I attended a fantastic course yesterday. Sitting in the room I was beginning to feel physically uncomfortable, so excited that I felt I was about to burst. I kept wanting to run out of the room and run to school and start putting what I was hearing into practice straightaway; but I knew I was going to learn more, so I was staying put.
Over lunch, I talked nineteen to the dozen with another teacher, both of us enthused, and trying to wolf our food down so we could get back to the seminar. We were bouncing ideas off each other, working out how we could use what we were learning back in our classrooms.
I was already planning my lesson for the following day, and had planned to use it once a week with a group that I have next year that has the potential to be tricky. I already had in mind a pilot group, a report, dissemination, training other teachers.
So what was this course?
Philosophy 4 Children. Obviously, the title gives that away, but I wanted to get across first how much this course had a physical and emotional effect on me. The trainer, Will Ord, from Thinking Education, was excellent. He had a good range of resources, but the best bit was the way he modelled the methods, and explained the pedagogy behind P4C very clearly. One piece of clear evidence that backs up how effective Will was: he asked us to make a “Take Ten” list – ten practical ideas that we could take away and use. I made a list of at least fourteen. And I used one as my starter today, another as a method of sharing ideas (put hand palm upwards as opposed to raising hand), and another as a means of voting (the omnivote – saves having to make sure no one votes twice, let them vote as often as they want!).
So, yes, I did put the ideas into practice straightaway. I teach my Year 7s last lesson on a Friday, and although they are a fantastic class, they can sometimes become a little bit hyper by that time, and not quite as focused. So what better time to try something new?!
As we entered the chapel (I’m lucky to have a quiet place where I don’t have to rearrange the desks), another class began to walk across the playground. I’d forgotten that another teacher was going to bring her class to do some quiet reading about Desmond Tutu in the chapel! So, I decided to make it a joint P4C class. Although this meant there was some shyness from some in my class, they worked together quite well. We started trying to sit down one at a time in silence, queue lots of laughter then some frantic gesturing from those that understood how it could be done more quickly than the others. I then shared as a stimulus an old photo of my grandmother, great grandmother and great great grandmother (most of my class had since this already, but it was new for the other class), then a few pupils shared their first thoughts. In threes, they then came up with some questions, which were then shared with the others in the class. Some of these questions were still about the stimulus (eg Who are they? What year is this?) but others included What is a family? Should we have babies? and Are all families close? Unfortunately, at this point we only managed three comments in response to the chosen question (Should we have babies?: some people want to extend their families, some people are poor, we might not want so many people), so I’ll need to keep a closer eye on time keeping next time, and bear in mind that it takes a while to go over some of the ground rules etc. However, overall, I was quite happy with it for a first go, and hope that I can do that again on Thursday, which will be the next, and last, time I see this group – and I am not due to have them next year, so it may be some time before I see them again.
Can anyone suggest a good stimulus for this last lesson? Maybe something that might encourage us to think about the past year, or something about summer holidays, or about change, or growing … Maybe one of their exercise books, or a photo from earlier in the year when they did a drama about The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas? A pair of sunglasses, or a clock? Or maybe I should ask them to all hold hands and pass a squeeze around, or just ask them to think about the whole year? What would you do? (And what would someone who disagrees with you say?)
