Harwood Harkness Initiative gets national recognition, Vermont interest
March 29, 2023 | By Lisa ScagliottiThe April issue of the American School Board Journal. Cover image
Harwood Unified Union School District is getting some national education community attention at the National School Boards Association annual convention this weekend while practitioners have been busy meeting with Vermont student and teacher groups to offer first-hand demonstrations.
The school district this weekend is receiving a Silver Magna Award from the school board trade group. The awards recognize exemplary school district programs and this year’s focus on innovation in education, highlighting school programs that exemplify creativity and out-of-the-box problem-solving.
Harwood is being recognized for its Harkness Initiative of student-led dialogue that began in history and civics classes and has become a model for discussions on many topics across disciplines.
Superintendent Mike Leichliter and former Harwood teacher Katherine Cadwell who founded the Harkness program in 2016 will attend the annual conference in Orlando, Florida, April 1-3 to receive the award.
Find the Harwood section of the article with this heading.
Harwood is featured in the April edition of the association’s magazine, the American School Board Journal.
Printed copies were sent to the school to circulate. The magazine is also available online. Harwood is included in an article about the 15 programs receiving the Silver Magna Awards. It describes the program and traces the growth of Harkness over the past six years:
“The initiative amplifies student voice, encourages a diversity of perspectives, equity, and inclusion in classroom culture, and develops the skills of civil discourse throughout the school. The Harkness pedagogy places students at the center of the educational process. The skills of questioning, valuing different perspectives, and learning how to disagree respectfully and work collaboratively are the essential skills students need to acquire if democracy is to remain healthy, vital, and strong.”
Sharing Harkness in Vermont
Teachers from Harwood and Hazen Union meet to discuss the Harkness program. Photo courtesy Kathy Cadwell
As word spreads about Harwood’s Harkness program, faculty and student leaders have had opportunities recently to teach others in Vermont about how to adopt the techniques to transform classroom practices in other schools.
Harwood students and teachers recently have met with counterparts from both Hazen Union High School and Champlain Valley Union High School.
On March 16, teachers from Hazen visited Harwood and observed Harkness discussions in a variety of disciplines. Interested in bringing Harkness to their school, they wanted to see it in action at Harwood, according to Cadwell.
The Hazen teachers sat in on three different discussions in different disciplines, observing similarities and differences in how the conversations unfolded.
The Hazen teachers remarked on how the various classes adapted the Harkness techniques to their discussions and they got to see how students led the classroom conversations.
“Harkness looks different in different classrooms,” said Hazen teacher Corey Maskell. “We saw how Harwood teachers used a number of techniques to get students to lead classroom conversations.”
The teachers were particularly interested to see Harwood’s Harkness Leadership class, an elective course designed to develop student leadership and skills of civil discourse using Harkness inquiry. They said they hoped it could be a model for a program Hazen Union can establish, Cadwell explained.
After school, Hazen teachers attended the Harkness Professional Learning Community group at Harwood, a monthly meeting of Harwood educators who use Harkness in their classrooms. As part of the joint meeting, the group engaged in a Harkenss discussion on “The Great Silence,” a short story by Ted Chaing, Cadwell said.
Harwood and CVU students and teachers meet to discuss Harkness. Photo courtesy Kathy Cadwell
The visiting teachers said they liked what they saw. “We would really like to use this as a model for what we could do at our school,” said Emily Willems, a Hazen Union social studies teacher. “We were so happy to come to visit.”
A few days later on Monday, March 20, Harwood students got to share their Harkness leadership expertise in discussions with students at Champlain Valley Union High School. Last fall, Harwood’s Harkness Leadership class hosted a delegation of 15 CVU students who are learning about Harkness. This time Harwood students traveled to Hinesburg.
One of the exercises at CVU involved the students all reading an abridged text of the U.S. Supreme Court case Vernonia v. Acton. In the 1995 case, the high court ruled 6-3 that an Oregon school board's random drug-testing policy for student athletes was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The group discussed the implications of the right to privacy in a school setting. CVU students facilitated the discussion while adults sat on the sidelines, Cadwell said.
After lunch the students shared their impressions. “One student remarked on how it was great to have interesting student-to-student discussions and not listen to teachers talk the entire time, which is how school usually works,” Cadwell shared.
The Harwood students were asked why they were interested in Harkness. Cadwell said one student answered saying, ‘I chose to take this class because it is so important to learn to talk to and learn from other people. I use these skills at the dinner table with my parents. It really helps with communication of all sorts.’”
Kathy Cadwell contributed to this report.