Teachers should empower students with the skills of dissent. These include raising awareness, forming persuasive arguments, building coalitions and using critical thinking to challenge misinformation. Students should practice putting forward solutions that can be discussed and tested. Young people should be encouraged to imagine how life can be better in America as a way to build hope with their peers.

It’s important that they realize how dissent and hope together can help strengthen U.S. democracy.

David Schonfeld, Director, National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, University of Southern California; Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director, Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University; Kyle Greenwalt, Associate Professor of Education, Michigan State University; Paula McAvoy, Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education, North Carolina State University; Sarah Stitzlein, Professor of Education and Affiliate Faculty in Philosophy, University of Cincinnati , and Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, Assistant Professor of Secondary Social Studies, West Virginia University

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