Educator and AFT Civics Design Team Member
A 21-year veteran of public education, Stephen Wright currently teaches at Lamar High School in Houston. He leads junior- and senior-level classes in American government and Advanced Placement government and economics, although he has experience across the secondary social studies curriculum. In addition to 14 years in the classroom, Wright has seven years of organizing experience, first for the Associate Member Program of the Texas American Federation of Teachers and then for Education Austin.
A graduate of the Texas public education system himself, Wright was drawn to government and political science during his college career at Texas A&M University. He combined his love of public education and his passion for government by graduating with a political science major and a history minor, then getting his secondary education certificate.
As a politically active individual who believes in the labor movement, Wright joined the AFT during his first year as a teacher and began to get involved right away. He was invited to apply for a full-time organizer role soon after. “I focused on building capacity: recruiting new members and building leadership, so our voices as educators could have an impact,” he says. “My two careers have fed each other well.”
His teaching philosophy is focused on educating students about history and government in a way that makes the disciplines alive and relevant, but it is also focused on getting the students actively involved in their communities. “My students would say that I have tons of passion for what I teach,” he says.
Now that he is back in the classroom, Wright saw the civics design team as a way to continue his involvement in the union. “This project sounded like something we need. Teachers all over the country struggle with questions like, ‘Should I share my own views?’ ‘How do we have discussions about controversial issues without it blowing up?’ and ‘How do we disagree respectfully?’”
He is focusing on researching and experimenting with structured academic controversy. “Structured academic controversy is a strategy in which students in small groups do research on one side of an issue, while another group represents the other side,” he says. “Then, they present the research in a nonconfrontational way, and discuss it with an eye to consensus, not just debate.”
In addition to sharing his background and experience with the rest of the civics design team, Wright has the designation of being the educator with the largest class sizes—several of his classes have more than 45 students.
His goal is for teachers who go through this professional development module to walk away with ideas they can plug into their lesson plans right away. “We don’t want it to be something you have to spend hours revamping before you can incorporate it into your classroom.”
Civics is a critical part of engaging young people in voting and broader community involvement. “We want our students to be voters, to be comfortable jumping right in,” he says. More broadly, Wright says, “The polarization of our society is a problem for everyone. Teaching people to discuss tough issues in a respectful way and find common ground is so important.”
Wright appreciates the union’s role in convening this team of experts and supporting them in creating civics education professional development. “I love that this project is union-driven and union-applied. It helps to show that AFT members are the ultimate professionals, and we can help our colleagues to approach civics in the same, powerful way,” he says. “We’re coming in as colleagues, as fellow union members, to say, ‘we’re using this in our classrooms, and we’ll help you learn how to use it, too.’”