By Martin Hamilton and Toby Yos
My name is Toby Yos and I specialize in p4c (philosophy for children) at the University of Hawai‘i Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education (home of p4c Hawai‘i). A former p4c student, Martin Hamilton, emailed our University of Hawai‘i p4c team two days after devastating fires took place on the island of Maui, where Martin was born, raised, and teaches today. He expressed concern about how to start the school year as news unfolded about the catastrophic impact of the fires in Lahaina and closer to his school in Makawao. In this moment of uncertainty, he reached out for advice about the best way to incorporate p4c in his first days of school. Here is Martin’s email to our team:
August 10, 2023
Hello Uehiro Academy friends,
I'm reaching out to you all to get some help thinking about how to work to support my students after these wildfires have happened.
Our school community, in Makawao, wasn't affected to the same degree as those in Lahina, but we also had wildfires near our school community in Kula and Olinda. And as I'm sure you all know, being such a small island, what affects Lahina will affect us all as we have connections all over the island.
The main thing I'm struggling with is knowing that my students will be coming to me without us having a community of safety set up yet (I'm teaching 4th grade). Our first school day has been pushed back to Monday, August 14, and I'm unsure how to approach the day now.
Should I just start like usual making the community ball and leave it at that? I remember learning from you all that p4cHI was used in Japan a lot after the tsunami to help children work through their feelings. And I've been reading documents from the national association of school pathologists that supports giving students time to talk about their feelings after disasters.
So I'm wondering if I should set some time aside on Monday to talk about what happened and how students might feel, if they feel comfortable sharing. Or would it be better just to briefly talk about the situation but save that conversation for later in the week after we better understand what it means to be intellectually and emotionally safe with one another?
Mahalo,
Martin Hamilton
Martin’s worry about his students was apparent in his email. So, drawing upon my p4c and counseling experience, I quickly drafted a reply. My immediate impulse was to provide Martin with some advice about how he might use p4c to facilitate a classroom conversation about this tragic topic. As my email progressed, however, I came to realize that my initial counsel was based on the problematic assumption that it was, in fact, a good idea to have the kids all sit in a circle to talk together about the fire in a p4c discussion. Maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do. Maybe the best course of action was simply to have faith in the gently healing quality of the p4c process itself and to refrain from trying to impose a topic of conversation upon the students. The following is my email reply to Martin:
August 10, 2023
Hi Martin, nice to hear from you. Sorry that it is under such circumstances.
Here's my two cents....not necessarily the right or only answer....
Right from the beginning I'd want to acknowledge the situation. "Friends,” you might say to the students, “we want to begin the year by acknowledging that something terrible has happened on our island. We send our best wishes to everyone who has been hurt and affected by the fire."
At this time I'd also offer an invitation to students to talk about the fire. "As we get to know each other we can make time for you to share your stories and thoughts about the fire. But for now if you need someone to talk to, please know that you can come talk to me, our school counselor, or other people at our school."
Then you go about your normal business of making your p4c community ball and building your classroom community. Have fun with your students.
When the time is right....I'll leave it to you to figure out when that time is....You could provide opportunities for the public sharing of stories. A good first step could be an invitation to write a journal entry, shared only with you, about their experiences. Then you could have a time when you go around the p4c circle and invite kids to share their stories with their classmates. "Invite," of course, is the key word. Kids can always pass. If you do this, you might want to have the counselor sit in. That way he/she will know who to follow up with. Another consideration is if some kid might have a terrible story that could further traumatize the other kids. You'd want to avoid that situation.
And definitely keep in mind that you don't have to do a circle like that. It may not be the right move. It depends on the group. p4c isn't therapy. We're not therapists. And with something like this I always keep in mind the advice that a wise psychologist once gave me. Using the analogy of surgery, he said "Don't cut them open if you can't sew them back together." Simply creating p4c’s intellectually safe place is therapeutic; it will add protective factors to the kid's lives and support them. You don't necessarily have to add the step of sitting in a circle to talk about their trauma. A substitute might be some sort of artistic, writing, and/or service project; they could write cards, create artwork, or give in some way to a hospital, first-responders, Lahaina school, or others directly impacted by the tragedy.
