Practicing What We Teach and Teaching What We Practice: A Town Hall Model as Curricular Component and Tool for Curricular Reform

Issues in society such as immigration and racial inequality threaten to derail classroom discussions. Likewise, issues in higher education such as general education (GE) reform threaten to obstruct faculty committee discussions. We want students to engage in classroom discussions through a comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, and events before accepting or formulating opinions or conclusions. How can we expect this of students if we cannot expect this of ourselves? Shenandoah University (SU) adapted California State University-Chico’s Town Hall Public Sphere Pedagogy model to incorporate role play and deliberative dialogue into its GE reform discussions and then adapted the model further to become a signature program in its revised GE curriculum. SU Town Hall classes require students to explore a social issue from the lens of their GE class and share that informed perspective with peers, faculty, and community consultants at a convening Town Hall event. While GE reform and issues such as immigration seemingly have little in common, discussions of both require participants to transcend individual biases, to find commonalties, and, one hopes, to discover new possibilities or solutions. This article describes how SU embedded civic engagement into GE curriculum after modeling the process in GE reform discussions.