Notes From A Work Friend™

Notes From A Work Friend™

Share this post

Notes From A Work Friend™
Notes From A Work Friend™
How I Teach My Students to Have Better Conversations

How I Teach My Students to Have Better Conversations

Inside: Step-by-step process and templates to help you do it, too.

Brielle Harbin, Ph.D.'s avatar
Brielle Harbin, Ph.D.
Jul 11, 2025
∙ Paid
3

Share this post

Notes From A Work Friend™
Notes From A Work Friend™
How I Teach My Students to Have Better Conversations
Share

In this post, I walk you through the exact system I use to teach students how to listen deeply, disagree without spiraling, and participate with care in classroom discussions.

You’ll get my six go-to student discussion roles, printable discussion role tent cards to use with your own students, and a behind-the-scenes look at how I build a classroom culture that supports civic dialogue and introverted learners, leading to better, more meaningful in-class conversations.

📥 Want to go deeper?
Join the waitlist for my August 2025 workshop series, Rooted Teaching in Uncertain Times.

This three-part series is designed to help faculty return to the classroom with a sustainable, values-aligned rhythm—especially amid institutional precarity, political tension, and AI disruption. Each session offers practical strategies and reflection prompts you can implement right away—no major course overhaul required.

Joining the waitlist means you’ll receive an email when registration opens on August 4th. There’s no obligation to sign up or attend.

Photo by CX Insight on Unsplash

We ask our students to “discuss” all the time. But how often do we pause to ask: have they ever been taught how?

Not how to raise their hand or share an opinion. I mean:

  • How to listen deeply,

  • How to respond when someone challenges their beliefs without shutting down or spiraling,

  • How to speak with intention without bulldozing, retreating, or performing.

In my early years of teaching, I believed these capacities would emerge over time. If I modeled active listening and encouraged thoughtful responses, surely the trust and courage would follow.

And sometimes, they did.

But more often, I found myself trying to resuscitate a flat conversation, de-escalate a tense moment, or urge students to “go deeper” without offering the tools to get there.

That’s when I stopped letting group discussion “just happen.”

Now, I treat conversation like a system—one that must be taught, practiced, and sustained.

This post outlines exactly how I do it.


What You’ll Find Inside:

  • The six critical student discussion roles I teach students to use in small and large group discussions, along with practical tips and examples you can apply in your own classroom.

  • A printable PDF of the six discussion role tent cards that you can use in your classroom.

  • A detailed explanation of how I introduce these roles in my classroom, including the exact language I use in my syllabus to foreshadow my focus on cultivating students’ conversational competence and civic courage.

  • A link to my QCR portal system, which I created to organically incorporate introverted students into class discussions without putting them on the spot and requiring everyone to be skilled at extemporaneous speaking.


This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Brielle Harbin, Ph.D.
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share