Something Cool
In the Ethical Issues class that I teach, I have a mix of grade levels. When I started the class four years ago, it was all 12th graders, and I tried to mix discussions of current events with some of the philosophical ideas that I teach in my intro college classes. I started using Mark Rowlands’ book, Sci-Phi, which I have also used in the college classes. The book does a nice job of combining discussions of action movies, philosophical concepts, and conversational language, but it’s still a pretty dense read. But since I figured that most of these 12th graders would be facing texts like that in just a year’s time, it was worth the investment to try to hep the students work through it. The second year I taught the class it was a mixture of 10th and 12th graders. I started getting a little more concerned about the text, and I started getting the feeling that the students weren’t getting much from the experience of reading it. In the third year, I started getting 9th graders in the class as well, and that’s when I pulled back from the text completely. I took the general ideas that I had tried to tech the previous years, and created a “List of isms” for the students to review, discuss, and use when we talk about current events and ethical problems. I think it’s been working well – simplifying my approach is actually giving us opportunities for greater depth in using the concepts.
This week I gave the students some time to work on a project of their choosing, with the guideline that they should create something to explain at least one of “the isms.” A group decided to create a rap explaining concepts like dualism and egoism, and after a couple of days of rehearsing, they performed it for the class. In that moment, my students made something cool happen in the classroom. I’m proud of them, and I’ll be honest, I’m proud of myself, because I don’t know if that moment would have been possible during my first year in the high school classroom. I still have a lot of growing to do, to make moments like that happen more frequently and for more people. But when something cool happens, it’s worth savoring the experience.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.