Those are just my immediate thoughts. So much, of course, depends on where the kids are at. You have a smart brain and kind heart. And you can get the guidance of mental health professionals at your school and within the HIDOE. Also take time to observe the kids. Gathering information on where they're at will provide you with guidance. Then you can proceed accordingly. There's definitely no single right answer to this one.
Sending you and your students my best wishes.
Aloha,
Toby
Those are the thoughts that I shared with Martin. Martin drew upon these thoughts and, as you will read, progressed far beyond them. I now leave it to Martin to tell the rest of his inspiring story; a tale of how a group of resilient students and their skilled and caring teacher worked together to overcome grief and uncertainty by crafting a genuine, mindful, and healing community.
My name is Martin Hamilton. I was born and raised on the island of Maui. This is my third year of teaching at Makawao Elementary School. The devastating Lahaina and Kula wildfires have had an emotional impact on me and all members of my island’s community, and with a new school year beginning for my 4th graders just days after the fires, I found myself uncertain about how to start the school year. News was slowly coming in about the catastrophic impacts, and I hadn’t yet met my students. I was unsure about who, how, or to what extent my students and their families had been affected by the fires and to what degree. In this moment of uncertainty, I was strengthened by the support of my former professors at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, including Dr. Toby Yos, whose feedback helped me orient myself during a difficult time. As teachers, I feel like most of us want so badly to help our students as much as we can. But sometimes it is difficult to know what will help them the most. I wanted to be able to become a counselor for every student in my class after the sad events on Maui. However, Toby’s message helped me remember that the best way I, as a classroom teacher, could help would be by laying the foundation for an intellectually and emotionally safe community. I remembered that healing will take time so I set out to re-plan the beginning weeks of school with this safe community as the goal.
Planning for a Classroom Community of Safety
Before students returned to the classroom, I reached out to our school's behavioral health specialist and grade level counselor, and was able to join a meeting on Psychological First Aid from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN). What I learned mirrored Toby’s initial thoughts. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) had seven main recommendations. Teachers should remain calm and reassuring, acknowledge and normalize students' feelings, encourage children to talk about the events, promote positive coping strategies, emphasize childrens’ resiliency, strengthen childrens’ friendships, and take care of their own needs (National Association of School Psychologists, 2017). Additionally, the NCTSN recommended providing reassurance, a daily routine, and structure to students.
Based on my prior experiences with p4c, I also knew that I wanted to emphasize the importance of intellectual and emotional safety on those first days of school. While the NASP recommends encouraging students to talk about the events of the fire, they make a point to say the discussion should be done in a safe and accepting environment. This also mirrors advice I got from another professor, Dr. Chad Miller. He shared that teachers and students who tried to approach difficult topics at the beginning of the year, without first establishing that safety, tended to create classroom communities that felt unsafe, and he observed that these classes often struggled to help students feel comfortable as the school year progressed. Since I didn't know any of my students yet, and they wouldn't know what I expected from them to be ‘safe’ in a discussion, I decided that a class discussion about the fires on the first day of school might not be the best choice. Instead, I made the decision to offer the opportunity to speak to our school counselors if they needed to talk. With this students would get to talk about the events as they needed and I would work to build intellectual and emotional safety with the students so that we would be able to have these difficult discussions later in the year.
This was all of the thinking that went into planning my first days of school. I used what I learned from the resources provided by the NCTSN, NASP, Toby, Chad, and my own experiences with p4c to make a plan. I decided to start my first day with students with some general classroom rules, an acknowledgment of the events in Lahaina, and an invitation for students to talk to our school counselors. I also included activities and routines to start building a safe community in the classroom – a foundation for the rest of the school year.
The First Day of School
Before the start of the first day, I kept reminding myself to be extra attentive to my students, their words, and their body language. Attentiveness is a key aspect of care and properly caring for students would help me preemptively get them the support they needed in this difficult time. The NCTSN had a list of behaviors to look out for, including students being extra clingy, struggling to concentrate or participate, being tired, or having physical pain like a stomach ache. I kept all of this in mind as I opened my doors on the first day of school.
