Your students need new skills to effectively lead in today’s world.
Colleges and universities face challenges in effectively engaging all students and creating space for inclusive discussion in our increasingly polarized society. Touchstones offers you a method to systematically establish a classroom culture of respect in partnership with your students. In Touchstones Discussions, students learn to teach themselves and others, collaborate with those they perceive as different from themselves, gain greater awareness of their assumptions as they become more open to new perspectives, and ultimately share power and responsibility.
Where can I use Touchstones?
Whether feeling under prepared for or uncertain about further studies, students enter Bridge Programs to improve their skillsets. Touchstones supports students in your Bridge Programs to more fully develop critical thinking, literacy, and collaboration skills before continuing their studies.
Touchstones successfully supports all your Community College students to develop higher level thinking and communication skills and strengthens and accelerates fluency among those learning English.
Touchstones programs are introduced everywhere from Freshman Seminar to leadership courses in Honors Colleges to undergraduate teacher preparation programs, and they all lead to crucial outcomes: students strengthen communication skills and they form a more respectful community of learners.
Touchstones provides educators with a proven method for building inclusive classroom and school communities rooted in respectful discussion. Our programs broaden the scope and thinking of educational leaders as they examine how these skills support instructional design, school performance, and culture.
What are people saying about Touchstones?
“Touchstones discussions are life-changing for me. They give me confidence because they give me a chance to speak and discuss peacefully. Only when we embrace solving conflicts through dialogue can we maintain what we call peace.”
Aung Phone Myint
Myanmar, Davis Projects for Peace 2013 Report, Bates College
“I have mostly agonized over how to lead whole class discussions on readings, to get students to probe a text collaboratively, to enable them to claim a place in college discussions. The solution has been Touchstones. Touchstones is a methodology that trains students to participate meaningfully, confidently, and cooperatively.”
Professor Marsha Bronstein
Learning Communities Coordinator, Montgomery College
“I absolutely recommend Touchstones to other classes! I grew intellectually and personally. This class allowed me to not only perfect my leadership skills but explore my inner-self (as well as selves of other students).”
Student
University of Oklahoma
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