Philosophy
5/6s
Fairness (including equity and equality)
We have enjoyed lots of fascinating discussions about the concept of fairness. The vast majority of students have shared that their ideas about fairness have changed from thinking that treating everyone the same is the most fair thing, to including the idea of equity and needs-based support. It was really interesting to hear students raise the the idea that sometimes we do need equality (for human rights and for sports, aths etc) but at other times we do need to give more attention, resources, or support to people who need it more. Remember that in philosophy I'm not teaching them these things - I'm providing stimulus and questions, and facilitating discussions so that students develop their thinking and learn with and from each other!
Participatory Democracy - Civics & Citizenship
After some in-depth explorations of the concept of fairness, we stepped out of philosophy to spend a few weeks doing some Civics & Citizenship to learn about systems of power and decision making systems, then later in the year we'll return to the things that students find unfair at our school and think about how we can make them fairer through our systems of power and decision making processes - or even changing these processes!
We enjoyed an incursion by Sonia from the Sortition Foundation. She spoke with students about ways that young people can be involved in shaping our society and schools through more participatory democracy, and she facilitated some interesting discussions - students enjoyed having an outsider with fresh ears and eyes to hear their experiences. Sonia shared some short videos with us that you might also be interested in:
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/school-circles/ - Democratic schools - sharing power with students, and involving them in decision making.
https://youtu.be/gZAZnJ10vVY - Children & Young People's Assembly in Ireland, to advise the government on addressing biodiversity loss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGhrBw6Oi-A - A democratic, randomised selection process for the SRC at a school in Bolivia (something that we started an NPS last year, possibly an Australian-first), and the positive impacts of this.
Philosophy in Public Spaces (PIPS) event
This week, I took some students from 5/6EF to the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square for a Philosophy in Public Spaces (PIPS) event run by the Victorian Association for Philosophy in Schools (VAPS). We spent the day using art work as starting points for exploring the concept of identity, before expressing our more developed thinking about identity through creating our own art. It was such a delight taking these students out on public transport, through the city, and to this event - their conduct was excellent and it brought me so much joy to see them engaging in philosophical discussions with other facilitators and students from other schools. I'm looking forward to doing the same with the other 5/6 classes in the second half of the year. There is a cap on the number of students I can take, so sadly not everyone can come, just to warn you!
3/4s
Giving & Taking
We've been exploring giving and taking (we haven't yet gone into the differences between taking and receiving, but I hope to) - what we give, what we take, and why we give and take. Students have shared such an interesting diversity of responses - see some of the photos below of class brainstorms.
We also thought about why we give and why we take (again, see some photos).
Our relationship with nature
We then read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and students' reflections and wisdom was impressive eg "we can't give everything or we'll have nothing left for ourselves". I wish I had written down more responses. This has begun a new focus on relationships and our relationship with nature - something that we have begun to reflect upon but not yet discuss.
For Reconciliation Week, we did lots of weeding in the Wellbeing Nature Connect Garden and along the Protected Habitat Corridor (created with the 1/2s last year in Inquiry with a Landcare Grant). For World Environment Day, we planted indigenous plants with support from Nangak Tamboree and Green By Nature. Whilst weeding and planting, students reflected upon their relationship with nature and we'll discuss this further next term.
Nangak Tamboree would really appreciate getting feedback from some students to assist with their grants and efforts to support schools like ours. If your child did any planting in the Wellbeing Nature Connect Garden during a Philosophy session with me or Kehani (CRT), please get them to complete this survey https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=2CbumsKXrU-JAJZzX23HPyUg5NqCj1pClBHYIa2vyXZURFVQMkxCQUFHOFZXSE1OQjdUMFNXUzlGRy4u Thanks!
1/2s
This term we're continuing to explore the concept of friendship, but sometimes with an ethical lens. I've found that the 1/2s respond well to picture story books, so we're using certain books to launch our sessions with a different aspect of friendship explored most weeks. For example, we used the book "Little Blue and Little Yellow" by Leo Lionni to explore the idea of being influenced and changed by our friends in various ways.
To explore the idea of there being helpful friends (and ways of being helpful as friends) rather than just fun friends, we read "Sharing a Shell" by Julia Donaldson, had a discussion about that, and then we practised being helpful friends with clear communication (detailed information, careful listening, asking questions etc) in a 'blind' drawing or back-to-back drawing activity, which was a hit!
In another session, after reading a very funny old book called "The Important Book", we thought about what was important to friendship, then made our own books called "The Important Things About Friends" by Margaret Wise Brown. We then spent the next few weeks using the content from our own books to explore the concept of friendship, trying to sort out what elements or behaviours are essential to friendship and which are optional.
Nerida
Philosophy teacher & student empowerment coordinator