Students in this class are debating whether the proposed Crosstown Expressway in 1960s Philadelphia was racist. In the first segment of the discussion, the teacher elicits arguments from the side arguing that the Crosstown Expressway was not racist, and students presented arguments that it served to make the city accessible to everyone. As he elicits these arguments, the teacher orients students to each other (e.g., does anyone have something to support Dashaun? What do you think about what Jonathan just said, Nate?) and orients students to the text by prompting them to put the quotes in their own words. 

After eliciting arguments from the side that the Crosstown Expressway was not racist, the teacher turned to the other side to share arguments that it was racist. As students proceeded to share arguments, it became apparent that they did not know what the Mason-Dixon line was. The teacher stabilized the content by defining the term and then pressed students to explain the argument that the proposed expressway would create a modern Mason-Dixon line. There’s an interesting moment at 6:54 where a student wanted to offer a counter-argument and the teacher insisted that they “stick with this one” – trying to ensure that students understand the point under discussion before moving on. 

The teacher turned to the student who wanted to offer the counter-argument. The student, arguing the position that the Crosstown Expressway was not racist, claimed that the Mason-Dixon line simply divided North from South, not two races. The teacher here pushes back and explains that the article (and student who quoted it) is making the point that the expressway would effectively segregate the city, adding “it’s a good argument that Kyrie made.” This decision not only to resist the student’s counter-argument and affirm the first student’s argument effectively grounds the debate in the text.

 At this point the teacher invites students to abandon their initial positions and argue what they actually believe. We see that two students stuck with their initial positions but one of the students who was initially arguing that the highway was not racist revealed that he actually believed it was. Although the teacher ran out of time, the discourse in this video reveals the value of discussion structures (in this case, the Structured Academic Controversy) that scaffold student argumentation.