Permission to Provoke: A 9 Step Guide to Teaching Controversial Topics With Confidence and Care

Blog post October 16, 2025 Ashley Shaw, SREB Communications Specialist

There are two kinds of teachers when controversy walks into the classroom.
One panics and mentally scans the employee handbook for legal cover.
The other smiles, leans in, and says, “Let’s talk about that.”

Chaney Mosley — an agricultural educator and professor from Middle Tennessee State University — calls that second approach “permission to provoke.” And after hearing his featured speaker session at the 2025 Making Schools Work Conference, I’m convinced it is a good way to prepare students for a thinking, breathing, messy democracy.

This post is a how-to guide, built from the stories, humor and hard-earned classroom experience he described in his session, and it includes nine ideas on how you can better teach controversial topics in your classroom. Because the truth is, controversy will find you whether you invite it or not. The question is whether you’ll be ready when it comes.

1. Start with a Hot Dog, Not a Firestorm

Mosley began with a question that made the whole room grin:
“Is a hot dog a sandwich?”

The discussion lit up instantly. Someone invoked “layering.” Another argued classification. Within minutes, we had a fully engaged, passionate audience — and not a single risk of parental complaint.

Before you dive into bigger topics, let them practice the process of respectful disagreement.

That’s the point. If you want students to learn how to disagree, start with something harmless. Before you dive into bigger topics, let them practice the process of respectful disagreement. The hot dog question is the sandbox version of civic discourse.

It’s also a reminder that controversy is a matter of perspective. What feels lighthearted to one person can strike deeply at another’s identity or experience.

2. Don’t Tell Students What to Think – Give Them Facts and Let Them Make Their Own Conclusions

Early in his career, Mosley taught a unit on medical testing using animals. At the time, he taught it only because it was a part of the standards, and he didn’t realize it might cause any problems.

The next morning, he was called to the principal’s office. Mosley was met with a furious father, a mother and a student who looked ready to disappear under the table. The father began the interrogation with what Mosley calls “the knife hand”—the military-style point that means business.

The family was vegan, and the father was angry that Mosley had brainwashed his daughter. Why? Because of what she said when she spoke up in the meeting: She had type 1 diabetes and had just learned in class that insulin was first derived from pigs. That day, she had gone home and told her parents that maybe it wasn’t as black and white as they thought because “if we hadn’t in the past used animals for testing, I’d be dead.”

That was the day Mosley realized he hadn’t brainwashed anyone. He’d given a student new information — and she’d made her own conceptual leap. That’s the goal. Controversial lessons aren’t about persuading. They’re about equipping students with enough knowledge and courage to examine what they believe.

3. Use the Dichotomous Key to Determine If a Topic Will Be Controversial

Teachers love a checklist. Mosley offers one.

He uses a “dichotomous key”— borrowed from biology — to help decide if a topic is truly controversial or just debatable.

Ask these questions in order:

Are there differing viewpoints?
Do people express strong emotions about it?
Does it involve ethical or moral considerations?
Is it multifaceted, with many contributing factors?

If you reach “yes” to most, you’ve got yourself a genuine controversial topic.

If you reach “no,” it’s probably just a spirited discussion about hot dogs.

This key does two things. It helps you decide whether to wade in, and it prepares you to justify your choice later. If a parent, administrator or board member questions why you discussed, say, genetic modification or police reform, you can show that you didn’t “go rogue.” You followed a structured decision-making process.

4. Ask Four Hard Questions Before You Teach It

Even if a topic is controversial, that doesn’t mean it belongs in your classroom.

Mosley suggests four filters:

Does it align with standards or required competencies?
If not, you’re arguing uphill. Tie it explicitly to curriculum goals.
Can it be connected to real-world issues in your career field?
In career and technical education, ethics and practice are inseparable.
Will it enhance critical skills like communication, problem-solving or decision-making?
If yes, that’s half the battle.
Is it developmentally appropriate and sensitive to students’ backgrounds?
Your class may be the only safe space some students have. Don’t weaponize it.

Even if a topic is controversial, that doesn’t mean it belongs in your classroom.

He illustrated that last point with a story about Nebraska’s health education standards, which proposed (and then dropped) content around gender identity. The fight wasn’t just about content — it was about readiness, context and the lived experience of students.

The lesson: a topic can be educationally rich and still be too volatile for your setting right now. Timing and community context matter.

5. Stay Neutral — or at Least Appear To

When Mosley showed a photo of a futuristic AI-powered classroom and asked for the room’s thoughts, one teacher immediately said that she was immediately offput because of her personal stance on AI.

Perfect setup for Mosley to ask, “Do you believe the integration of artificial intelligence in education will enhance or undermine the role of teachers in fostering critical thinking?”

