Something I thought about often this class was the role of the teachers and students in a classroom. I found the concept of teacher-student and student-teacher helpful in understanding how to implement a classroom environment where students can practice forming their own questions and thoughts. A student-teacher/teacher-student recognizes that in a discussion you play the role of both student, trying to learn from and understand the experiences/thinking/perspectives of the kids in your class as they teach you about their experiences/thinking/perspectives. Something I want to improve on is to not always try and give my students an example or 'explanation' to some of their questions so quickly. I sometimes get excited by a question a student asks and answer them right away without first letting the community discuss the question. I want to better facilitate discussions between my students even if I think I have a great example or response to give my students.

I'm grad to see three descriptions in using community ball. Right to speak means attention to ongoing speaker. Right to invite is often misunderstood as right to determine next's speaker in Japanese educational situations. Invitation includes tenderness, gentleness to share other's views. And also, we have right to pass. We can wait until someone is prepared to talk. Sometimes Japanese shy and wild students tend to make all students to use right to pass. This notion breaks intellectual safety. From Jumboards I learned many forms when we express intellectual safety. We can be accepted intellectually in many ways. So, there is diversity in intellectual safety. We share deliberative pedagogy. As we share our ideas of intellectual safety, in p4c circle we try to make sense of the new idea. This is how we use content, and p4c teachers ought to construct teaching materials like that way. I have some questions. What is most important to examine our life as little-p philosopher? What occasions is needed when usual teachers start to love little-p philosophy?

I would share about the benefits of using multiple rounds of questions when establishing a community of inquiry. First, having multiple shorter rounds of questions can help engage students in the community building process. There will be a higher amount of engagement if students only have to wait 15-20 minutes to share their thoughts on the question then 15-20 minutes to share their thoughts on the next question, opposed to having to wait 60 minutes to share their thoughts on multiple questions. Second, having multiple rounds of questions can allow the facilitator to scaffold these questions in terms of 'depth' and 'risk'. For example, the first questions could just be general info like "What is your name, where do you live?", the second question could then be a low 'risk' question where students share something more personal, like "What do you like to do in your free time/what are your hobbies?" By having questions of variable risk you can get scaffold students ability to answer more risky questions in addition to assessing which students might be more hesitant with sharing.

I would like to share the meaning of "not in a rush to get somewhere". In today's circle, we talked about where we live, why we like living places, and what we experienced when we met p4c first. I heard most participants were deeply effected by first p4c experiences. And also, I was curious about many features of p4c. After this session, I went to my school to work with. I saw many Japanese teachers were too busy to listen to colleagues voices. Then I realized the meaning of "not in a rush to get somewhere" is just listening. When we listen to voices, we feel time just passing by. I think this experience is needed in every educational systems.

Today's discussion at Waikiki provided much needed framing for some thoughts swirling around in my mind during this symposium. Many disciplines and professions have some sort of product or talent which makes it unique. For historians, the timeline. With doctors, the treatment. The pedagogy of educators. The map of geographers, policy of lawmakers, and the plan of urban planners. Today I learned to articulate this as a superpower. Understanding this superpower seems essential in teaching those who will one day wield the power because, as I see it, education is about building capacity. If we are to teach philosophy we must understand its superpower so we can build capacity in children to recognize it and wield it responsibly. For philosophy, I believe this superpower is inquiry. If this is true, any effort to teach children philosophy necessarily requires the combination of the superpowers of both the educator (pedagogy) and the philosopher (inquiry). This intersection is p4cHI.

Today we heard from 10 teachers who are using the methods of P4C-Hawaii. Two are doing work with adults in correctional facilities, and the others are doing work with kids (in grades K-12) in their own classrooms and sharing the methods with other teachers in their schools. Many of them said they have incorporated the methods as part of their general pedagogical approach, rather than slicing out time specifically for philosophical inquiry. Some of the big take-aways for me are: (1) Teaching a course in P4C through a university's Education department is key to spreading the approach into schools. (2) A philosopher-in-residence is not there to demonstrate the facilitation of an inquiry, but actually participates in the discussion to help guide the content so teachers and students see how to take the discussion in philosophical directions (considering multiple perspectives, challenging assumptions, looking for reasons, connecting to issues about knowledge, value, metaphysics, etc.). (3) Teachers want to see that doing P4C is going to achieve clear outcomes for their students, or they don't want to give up class time to trying it out --3 outcomes can be Thinking, Listening, Speaking. (4) Teachers don't want to read a manual explaining a fancy new pedagogical style; it's better to demonstrate it and pull out elements to scaffold them into incorporating into their own teaching style (e.g., first just suggest they get kids noticing assumptions). (5) Calling it 'discussion circles' or 'communities of inquiry' conveys the method better than 'Philosophy for Children'.   

I’m constantly astounded by the depth of the comments and reflections by the participants. I’m kind of falling in love with this group. And it’s only day 2! Is this what happens when kids do p4c-Hawaii in their communities?

Today i saw how simple practices remove the dogmatic structure of an educational setting. With the community ball each individual was able to guide discussion in accordance with their preferences. This is the type of strategy that promotes inquiry and discussion within a group without direct participation by the facilitator or teacher. 

Really happy that we have so many wonderful educators from across the world join us for our inaugural p4c Hawaii Summer Symposium.