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TEACHING NOTES:
BUILDING AND RUNNING A TEACH PEACE SESSION

For instructors, moderators, and anyone preparing to lead a class

This is not more content. It is the method behind the content — how to take any real issue and turn it into a genuine Teach Peace question, and how to lead the discussion that follows without steering it toward a conclusion.

 

Part One: Building a Question From an Issue

Step 1 — Choose a Real Issue

Start with something real: a current news event, a historical decision, a policy, a persistent social pattern. Avoid inventing a hypothetical. A real issue carries real facts to check the question against, and real people who actually hold different positions on it.

Step 2 — Test It at the Gate

Before building anything further, run the issue through the two-part gate already established for this method. First, the Systemic Reach Test: does this affect only two identifiable parties under existing agreed rules (a mediation matter, not a Teach Peace question), or does it reflect or reinforce something larger — a pattern, an institution, a power structure? Second, the Violence Potential Test: does this carry a real, even indirect, connection to conflict or harm? An issue that fails either test belongs in ordinary discussion, not this method.

Step 3 — Write the Core Question

State a single, specific, evaluative question. It must be a genuine question, not a statement dressed as one, and it must not presuppose its own answer. Test it by asking: could a thoughtful, informed person honestly answer this either way? If the answer is obviously yes to nearly everyone, the question is too easy and needs sharpening.

Step 4 — Write the Context

State only the neutral, verifiable facts: what happened, who is involved, what has been reported. No interpretation, no framing that nudges the reader toward either answer. If a fact is disputed, note that it is disputed rather than picking a side of the dispute.

Step 5 — Identify the Agreed Factors

List the facts that all sides of the issue already accept as true, even if they disagree about what those facts mean. This list exists specifically to prevent an undisputed fact from being quietly left out of the discussion because it is inconvenient. Ask directly: can the Core Question honestly be answered if any of these facts is ignored?

Step 6 — Write Eight Guided Prompts

Write eight sub-questions that a genuine, honest discussion would raise. They should pull in different directions from each other — for every prompt that could support one answer, another should be capable of supporting the opposite. No individual prompt should state a conclusion. If all eight prompts seem to point the same direction, the question is not yet balanced and needs revision.

Step 7 — Write the Reflection

Name one distinction, complication, or nuance the Core Question does not fully capture on its own, and instruct the reader to weigh it — without resolving it for them. A Guided Prompt asks something. A Reflection tells the reader to notice something. Keep the two distinct.

Step 8 — Close With the Peace Frame

Restate the Core Question, verbatim, as the final line. Add nothing new. This closes the entry exactly where it opened.


 

Part Two: Conducting the Classroom Discussion

Before the Session

Distribute the full written question — Core Question, Context, Agreed Factors, and Guided Prompts — to students in advance if possible, so the room arrives already having thought about it rather than encountering it cold.

Opening the Discussion

Read the Core Question and Context aloud, exactly as written. State plainly, at the start, that the moderator will not be offering an opinion or a conclusion during this session. This ground rule matters and should be repeated if the discussion later pulls toward asking the moderator directly what they think.

Walking Through the Structure

  1. Confirm the Agreed Factors as a group. Ask directly whether anyone disputes any of them. If a fact is disputed, note the disagreement and move on — do not resolve it as the moderator.
  2. Work through the Guided Prompts, not necessarily all eight in a single session if time is limited. Let students respond to each other, not only to the moderator. Redirect debate back to the prompts if it drifts.
  3. Introduce the Reflection at a natural point in the discussion, once the room has engaged with several prompts — not before, or it can prematurely narrow the conversation.
  4. Open the floor for any final points not yet raised.

The Vote

Close the session with a vote on the Core Question itself, restated as the Peace Frame: does this increase or decrease the level of peace in the world human society? This vote is not a verdict on the underlying issue. It is a dated record of where this specific, informed group landed after full exposure to the material — nothing more, nothing less.

After the Session

Record the vote result, the date, and the size of the group, and make that record available alongside the question itself. Over time, the same question asked of different classes, in different years, becomes its own kind of evidence — not proof of a correct answer, but a real, honest record of how thinking on a genuine issue moves, or fails to move, over time.