Rose-Anne Manns on the joys of teaching high school ethics.

‘Should we always apologise for hurting someone accidentally?’ I ask my Year 7 students at Lindfield Learning Village.

‘Yes’, says one boy. ‘Saying sorry will make them feel better – it’s kind. It’s a good life skill.’

‘Well, it depends’, says his classmate. ‘If it was just some random dude I hurt, then sure. But my mates and I never apologise to each other – we just laugh it off.’

‘But some of your friends might hold a grudge if you never say sorry’, a girl responds. ‘What if everyone did that? We’d all end up killing each other.’

I sit back and say nothing for a full minute or so. There is no need to anchor – they are all answering the question. There is no need to ask for reasons – they’re providing them. There is no need to open to others – they are taking turns engaging with each other, sometimes building on a classmate’s idea, sometimes explaining why they disagree.

Such is the joy of teaching my high school ethics class. Most of the time, I simply wind them up and let them go.

I have been a Primary Ethics teacher for 10 years, covering all primary stages, and this year I finally had the opportunity to teach at a high school. It’s the most fun I have all week.

The younger kids sometimes need coaxing to reveal their opinions, and often need a fair amount of structure to reveal them logically. Not so with my high school students – they are well practiced in articulating their views, especially those who experienced ethics lessons in primary school.

It’s not that I’m a passive facilitator. I always have my trusty facilitation skills flowchart on hand, checking that the group is raising a variety of views and that individuals are considering those different views. I throw in plenty of encouraging feedback when someone responds directly to what a peer is saying. I praise anyone who comes up with examples and counter-examples to make their points.

Although I facilitate the discussion with a relatively light touch, I nevertheless keep a tight rein on classroom management. Adolescence is a time when some young people feel emboldened about challenging authority figures, ethics teachers included. I have to remind a couple of them that the ‘no putdowns’ guideline applies to their teacher too, when I catch them rolling their eyes at me or mimicking me disrespectfully. Others need repeated assertive directions about not rocking back on chairs or keeping their hands to themselves.

They soon settle down and engage enthusiastically with the content, which creates another challenge for me. Because they are so eager to express their ideas, the conversation can feel somewhat freewheeling, even when we’re on script. For example, there were peals of laughter when, earlier in the year, they presented sometimes provocative beliefs on how old people should be before they’re allowed to vote, leave school, drive a car, buy alcohol (Topic 1: You’re not the boss of me). Weeks later, they had an extremely energetic debate over how far lockdowns should go during a crisis (Topic 2: Life under Covid-19).

Because the conversation was so animated, I wondered whether I was losing control, so I put out a call to the Primary Ethics classroom support team to ask whether I should intervene to create a more serious vibe. A helpful chat reassured me that if the class is on topic and behaving well, then I should just relax and enjoy it as much as the students clearly are.

And so I do. Happily.