This year, Project Vox is expanding its educational outreach, working to bring marginalized figures from the history of philosophy beyond college campuses and into high school classrooms.
As part of that effort, Project Vox invited eight teachers from local middle and high schools to Bostock Library on Duke’s West Campus for its first-ever Teacher Development Workshop on Saturday, February 21. The workshop aimed to help teachers think about how they might incorporate philosophical discussions, especially ones centered on Project Vox’s figures, into their English and social studies classes.
The workshop was led by the Project Vox education team, which includes Lindsay Huth, Mary Purcell, and Audrey Ledbetter.
At the workshop, participants talked about philosophy — what it is, the benefits it offers to students, and what the history of philosophy, in particular, has to offer — and how to lead philosophical discussions in the classroom.
Teachers engaged in a practice philosophical discussion focused on an excerpt from Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogue on the Infinity of Love. They were prompted to reflect on their own definitions of love, including the words they commonly associate with it. They then worked together to develop a shared understanding of how d’Aragona defined love, which they evaluated and compared to their own ideas about love.
Several teachers shared that this discussion illuminated for them what philosophy was and what philosophical discussion had to offer their classrooms.
Teachers at the workshop also reviewed and provided feedback on high school lesson plans that the Project Vox team is developing to help teachers incorporate Project Vox philosophers into their existing English and social studies curricula.
One lesson plan focuses on the nature of love, bringing d’Aragona into conversation with “Romeo & Juliet.” This lesson includes the discussion about the definition of love that teachers practiced during the workshop.
Another lesson plan considers arguments made against slavery in the U.S. and France in the wake of their respective revolutions. That lesson pairs a text from Germaine de Staël (in France) with one from Benjamin Banneker (in the U.S.) and examines how both authors point out the hypocrisy of their audiences in an effort to convince them to reject slavery.
A third lesson examines arguments for a woman’s right to education made by various authors during the Querelle des Femmes, an extended debate about the nature of women that occurred in Europe from the 14th to 17th centuries.
At the workshop, teachers offered helpful ideas about how to make the lessons more accessible for both students and teachers. These ideas will guide ongoing updates to the lesson plans, which the team plans to publish publicly at the end of the semester.
In acknowledgement of their contributions to this work, each workshop participant received a $100 honorarium, the title “Duke Philosophy Curricular Fellow,” and the opportunity to secure continuing education credits.
Project Vox team member Grace Nie, a first-year Robertson Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also participated in the workshop.
“If I had the opportunity to engage in these sorts of activities in high school, I would have realized the impact individual words and genuine, close reading can have on comprehension and critical thinking much sooner,” Nie said.
If you are interested in talking about or using these high school lesson plans, please contact Lindsay Huth at lindsay.huth@duke.edu.
