CHAPTER 1

Overview of the WashingtonElementary School Philosophy ProjectM. Evans, A Bassiri

The idea of introducing philosophy and critical thinking to theelementary school curriculum has received great attention recently.Most teachers however are not trained in philosophy and the fieldis plagued with difficult, indeed at times impossible to decipherliterature. Even if one has a grasp of philosophy it is difficult toknow just how to make the subject interesting to elementary schoolstudents. Inspired by the work of Thomas Wartenberg, Maria Evans(principal of Washington Elementary School at San Jose) and AliBassiri (a physician with a strong interest in education) broughttogether three philosophy professors (Drs. Anand Vaidya, KarinBrown, and Carlos Sanchez), two school teachers (Allison Pruitt andStacy Mascitelli-Morey), along with over ten volunteers that includedcommunity members, parents, and philosophy students, and createdthe Philosophy Committee of the Washington Elementary School.The goal was simple: to discover how to implement philosophy inelementary school classrooms. We eventually discovered that thesolution is to (1) transform the role of the student from passivelearner to the active participant by using active learning methods,and (2) transform the role of the adult from the knowledgeableleader who knows the answers to the `uninformed participant' whomingles with students seeking answers (ie. plays `dumb').

The basic idea behind designing a classroom philosophy sessionis to pick an appropriate topic and a related question (What doesit mean for something to be fair? What is happiness? Why do wemake mistakes? Is it ever OK to lie? etc.), select a story that exploresthe topic, and create a lesson plan that recreates the question inthe classroom. For example, on the topic of justice, the kids readEmily's Art, a story about an unfair art contest. We then held anart contest in the class and the children chose a winner by majorityvote. An adult role-played a judge and picked a lesser drawing bysome obviously irrational criteria (mimicking the events in Emily'sArt). The students uniformly protested and there was an excellentdiscussion about the criteria the judge used and whether they werefair.

The Committee implemented this project during the 2011-2012and 2012-2013 school years for 2nd and 3rd grades. The storiesused were either chosen from Thomas Wartenberg's websiteteachingchildren philosophy.org or found while browsing throughbookstores. The professors would provide a philosophical synopsisof the story which the Committee would use to create a lessonplan. The volunteers would then implement the lesson plan duringclassroom sessions under teacher supervision. A feedback formwas created which the teachers completed at the end of everysession. This assessment became the basis of the project's qualityimprovement efforts. Once a month, the Committee would meet,review the feedback, and discuss methods to improve subsequentlesson plans. During the first year the sessions comprised of twoadults who read the story and lead the classroom discussion. Duringthe second year we abandoned this format for active learningmethods and the focus shifted to dividing the class into smallergroups where students can all voice their opinions. The adult rolewas changed to participant rather than discussion leader and thenumber of adults per session increased to at times as many as eight.The result was a much more interactive session which is describedin Chapter 2. Through a process of trial and error we formalized aprocess that became the basis of our operations. This process issummarized below and forms the basis of this manual.

1) Create age-appropriate philosophical questions:

The task of analyzing the story for its philosophical contentnaturally falls to the professors. The professors read the books andidentify the philosophical questions. The members of the committeethen transform the questions into age-appropriate syntax and findits relevant application to the student's lives.

Take the question "can we trust our senses to perceive trueknowledge?" This question is too abstract for young children (andin fact most adults!). The question needs to be transformed intoa sentence such as "why do we make mistakes?" The latter maynot be the exact same philosophical question but addresses thesame philosophical subject, namely epistemology (the study ofknowledge).

Another example is the transformation of "What is happiness?",which is too abstract for most children, to the more graspable "Whatmakes you happy all the time?" The idea is that an activity likeeating ice cream only makes you happy while you're doing it, whilea concept like self-satisfaction or family affection creates happinessthat is present all the time (and theoretically closer to the abstractconcept of `happiness').

A significant portion of the committee meeting time is spentdiscussing the phrasing of questions. Many of our proposedsentences failed to engage the children, so we modified them untilwe found a version that resonated with the students. In Chapter3, Professor Brown will overview philosophical questions derivedfrom children's stories. In Chapter 4, Dr. Bassiri and ProfessorVaidya provide tips on how to steer everyday conversation to moreabstract levels.

