When students say openly prejudiced things

So, on Wednesday I’m going to run a professional-development workshop at my school, for my colleagues (i.e. other teachers) on how to react when students say openly bigoted stuff. So not the subtle things (although that’s also a massive issue) but like, using slurs, or ‘in Algeria we don’t have any gays because we kill them’, or ‘bisexual people are just greedy and selfish’, or ‘being gay is a birth defect’. (All RL examples from my classroom! Anti-Semitism and xenophobia also crop up semi-regularly, and racism every so often.)

It’s a tiny little forty-minute session, so I’m going to start off with what made me think about the topic and the school policy, then teachers discuss in pairs, then we discuss as a group, then I round it off with some tips and ideas. Most of the discussion will be different techniques for responding to this in the classroom, what we’ve tried and what’s worked, and also what the goal is - i.e. do we want to be ‘neutral arbiters’ (hint those don’t exist and also no), are we changing hearts and minds, do we just want the student to shut up, etc.

Keep in mind I teach at a language school, all my students are studying English as a foreign language and most are adults who are explicitly in London to learn some British culture too. I’m happy to host a wider discussion, though, and interested to hear POVs and difficulties from the various state school teachers and university lecturers I know.

Basically, I’d love to know if you have any thoughts! And not just from teachers - you're all former or even current students. I have thoughts of my own but I’ll keep those to the comment replies...