Juniors engaging in vital discussion after preparing their own open-ended, text based framing questions in response to reading “The Pact,” essays by DuBois and Booker T. Washington, and Debra Dickerson’s “Who Shot Johnny?” Our first Socratic Seminar of the 2012-13 year set a high bar for fostering a respectful speaking and listening environment. Students were taught to build onto ideas, disagree respectfully, and show careful listening — all of these habits of mind were a precursor to writing critical response papers.