2) Prepare the class for philosophical discussion

Sessions are more productive if students have read the storiesbeforehand. The more exposure children have to the story the easierthey can delve into deeper abstract issues. It is also imperative thatchildren have their own copy of the book to follow along. This mayincur a significant cost but the benefits are well worth it and thebooks can be used the following year. Midway through the projectteachers began to read the story to class beforehand and thissignificantly improved discussion quality and student attention.

Teachers are also the most appropriate persons to reiteratethe rules of conversation. Such rules include active listening,not interrupting, raising one's hand when wanting to speak, andlooking at the person you're talking to. In Chapter 5 teacher AllisonPruitt summarizes her method of preparing the class for groupdiscussion.

3) Prepare a lesson plan and conduct classroom sessions:

Once the story has been analyzed and age-appropriatequestions created, the basic data is available for the preparationof a lesson plan. Lesson plan is the instruction guide for classroomsessions and discussed in detail in Chapter 2. The followingfactors were found to be instrumental in the implementation of asuccessful lesson plan:

a) Make the philosophical question relevant to the child's life

Making the philosophical question relevant to the student'slife is crucial for optimizing student participation. The input ofthe teachers is essential as they know the students better thananyone. An example is the session on friendship, which used thestory Alone, from Arnold Lobel's book "Days with Frog and Toad".In the story, Frog sits alone on an island contemplating how luckyhe is. Toad, unaware that Frog is actually happy, watches from theshore mistakenly thinking that his best friend is upset at him. Thephilosophical question is `Should Toad leave Frog alone or respecthis right to privacy?' and reflects individualism in friendship. Ananalogy is a child who is by himself in a playground. Should he beleft alone or approached? Students can recreate this scenario inclass and use it to explore the story.

(b) Use active learning methods and incorporate physical movement

The usual passive format where an adult asks a question hopingto elicit a response is unlikely to engage students. It feels too muchlike school where a few students answer the questions while the`silent majority' drifts off. To increase student participation weswitched to active learning methods which by nature incorporatemost or all students. The active learning methods used were smallgroup discussion, role play/skits, group debate, and fish bowl, andthey form the infrastructure of our lesson plans. We also noticedthat children's focus improved if they are given a chance to physicallymove every 10-15 minutes. As such, movement was incorporatedinto the lesson plan.

Small group discussion involves dividing the class into groups of3-4 students with one or two adults (depending on the number ofvolunteers). The philosophical questions are presented and everyonegets a chance to share their opinions. The initial `ice breaker' questionis usually an easy one related to some aspect of the student's lives.The discussion then moves into more abstract areas. The purposeof small groups is to ensure that every student voices an opinion andunderstands the philosophical issues. An example of an ice-breakeris "tell me about a time you guys made a mistake?" followed by themore abstract "why do you guys think we make mistakes?" Adultsshould ensure that every student participates.

Role play involves acting out a scenario that brings out aphilosophical question. The skits are designed to place the adults (andat times children) in various philosophical dilemmas. The `confusedadult' then turns to students for advice(`Should I lie or not?', `ShouldI approach my friend or respect his privacy?', `I'm confused, how doyou decide which drawing is better? etc). The entire class is involvedand everyone can participate in the discussion. What makes theseskits particularly appealing is the irony that students are teachingthe adults! We found this `role reversal' to engage students andincrease their enjoyment of the sessions. Role play also involvesmovement which energizes the kids and prevents boredom.

Group debate involves the entire class sitting in a horseshoe shapein front of an adult who can either read a story or present a questionfor discussion. The idea is to stimulate children to debate each otherand come up with counterarguments or counterexamples to eachother's views. Adults can participate in the discussion especiallyif the conversation begins to dwindle. They are modeling how todisagree respectfully and the students will learn by observing andlistening.

Finally, fishbowl is used to conclude the session and sum upwhat everyone has learned. 7 chairs are arranged in a circle. Four orfive children and one or two adults occupy 6 of the seats and one isleft vacant. The rest of the students crowd around the `fishbowl'.The seated begin a discussion of what they've learned. One studentis coached to lead the discussion and ask everyone their opinions.Students who surround the fishbowl can take turns occupying theempty seat, voice their opinion, and vacate the seat for anotherstudent (or adult). Everyone is encouraged to participate includingthe teacher. Fishbowl is a great opportunity to assess the successof the session. If students have plenty to say then the session wasa success!