I started the day by walking my students to the class and greeting all of them. I then had a slideshow set up to help them follow along with some pre-established and necessary class rules and procedures. After they understood the basic ways I expected them to act in class I had our school counselor join us in the room. Once the counselors were present, I acknowledged the Lahina fires. I started by asking students to be extra kind to one another as we make sense of these events together. I emphasized resilience by saying, “things will improve, we are safe here at school, so many people are helping, we can help each other too.” I acknowledged the feelings in the room by sharing, “you may feel strong emotions and that’s okay, you may feel fine and that’s okay too.” I started building the idea of peer support by prompting, “support each other – what could we do to help each other?” Students suggested ideas like checking in on a friend, helping them with their work, and being a friend to someone new that day. This conversation with the counselors helped to set the groundwork for the supportive language and dialogue that would be needed as we worked to support one another through this difficult time and the remainder of the school year.
After this, I moved the class into the next set of activities, which centered around modeling three different mindfulness coping strategies. First, we practiced mindful listening. I did this by ringing a bell, and having my students raise their hands when they no longer heard the ringing. Second, I used an expandable breathing ball to guide students through three deep breaths. I had them exhale slightly longer than the inhale to help with anxious feelings. I also reminded students to breathe in like they were smelling cookies, spam musubi, or something yummy, and then exhale like they were blowing bubbles. Finally, we practiced mindful seeing. I asked my students to make a fist and look around the classroom at three things that are blue, putting up a finger for each blue thing. I shared with them that mindful listening, breathing, and seeing activities are important activities to help us be present and thus quiet that part of our mind that worries about the past or future. I told them to try any of these activities if they ever felt overwhelmed. Now that we are weeks into the school year, I continue to use each of these mindfulness activities, building the practices established on our first day together.
After this, I got the students started on a “My Favorites” activity, where students got to share and draw their favorite things. The students had a great time sharing and drawing together. Then, right before recess, we did some silent reading. This gave me time to individually check in with all my students. I asked every student three questions:
How are you getting home (bus, walk, or pick up)?
How is your sleep?
How are you feeling?
The first question was practical because I wanted to know where each student would be going after school, to make sure that they could get where they needed to go safely. The second question about sleep helped me to learn more about whether my students were affected by the events of the fire, even if they didn't realize it. The third question gave students an opportunity to share how they were feeling, without me leading them to thoughts about the fire. These questions were really helpful and gave me the opportunity to reach out to our counselors for students who needed it. One student was having lots of trouble sleeping and was acting differently than they did last year. They didn’t think they were affected by the events of the fire, but I contacted our school counselor. The next day when they talked to the counselor they realized that they really were sad and thinking a lot about the fire but didn’t realize it earlier. Other students shared they were feeling sad about what happened. I acknowledged and validated their feelings and shared that I was sad too. I followed up by saying that I was also glad that so many people were helping those affected by the fires, thus normalizing feelings and bringing awareness to the resilience of the community (NASP, 2017).
Before the end of the day, I had my class make a circle on the carpet so that we could make a community ball. The community ball was created by students as they wrapped a skein of yarn around a tube while sharing about themselves. They shared:
What is your name and what teacher did you have last year?
What is your favorite school lunch and what is something you did over the summer you liked?
What are you excited to learn about this year and what is something special about you that you want to share?
The questions started with low stakes and increased in opportunities for them to be vulnerable with one another as the process went on. Before beginning I made a point to students that it was very important that they listen to the person sharing, not talk over them, and be supportive of whatever they share. I was always the first to answer the question then I passed the string to the student next to me and we all had a chance to share in a circle. At the end of the process, I cut the yarn and tied it together creating a pom pom ball.
Once the community ball was completed, I played a name game with the group. It was very simple. Everyone stood up and said the name of someone standing, throwing them the ball, and then sitting down. Once everyone sat down the game was finished. To make the game more fun, we timed ourselves to see how fast we could do this. The game was a great way to help students learn each other's names. We ended the day after this game and everyone went home happy and excited.
