2024: an election year and Congress’s least productive session in a hundred years. 2024 is a year marked by unruly and stark political divides and a lack of general consensus amongst the American public. Created by StoryCorps, One Small Step is a nation-wide initiative to bring together people with contrasting political or policy differences to engage in a human conversation with the goal of uncovering who Americans truly are as people. 

Maggie Walker’s librarian Ms. DeGroat brought One Small Step to the school in 2021 and has since found great success with the program. She is supported by a student leadership team called “Organizers,” a select group of ten Maggie Walker students and veteran One Small Step participants. The fall of each year is dedicated to the Organizers themselves, allowing the students to get to know one another and hash out their ideas for the program. Sign-ups to participate in the program are released around winter break to all MLWGS students, especially targeting those who have strong political tendencies like those in political-affiliated clubs, and sign-ups close around mid-January. After garnering a substantial group of students to participate, new participants take part in three mandatory workshops between January and February. They engage in light conversation and are exposed to new perspectives to prepare them for the big culminating conversation of the program. However, recurring participants have a much lighter time commitment in terms of preparation and refreshers on the program. Based on responses to a form asking participants about their opinions on certain political topics, students are paired up and each pair will record themselves talking through designated topics in mid-March. The recordings are then sent to Ms. DeGroat and stored in the Library of Congress’s databases by the national organization.

With a four-year legacy at Maggie Walker, One Small Step is constantly evolving, finding better, more impactful ways to benefit the student culture. The students are truly the heart of the program, putting forth their time and effort into creating a more understanding and inclusive community. This year, Ms. DeGroat made the change to have ten Student Organizers–a significant increase from years prior–with the goal of wanting students to truly reflect on what the best way to conduct the program would be. Another improvement made this year was implementing a “Conversation Guide,” replacing last year’s “Conversation Roadmap.” DeGroat expressed how a student communicated that a “roadmap” implies that “participants need to get somewhere, that they were rushing to get somewhere.” Instead, a “Conversation Guide” was superimposed on a picture of a cavern with a chasm, and this change will hopefully lead to less rigid and more free-flowing and deep conversations–like a cavern. In addition, Maggie Walker’s One Small Step program does not have a mediator or a non-affiliated “middle-man”; rather, the students themselves are the only ones present while discussing  their stances. Such changes contrasts Maggie Walker’s One Small Step with the national organization’s version of the program, molding the program to better fit and benefit the student body.

One Small Step has had a profound impact on the student body, fostering respectful disagreement, civil discourse, and productive dialogue amongst students who are oftentimes polarized by the modern political landscape and media. Winston Crane (‘25), a three-time participant and Student Organizer of One Small Step, comments, “Seeing the MLWGS community get past the partisan divide that seems to be everywhere in politics these days is refreshing and gives me hope for the future.” As a part of the Organizer team, he explains how this year’s Organizers focused on matching people with contrasting viewpoints, whereas in years past, it had been less of a priority. One way the organizers did that is through sending out a form to all participants and asking them simple questions regarding their stances on common political questions. Although heated and divisive topics such as abortion were not on the form, topics such as cancel culture were. This allowed the Organizers to better gauge how to pair students up. Crane remarks, “The success of this year’s conversations has been a testament to the fact that even if political differences are drastic, smart people with the proper mindset can overcome them and have calm, productive conversations.”

For Ally Lichtman (‘25), who is also a member of the One Small Step Organizing Team, the program “has inspired [her] to approach divisive social and political issues with an open mind and thoughtful consideration of a variety of viewpoints.” She comments that the program encourages her to reflect upon how her cultural background and upbringing shaped her values and about how her values have changed over time. “As a participant, I have had the opportunity to sit down with classmates who have different life experiences and political beliefs to understand their unique perspectives and explore our shared humanity,” states Lichtman. As a whole, she believes that the One Small Step has “created an environment for civil discourse in and out of the classroom and has fostered a sense of community.”

The goal of One Small Step is to bring together groups of people of differing backgrounds and beliefs to foster a meaningful and respectful conversation, inspiring healing and self-reflection in a polarized society. Maggie Walker’s One Small Step program has had and continues to have an authentic impact on students, helping shape students to be more in tune with both their peers’ viewpoints and emotions, and their own. By believing in one another’s sense of humanity, One Small Step highlights the power of a story and how it can be a transformative force in all.