(c) Make adults participants not teachers

During the early stages of the project adults functioned more orless as leaders who posed questions to the class. They usually endedup doing most of the talking despite persistent efforts to engage thechildren. As such, the success of the sessions became significantlydependent on the knowledge and personality of the moderators.Enthusiastic moderators created vibrant sessions, opinionatedmoderators created sessions that resembled sermons, while themore reserved moderators created sessions with lots of quiet times.We decided that the sessions needed to become independent ofvolunteer personality. The solution was to transform the role ofadults from discussion leaders to equal participants.

Equal participants mingle with students, sit among them, asktheir opinions, and interact at their eye level. They participatein active learning methods. They routinely act `uninformed' andask students to clarify issues for them. They solicit each other'sopinions and speak up when the discussion seems to be dragging.They reiterate that there are no right or wrong answers and thateveryone's answers are equally valid. Perhaps most importantly,they model how to argue, listen, disagree, and respect each other'sopinions.

(4) Assess the success of the sessions by written feedback from theteachers

Midway through our project we created a feedback form thatwas completed by the teachers after each session. The contentsassess the quality of discussion, appropriateness of props,student participation, adult-adult interactions, and adult-studentinteractions. The ultimate goal of our project is to create sessionswhere students discuss issues among themselves with as little adultinvolvement as possible. Teacher feedback allows the Committeeto assess if this goal is achieved. In fact it was these assessmentsthat led to the implementation of active learning methods andthe transformation of the role of volunteers to equal participants.Teacher Stacy Mascitelli-Morey will discuss how to assess sessionsand provide feedback in Chapter 6.

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The chapters that follow elaborate on these basic principles.They are a summary of our two year experience at WashingtonElementary School. Principal Maria Evans will conclude the manualin the Epilogue by providing some thoughts on how valuable thisproject has been to her school. We hope our experience can helpimplement philosophy in schools across the country.

CHAPTER 2

Lesson Plans and Classroom SessionsA. Bassiri, M. Evans

In this chapter we will construct a lesson plan and provide somehelpful tips for conducting classroom sessions. As mentioned inChapter 1, a lesson plan must be relevant to a child's life, use activelearning techniques, include physical movement, and involve adultsas equal participants who routinely play `dumb'. Box1 is the templatefor such a lesson plan. The individual components of the templatewere introduced in Chapter 1.

For this chapter we will use the story "Alone" from the book"Days With Frog and Toad" by Arnold Lobel to create a lesson plan.The topic is friendship. "Alone" starts with a note by Frog to hisbest friend Toad stating he wants to be alone. Toad perceives themessage as an indication that Frog is upset at him. He searcheseverywhere and eventually finds Frog sitting alone on a small island.Determined to regain Frog's friendship, Toad goes home, makesa picnic lunch, returns and asks a turtle to carry him to the island.Turtle argues that if Frog wants to be alone, Toad should let him.Toad persists and eventually arrives at the island where he findsthat Frog was happy all along and just wanted to reflect on howlucky he is.

Constructing a lesson plan

The first step is for the professors to analyze the story and providesome questions (Box 2).

We chose the questions "what is essential about a friendship?"and "how important is it to maintain one's individuality in afriendship?" as the basis of the lesson plan. The phrasing of thesentences where simplified to "what is the most importantthing about friends?", and "have you ever wanted to be alone?"respectively. This rephrasing of the question is absolutely crucialfor a successful session and frequently involves sacrificing a degreeof `abstractness'.

The basic information needed to create a lesson plan is nowavailable. The committee discusses the possibilities for small groupdiscussion, role play, and group discussion. The chair writes downa lesson plan. After a few group emails, a final draft is created(Box 3).

Conducting classroom sessions

The classroom session involves the active participation of a leadmoderator, the adult participants, and the teacher, and creates atremendous opportunity for modeling the art of conversation. Oneperson needs to be the lead moderator and direct the sessions. Thelead moderator performs the following functions:

(1) Introducing the topic, the objectives of the day, and theadult volunteers

(2) time keeping and announcing the transition from oneactivity to another

(3) directing role play

(4) directing group discussion

(5) coaching one of the children to lead fishbowl