Tolerance is an excellent leverage point for working with staff, students, and colleagues.
Examples:
In 2016 I was teaching at Venture Academy, which had a very diverse student population in race, gender identity, and socioeconomic backgrounds, with integrated classrooms of 30% IEP/504 and 10% gifted.
The presidential election results had my Homeroom classroom distraught and divided 50/50, including three students in tears, one on the floor. "How are we supposed to handle this?!" they cried, referring to the students jumping around with joy. I gathered my students in our daily circle and explained:
"The main focus at this point is tolerance. We have to recognize that people are different, and that we're not going to get along with all of them. So this means we have to act professional and tolerant in these group environments."
That Homeroom class went from identifying as "Discombobulated at best” in a shift from overall feeling “traumatized,” to feeling “functional, empathetic, honest, and responsible,” including one student being accepted into a Pre-Med program.
I had a student say, "this is so gay," from the back of my classroom, expressing that the current activity was boring and useless to him.
I gave him grace, empathizing that we all learn language differently, and that this phrase is unacceptable. But maybe it is still considered appropriate in his family.
I gave a diplomatic speech, saying:
"It's nor appropriate to use a human characteristic in a derogatory way. We need to be tolerant of others' lives. And I genuinely care about your learning, so we can all try to be more accurately expressive. Let's change this activity to increase your engagement."
2018 was a stressful year for many students because the school was undergoing a huge transformation. It was severely overcrowded: students were consistently late to class and the school had to change the passing period from 7 to 10 minutes to allow enough time to navigate the crowded hallways. Administration had decided to purchase, remodel, and then move into a new building at the end of the year. Several teachers were sharing the conference room as our office and sharing classrooms with whomever had open slots.
One student was fascinated by the concept of "heresy," and frequently utilized the word when interrupting me and my classroom. Because of his behavior, and with aligning with a lesson from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, I designed and delivered a lesson on Tolerance. I made a point that I will no longer tolerate his disruptive behavior, and he said that my intolerance was hypocritical of our lesson on tolerance. Because of setting norms as part of my Classroom Management, I was able to refer to our Classroom Norms and he now understood why his behavior was that of a heretic, contradicting a rule that we all agreed upon at the beginning of the year.
This student and I continued to have adult conversations about tolerance, and, by the end of the semester, he was quite the spokesman for his close friends and peers, advocating for their ability to thrive in a learning environment.