Then he asked participants to mark where they stood on a continuum — from Enhance to Undermine. No talking, no debating yet — just reflection. Later, after more information (like examples of AI we already use daily — smart assistants, search engines, even Spotify), they marked again. Then they marked their answer again after he showed the hilariously awful AI-generated “professional headshots” he bought for $20. (Think cowboy-hat-meets-sci-fi-villain.)

By the end, people’s positions had shifted — but not because he told them what to think. He simply layered evidence and experience.

That’s neutrality in action. Not emotional detachment, but disciplined balance.
You can model how to weigh evidence without ever revealing your own vote.

Mosley spoke of a high school biology teacher who taught evolution by saying, “My belief is irrelevant. My job is to teach the theory.” That’s the professional sweet spot: transparent about method, opaque about personal conviction.

6. Create Clear Rules of Engagement

If you’re going to open Pandora’s box, you’d better have classroom norms strong enough to hold the lid when needed. Mosley’s essentials:

Set clear expectations for discussion. What does respect look like here?
Acknowledge emotions up front. Controversy without empathy becomes combat.
Be a facilitator, not a persuader. You’re guiding the discussion, not winning it.
Provide balanced resources. Two perspectives minimum, more if available.
Discuss source credibility. Teach students how to spot manipulation and bias.
Use structured formats. This includes things like Socratic seminars, guided debates or “continuum” exercises.

If you’re going to open Pandora’s box, you’d better have classroom norms strong enough to hold the lid when needed.

He reminded us that students will beg to know what you think. Resist.

The moment you declare a stance, you shift the power dynamic. One side feels validated; the other feels judged. And all of them stop thinking for themselves.

7. Make Real-World Connections to the Topics

The final section of Mosley’s talk turned into a roundtable of real-world examples from teachers from different fields:

Criminal Justice: A case study on parental rights and gender reassignment surgery within the court system.

The teacher emphasized, “The court doesn’t care about your opinion.” The class learned to separate emotion from legal reasoning.

Health Science: A unit on human anatomy that opened space for conversations about abortion and transgender health, but with a focus on civility and listening.
Graphic Communications: The tension between print sustainability and digital alternatives.

Each example underscored the same truth: Controversy isn’t confined to social studies or civics. It lives in every discipline, from agriculture to art. To understand the field, students may need to be able to encounter these topics. However, by doing it correctly, they can learn without harm.

8. Recognize the Reasons We Avoid Controversy (and Why We Shouldn’t)

Mosley listed the usual reasons teachers shy away from controversy:

Fear of backlash or job loss
Lack of confidence in managing heated discussions
Local cultural constraints
Fear of disrupting harmony in class
The exhaustion of living in a hyper-partisan world

And yet, the arguments for teaching controversial issues are far stronger:

It boosts engagement (students love a good “what if”).
It builds critical thinking and empathy.
It helps them navigate conflicting information.
It models civil disagreement.
It prepares them for the global workplace—and for democracy.

In other words, controversy is the training ground for citizenship. If students can’t handle tension in a classroom, how will they handle it in a boardroom, a newsroom or a voting booth?

9. Take Steps to Protect Your Job While Stirring the Pot

While there are many reasons to teach relevant controversial topics in your classroom, the truth is that many teachers may feel like they cannot do so because of professional consequences that could occur.

This is why Mosley ended with something every teacher should probably laminate: a list of ways to protect yourself and prepare your students – and anyone else who may have thoughts on your lesson.

Prepare students and caregivers. Send a note home if needed. Let families know why you’re addressing the topic.
Use open-ended questions. Invite thinking, not tribalism.
Balance attention to multiple perspectives. Give each side equal intellectual airtime.
Demand credible sources. Make “source-checking” part of the assignment.
Keep your opinions private. Protect yourself and preserve inquiry.
Teach information literacy. Equip students to separate facts from emotional noise.
Use safe structures. Debates, case studies and Socratic discussions keep emotion contained within a format.
Reflect and adapt afterward. What went well? What surprised you? What will you do differently next time?

And perhaps most importantly, don’t surprise parents.

Mosley told a story about his son’s second-grade teacher who emailed families to say the class would be studying genetics, but since his son was adopted, “he would not be able to participate the same way.” The wording stung. It excluded rather than included.

Because the teacher came to them before the class, though, they were able to work out something that worked for everyone.

The solution? The teachers revised the lesson to use animal genetics instead of family trees — simple, sensitive and still educational.

Takeaway

Controversy isn’t the enemy of teaching; indifference is.

When you give students permission to think, question and disagree respectfully, you’re not just covering standards — you’re cultivating citizens.