Building a Community of Safety Throughout the School Year
Over the next few days and weeks, we continued the ongoing process of building a safe classroom community. I did this in a few ways. First, we had discussions about my three class rules: respect yourself, respect others, and respect the environment. Students shared examples of what each one meant. Then at the end of each day, we wrote down students’ examples of how they respected each other throughout the day. This helped to grow our understanding of what it means to be respectful. We had additional discussions about intellectual and emotional safety with students, connecting the idea of “intellectual safety” (Jackson, 2001, p. 460) with mindfulness. Since I was already teaching mindfulness I began describing intellectual safety as taking others’ questions and thoughts mindfully. We established together that we would practice hearing others’ questions and thoughts without judging them as good, bad, silly or serious, but rather, honest. All of this helped to build our safe classroom, and strengthen our understanding of safety with real world examples from my students’ lived experiences.
As they participated in these discussions, some students cried when sharing what happened to them in the past and how they were currently feeling. As a whole, the class was really supportive. The students became friends and helped to console each other when they were struggling. To balance the heaviness, we also played a lot of p4c games. For example, we played a naming game that included 3D models I made in my free time. This helped the students learn more about me and we had fun building our intellectual curiosity about one another and the world we live in. We also played “Would You Rather,” which helped students share different ideas while still respecting each other. These were some of the ongoing processes we used to build off of the strong foundation of safety established on the first day of school.
Final Thoughts
Just this week, we wrapped up the first quarter of the school year, and all of my students are doing well. They are kind, caring, and curious all the time. Our safe community has blossomed into a safe community of inquiry. When we do p4c, my students are coming up with creative questions, which help them express themselves. In our reading curriculum, we just completed a unit on natural disasters, and I’ve observed my students become more comfortable talking about the events in Lahina. They are giving examples of how their families helped out and they are thinking about what else can be done to heal our community at-large.
This experience reminded me how important it is to create safe and accepting communities in our classrooms if we want caring, resilient, and thriving communities in the world. I started the year feeling so anxious about what would happen, an experience I’m sure many teachers can relate to. I was grateful that I was able to draw from the safe communities I belong to: the professors at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, the counselors at my school, and the Maui community I live in. My safe communities helped support me in creating the same type of learning environment for my students. This personal experience helped me understand that by helping my students create a safe community, they could be supported in coping with any anxiety, worries, or strong emotions they would be feeling. Now I feel supported by my students when I come to school because they are being so supportive of one another. I learned to ‘trust the process’ of making an intellectually and emotionally safe community in a classroom, one day at a time. I saw how extended time and effort, dedicated to creating a safe classroom community, lays the foundation for learning and students emotional growth. I have observed first hand that when children are given a safe environment to learn and play in, they are very resilient. I am so proud of all of them.
Works Cited:
Jackson, T. (2001). The art and craft of “Gently Socratic” inquiry. In A. Costa (Ed.), Developing minds: A resource book for teaching thinking (3rd Ed). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
National Association of School Psychologists. (2017). Helping children after a wildfire: Tips for parents and teachers [handout]. Bethesda, MD: Author.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Martin Hamilton was born and raised in ‘Ulupalakaua Maui. They got an undergraduate degree in Philosophy with a minor in Fine Art and a certificate in p4c (philosophy for children). After graduation Martin returned to UH Mānoa to get an MEd in Elementary Education. During this time they had the great opportunity to student teach across O‘ahu including at Hanahau‘oli School. Now Martin teaches at Makawao Elementary where they use progressive strategies to teach 4th graders.
Dr. Thomas “Toby” Yos specializes in p4c (philosophy for children) at the University of Hawai‘i Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education (home of p4c Hawai‘i). A husband to an amazing wife and a father to four remarkable children, Toby has 30+ years of experience doing p4c and also has 20 years of experience doing school counseling. Toby is incredibly grateful to his ancestors, to his many wise teachers, and to all of the children and families who have gifted him with the opportunity to co-create intellectually safe and aloha-laden spaces.
