Unless you are one of my professors, classmates, friends, or related partners concerning my project, I am not particularly sure how you managed to stumble upon this blog. You could have found this through StumbleUpon, my Facebook profile (if you at least kinda know me), or my LinkedIn profile. It's no matter if you found this blog; I would just be surprised if seemingly random people found it. I don't expect this blog to report great things or even anything too interesting. Its purpose is simply to journal my attempts at teaching second-graders philosophy for the next 12 weeks.
"Teaching second-graders philosophy?!" It has been done before, so hold your horses. In fact, the teaching of philosophy has been done to children as young as 5 years of age. I will be following the method of Garrett Matthews as offered by the Young Philosophers Program headed by Education to Empower. (FYI, the organization also has a blog!) My approach will intensely revolve around Socratic dialogues with the children along with the help of various media like children's books, video clips, etc. Since I have never been formally trained as a teacher beyond my experience with occasionally helping my mother when she ran a family day care and being a Sunday school camp counselor, this will be interesting for me, to say the least.
I will be teaching once a week (or less, if I am not able to make up time due to Thanksgiving Break) in the morning for about an hour at a local Meadville public elementary school. The sessions will include two classes combined, making a total of 44 students. 44 students! The main teachers for the classes will be there and assisting me in behavioral management, for which I am extremely grateful. Nonetheless, this will be a very challenging classroom, as the teachers reported that while there are some students who are above average either intellectually or behaviorally, there are students who are significantly below their expected levels of development. This makes for quite a bit of mental/psychological diversity, which is unusual and will be incredibly challenging. Am I excited? Yes! Am I nervous? Absolutely! I wouldn't describe myself as terrified, but incredibly anxious. This will be a greatly beneficial experience for me, but I hope this project won't fail.
As you might have noticed, I have yet to mention the name of the elementary school, the names of the teachers there or of my own profs, the day of the week or exact times which I will be teaching, and my own name or much of any detailed information about myself. Most of this is due to my attempt at preserving confidentiality. I did not gain permission from parents to publish anything about their children on the internet, nor would I like any clues as to which children in the small city of Meadville I would be referencing. In future posts, all reference to children and adults related to the program in any way, shape, or form will be through the use of aliases. I also didn't post particular days or times of my sessions to prevent attempt by anybody irrelevant to the program from attempting at interfering. This concern might seem paranoid, but you never know. I really don't need to deal with nightmarish parents who are convinced the world is out there to get their children recruited in some sort of crazy government conspiracy or anything of this nature. The main purpose of this blog is for keeping a graded journal for a philosophy course on education at Allegheny College. The reason why I decided to make this journal into a blog is to allow people across the internet to comment so that I may be able to benefit from any advice they might offer or even use my journal for their own personal entertainment or professional benefit. If there are any concerns in regards to confidentiality that wouldn't want to be posted as a comment, I recommend emailing me at quyntyre@gmail.com.
I'm really not sure what to talk about on my first post other than what I have just mentioned above. I do have some ideas as to how I will open up my very first session with the children. I shall introduce them to the concept of philosophy and the idea that everyone can be a philosopher, including them. That should be quite empowering! It would be interesting to hear from the children as to what they think it means to be a philosopher and to philosophize. Should I read them a short story? Should I just keep it a simple opening discussion? I'll take some time to think about that...
I really do hope all goes well. I am really looking forward to the children, chatting with them, and hearing what they have to say!
No comments:
Post a Comment