Braver School Communities
Depolarizing America’s school communities and preparing the next generation for a more civil politics.
This initiative engages high school and middle school students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators, and school board members in workshops and activities to bridge divides.
Braver Angels is ramping up efforts to bring skills to our younger generation—especially high school and middle school students, who are capable of complex interpersonal exchanges. We know that the patterns children develop from an early age can stick with them for life, so helping students gain these skills early in their education can keep them from falling into the toxic patterns modeled for them by others in our public life, and can help create the kind of future leaders we need.
Depolarizing America One School District at a Time
What We Do
We offer programs for school communities, including high school and middle school students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators, and school boards. Our workshops, while free, are conducted by skilled moderators in partnership with high school faculty through collaborative planning. Some activities can be completed within a class period, others can be configured as a half day in-school field trip or an after-school activity. We have worked with both small and large groups.
If you’d like to bring our programs to your school community, please connect with our team.
Presentations:
Introduction to Braver Angels
Workshops:
Introduction to Braver Angels
Depolarizing Within
Skills for Challenging Conversations
Common Ground Workshop
1:1 Conversations
Fishbowl Exercise
Humble Conversations
Seminar Experiences
BridgeUSA High School Chapters:
We also collaborate with BridgeUSA whose High School Chapters bring constructive dialogue to high school communities across the nation, focusing on teaching students how to engage in political discussion and have productive conversations on hard topics through empathy and open-discussion.
High School Debates:
Braver Angels and BridgeUSA have engaged students in high school debates throughout the country.
Workshops:
Managing Difficult Conversations with Colleagues and Constituents
Participant Outcomes
- Awareness
- Setting Good Goals
- Freedom to Abandon Expectations
- Generosity
- Tone Setting
- Listening Well
- Speaking Skills
- Managing Difficult Moments
Essential Skills
- Learn listening and speaking skills to help clarify points of disagreement and alignment.
- Learn about how to handle challenging conversations, especially with those with whom they disagree.
- Learn about polarization and explore how to proactively combat it in their own conversations.
- Develop, through practice, the confidence to respectfully engage in contested conversations in topics that matter to them.
Ways You Can Help
We’re seeking trained Moderators, Organizers, and Ambassadors as well as Braver Angels members with skills such as team building, communications, writing, marketing, graphic design, video editing, and data management. If you’re a Braver Angels member interested in joining our team, please contact us.
Ambassador
Bring the message of Braver Angels to your school community
Organizer
Moderator
Other ways Braver Angels members can help is by sharing this with your school community, and with other Braver Angels members who may be interested in joining our team or spreading the word to their networks. To make your outreach efforts more effective and connect you with others who may already be working in your school community, please contact us.
FAQ
- Depolarizing Within: For Teens and Young Adults, national workshop. Read: ‘We need to see each other’s humanity in all aspects of life’: One teen’s journey to tackling political division within her generation
- Skills for Challenging Conversations, workshop for 600+ seniors, Northwood High School, Orange County, CA. Read: How a divided high school took action towards depolarization
- Depolarizing Within, workshop for 100+ teachers, staff and administrations, Northwood High School, Orange County, CA.
- Race and Racism in Schools: A Common Ground Workshop, Orange County, CA (2023-04-23).
- Sex Education in High School: A Common Ground Workshop, in collaboration with YouthServe, Birmingham, AL.
- Managing Difficult Conversations with Constituents, workshop for 150 mayors, school boards members, and public school superintendents, CT.
