It is difficult to convey what I have learned this past semester from teaching philosophy to a small eighth grade class. On the first day, I opened up with Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” My intent was to show them that while learning may not always be the most enjoyable thing, it can open up a brand new world. After the first few classes, I found that lesson plans were becoming easier to formulate.
One of the greatest struggles I soon discovered was how to make philosophy interesting. The demographics of a philosophy class usually do not include kids in the eighth grade. This was a challenge that I was able to overcome. Specific examples of topics that worked included why we should continue with space exploration, along with questioning our faith and whether or not this is a good thing to be doing. Soon, I began ending class with talking about anything that interests the students. Example: Many of the students play basketball. Being a Political Science major, I know there is a great debate in college basketball on whether or not student athletes should be paid. So the next class, I present both sides of the argument. Side 1: these athletes are students, and many, if not most of them, are receiving large scholarships to great schools, therefore they should not be compensated financially. Side 2: while these athletes are students, many of them come from impoverish lifestyles, living meal-by-meal, while the coaches and NCAA executives are paid millions of dollars. If by the end of presenting these arguments I find that majority of the class is siding with argument, I will take the opposing argument to play devil’s advocate. Mainly, I try to teach that having an argument is vital in life. In addition to this, every argument must be informed by research, and not formulated by an opinion they heard. Therefore, I welcome any one with a different or opposing viewpoint, and I encourage this. My most successful class was on social media and loneliness. There was a video I had seen called, “The Innovation of Loneliness,” and it included an argument that while we may be under the impression we have many friends because of Facebook and other social media websites, social media is actually causing us to feel lonely. So I showed the class this video once all the way through, and then played it again, but stopping each time that key issues were brought up. The students were very interested in how something they partake in everyday can have such a significant effect on them. Overall, I have had a great experience, and I am looking forward to beginning a new semester with the students. As I consistently tell the class, if they were to learn only one thing from me, it would be to always have an argument and a perspective on issues. Jack Holiver Every Monday afternoon this semester, fellow philosophy student, Jason Culmone, and I would go to New Haven to teach the 6th-8th graders in the St. Martin de Porres Academy Philosophy Club. Many people ask us “How do you get middle schoolers to understand philosophy?” That’s a good question, and one that Jason and I had the semester to explore and experiment with together. It has been a lot of trial and error and we’ve welcomed feedback from the students at the end of each lesson. I can honestly say that this club has not only taught the students how to think philosophically, but has taught Jason and I how to approach philosophy in a new and creative way.
Jason and I were approached with this opportunity over the summer when the former teacher of the philosophy club contacted Quinnipiac’s Department of Philosophy and Political Science asking if any students would be interested in teaching the club. We were provided with lots of resources and encouragement from the department and the former teacher so that we had ideas for lessons and how to approach these topics with the students. Once a week, Jason and I get together and exchange ideas for what we want to do with the students in the club. Our lessons have ranged from what is time to the ethics of cheating. We get ideas from various books and online sources, and sometimes we pick up on ideas from the material we are learning in our own classes. Once I was sitting in a political science class learning about mutually assured destruction when I came up with the idea to show the class the Dr. Seuss movie “The Butter Battle Book” the next week to start a discussion about conflict and war. The lesson was a success and the students had a lot of input. We learned that the best approach to doing philosophy with this age group is to make it fun and interesting, but to also prepare questions that push them to think in a new way. A typical lesson begins with a game or activity and we follow up with philosophical questions about the activity, and the final question is always “what does this have to do with philosophy?” This is our favorite question because it really gets the students (and us) to think not only about the nature of the topic, but also about the nature of philosophy. After a few weeks of asking this question, their response to this question was consistently “It has to do with philosophy because there is no right answer.” When this became the students’ go-to response, we had to push them one step further by asking why there aren’t always answers in philosophy, or why the topic is still important to talk about. Their answers are sometimes very insightful, and so are the questions they ask us because they aren’t trying to be sophisticated in their responses, but they are trying to give honest answers. While the students are productive and respond well to lessons, we have to remember that the students are still in middle school. As philosophy majors, Jason and I have built up a tolerance to 3-hour philosophy classes, but we recognize that even an hour lesson can be draining and difficult to focus on for the students. We usually plan the philosophy part of the lesson to last about 40 minutes of the 75 minutes we have for the club. When we arrive, we usually play a game to let the students release their energy, and after a good lesson we reward the club by using the rest of the time to go outside and play basketball, their favorite activity. At the end of each meeting, we ask the students how much they liked the lesson and then ask for any topics they would like to talk about in the future. Once after a fun lesson and great discussion about how we define gender, we asked the students to rate the lesson for us; we were shocked when we were getting mediocre ratings from them, but when we asked why, they told us the lesson was fun but it made them think really hard. Jason and I couldn’t help but laugh because getting them to think was the whole point. Carly Hviding & Jason Culmone |
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