizens,” she added. “So they can create a world that is a place where they want to live.”

Teachers might use a variety of what Vetter and her colleagues call critical talk moves to expand or direct a classroom discussion. These include posing questions in response to students’ assertions, asking students to bring their personal experience into the conversation, noting who is and isn’t speaking, and asking direct questions that surface divergent viewpoints, such as: Is there anybody who feels differently about this?

Discussions about diversity and inclusion might be expected on a debate team or in a literature class, but at University Middle these conversations permeate all subjects.

Physical education instructor Keith Loupe came to teaching after a 20-year career in the Marines, where he saw the impact a school can have on a community. Loupe helped rebuild a school in Indonesia as part of a humanitarian mission, and that experience stuck with him: After retiring from military service, he went back to school to become a teacher. He was attracted to University Middle partly because of its commitment to diversity and its approach to teaching.

Loupe sees sports as the perfect arena for engaging in and working through differences of opinion, since disagreements arise naturally in the course of playing most games. With that in mind, he uses the first few weeks of the school year to encourage vulnerability and help kids build trust by teaching them unfamiliar games from other cultures and ending each class with a set of questions that prompt kids to reflect on how comfortable they felt, how supportive they were of others, and if they felt like their point of view was respected.

For the rest of the year, physical education is broken into a series of units, each focusing on a particular sport. At the beginning of each unit students are assigned to a team, and Loupe takes into account many identity markers—including cultural background, athleticism, gregariousness, and competitiveness—to ensure that teams are diverse. Students also take on a specific role within that team—such as statistician, trainer, captain, or manager—that gives them the opportunity to take ownership over the team’s functioning and show off their strengths. Loupe’s ultimate goal is to create a mini community within each team. He hopes that this foundation of trust will empower students to advocate for themselves while respecting other points of view. 

“We need to be deliberate about advocacy,” Loupe said. “It’s not just about saying that you need to stand up for yourself. Because that’s easy to say, but how do you really do that? We address listening with purpose, acknowledging what the other person is saying, and then expressing your point of view. Because as adults, sometimes we say, ‘This is what I think, and I don’t care what you think.’”

Loupe also intentionally embeds discussion and character education into his class. Before starting the day’s physical activity, students gather in a classroom, where Loupe has prepared a prompt or scenario that relates to a theme such as compassion or justice. He then has students discuss the prompt—first with a partner on the half-mile walk between the school building and gym facility and then the whole group during a break in the middle of class. 

Students take these conversations in many different directions. For example, in a recent conversation about tolerance, students talked about being tolerant of people with different opinions, tolerance when others lose their temper, and cultural tolerance. Loupe finds that creating the conditions for these conversations takes intentionality and open-mindedness on the part of teachers.

“The challenge is bringing kids together and creating those experiences that they’re going to appreciate,” Loupe said. “Where they’re going to be in a position where they have to listen to somebody else. Not only that, but we as teachers have our own beliefs, so we have to be malleable—to be able to listen to students and appreciate their point of view.”

Contrary to partisan fears that students might become indoctrinated in a certain set of beliefs at school, University Middle firmly believes that its role lies in teaching students not what to think but rather how to think. Kumar has experienced this firsthand and credits her teachers at University Middle with helping her know herself better.

“[Before coming to University Middle], I didn’t know who I was, or who I wanted to be, or how I was going to impact society,” Kumar said. “Teachers do a great job of helping people find themselves without becoming a different person.”