The 10 July 1958 earthquake centered near Lituya Bay, Alaska, produced moderate property damage at Yakutat, 100 miles to the northeast, and was readily felt within 400 miles of the epicenter. Five persons died during the earthquake: two in Lituya Bay, where a cataclysmic wave sank two fishing vessels; three others near Yakutat, when a beach on which they were standing fell 100 feet beneath the sea. The earthquake caused large slides in the mountain areas and produced great numbers of sandblows and fissures on the low coastal plain southeast of Yakutat.

There is a growing recognition in society that more needs to be done to support LGBTQ youth in schools. In particular, school climate reports reveal that this need is particularly pressing for transgender individuals who are little understood and often rendered invisible or made to conform to gender-normative social standards. This mixed methods study surveyed and interviewed preservice teachers at three Catholic institutions. In particular, we focus on the shifting landscape of Catholic education in Canada as it relates to the support of transgender youth. The content of the study is framed by a common first grade social studies theme: family diversity, and takes its lead from the recent papal urging to pursue topics of discomfort at the peripheries of Catholic thinking. We explore how Catholic preservice teachers respond to the idea of teaching about transgender-parent families. The findings show there is dissonance between the personal and professional beliefs of new Catholic teachers. This dissonance is reflective of the beliefs held by North American Catholics at large, thus further illuminating the challenges and opportunities that are present in the emerging discussion about how to best support transgender students in Catholic school contexts.

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Motivated by the desire to "reconsider the models of community that many of us rely on in teaching and theorizing," Mary Louise Pratt defines "contact zones" as "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power." 1 Inside such spaces, pedagogical encounters can be challenging on many different levels. Pratt refers to a revamped course on the Americas, for example, by saying "The very nature of the course put ideas and identities on the line." 2 She further explains, "Along with rage, incomprehension, and pain, there were exhilarating moments of wonder and revelation, mutual understanding, and new wisdom," even describing the latter positive experiences as "the joys of the contact zone." 3 While we might wonder whether all the students would necessarily see things this way, Pratt reassures us that "The sufferings and revelations were, at different moments to be sure, experienced by every student," immediately adding "No one was excluded, no one was safe." 4 In the last paragraph, she says that the commitment to design the course so that it was "the best site for learning that it can be" meant that the search for "the pedagogical arts of the contact zone" 5 would continue.In this essay, I want to argue that inside the contact zone the cultivation of a certain conception of critical thinking, one where the critical thinker is "appropriately moved by reasons," should be one of these "pedagogical arts." 6 First articulated and then developed by Harvey Siegel, this approach to critical thinking makes explicit the connection between an acquired ability to identify and evaluate arguments, which Siegel calls "reason assessment," with a commitment to cultivate "certain attitudes, dispositions, habits of mind, and character traits," which he terms "critical spirit." 7 To be a critical thinker, in other words, is to assess arguments in a certain spirit with the goal of possessing good reasons that can inform and properly influence beliefs, desires, and actions.