Yes, I have been working with these 6th grade students since kindergarten. Each year I work with all of the students in the grade, so although there is a different combination of students in the various classrooms each year I still get to work with all of the students. It helps that this is a Philosophy in the Schools program in which I come into the classroom to work with the students. What I do doesn’t at all depend on teachers wanting to do philosophy with their classes — my work with the students only requires the teachers to allow for the time for philosophy.

It really has been gratifying to see the growth in philosophical skills over the years with this group. I meet with the students every week, for about 45 minutes in each class, for part of each year (the length varies, but generally for about half the year, sometimes longer). We have created some art as part of the unit we’ve been doing this fall — I just haven’t scanned anything into the blog yet, but it is on my list of things to do!

Thanks, Brian, for your nice words!

Jana

From the photo, the children look to be about 10? I hope that experiences like this one mitigate against their aesthetic views ossifying in the next few years, at least in some cases.

Good job!

I have e-mailed other teachers to join in the conversation. Hey, guys please join in!

I have a few questions about your middle school philosophy students:
1. You mentioned you were working with two 6th grade classes; are you working with any other grade levels?
2. I’m under the impression that you have been working with these students for a number of years-at least I think I read somewhere on your blog that you have been working with the same group of students since kindergarten? Is this correct? One of the problems, we’ve encountered is that we will have a teacher who will work with her class on philosophical inquiry one year, however the next year, these students will be shuffled and moved to different classes- only a few from that class will be remain together. (Unfortunately not every staff member has embraced P4C [this is rather an understatement!]) It must be incredible to see the growth of this community of students over a multi-year span. How have you managed to achieve this?
3. How often and long do you meet with the students?

The discussion that you had with your students regarding if plants have feelings -are plants sentient; I find very interesting and can’t imagine how much fun it was to facilitate this discussion with 6th grade students. The response”if people have feelings that are unexpressed, why should the fact that plants don’t express feelings lead us to conclude the plants don’t have them?” a very nice move-have you worked with informal logic with this group?

Are the students creating any visual or musical works stemming from the discussions? If so, could you scan a few into the blog? Do you have any videos of the dialogues that could be streamed into the site? I would love to see them and I’m sure that my students would be interested in seeing works generated from philosophical inquiry.

I found their three sources for expression in art to be very astute:
1. feelings generated by the artist
2. feelings that are part of the painting itself-did they elaborate on paintings embodying emotions independent of the maker or viewer-an interesting concept.
3. feelings in us causing us to respond in a certain way to particular piece art

I see there is a new post on music-can’t wait to read it!