Teaching People to Listen
31 Aug 2017
By Lisa Truesdale Kent Willmann loves to tell stories. As he pedals around Longmont during his daily bike rides, he often stops to take photos of scenery and visually interesting objects that also impart a deeper message. An integral part of the Boulder County Latino History Project, he helps teachers tell the vital yet under-told story of the area’s Latino community. And as a high-school social studies teacher for 32 years in the St. Vrain Valley School District, Willmann always worked hard to choose stories about history and politics that would help his students become effective citizens. Now, at age 61, when he’s not traveling the world with his wife, Keely, or hanging out with one or more of their three grown children, he still teaches. As an instructor in CU’s School of Education, he guides the next generation of social studies teachers toward crucial classroom techniques for preparing their students for the “3 C’s”—their civic, college and career lives to come. Willmann says that this happens most effectively when teachers share stories with students though a variety of media, often beyond textbooks, like photographs, speeches, films, campaign ads and political cartoons. It’s especially a challenge, he says, in the era of “fake news.” In a lecture hosted by the Longmont Public Library this past February, Willmann talked about the fake news he says is “worsening the polarization of political opinion in the United States.” He’s not a journalist (“although I do have some journalistic experience, since my first job was as a paperboy”), but he knows that fake news isn’t really a new thing at all. When speaking on the subject, he likes to quote Mark Twain: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” “Fake news is a big problem,” he says, “because consumers can now choose to only read or listen to media that validates their viewpoint.”“I think teachers sometimes forget how impactful they are, and what a difference they can make in kids’ lives.”