It is ironic that I begin this blog post by posing a question. As people grow older they begin asking less and less questions and there are many factors that play a role in the reason for this. One of those reasons that I personally connect with is “that questioning can be hazardous to one’s career” (Berger, 2014,
p. 5). At the beginning of my teaching career like others I had a lot of questions however, I discovered that asking questions was not always welcome by leadership. While this did necessarily play a major role in my career it did make me feel uncomfortable. Which caused me to hesitate and prevented me from asking questions at times. Eventually, I made connections with colleagues who helped me to become more comfortable with asking questions.
Even though I have become more comfortable with asking questions when I was specifically given the quickfire task to set a timer for five minutes and exclusively write down only questions I had related to my practice I struggled to get started. After a few minutes I was able to get a little groove and began writing down questions even as the timer went off I still had a few more questions that I added to my collection. Take a look at what I came up with. Are there any that resonant with you? Tweet me @jansenc579 and let me know!
After completing this quickfire task similarly to Dan Rothstein’s students I felt like I “‘looked spent’” (Berger, 2014, p. 62). My initial feelings with this activity I felt quite drained from trying to come up with questions related to my practice. Part of the reason for this I believe is because as I was trying to come up with questions I was immediately trying to evaluate and analyze if they were good enough to be a part of this activity. While evaluating the questions I was also already trying to answer some of them or trying to think of a way someone else might answer them. That was not the point of this activity though. All I needed to was ask the questions and later on I could go back and evaluate and attempt to answer them.
A second feeling I had following the completion of this task was my sense of ownership of the questions I created. This feeling is something I want to bring into my classroom because, “if a student thinks of a question him/herself, it is likely to be of more interest than someone else’s question” (Berger, 2014, p. 56). I want my students to be interested in their learning and take ownership of their learning and from my early exploration of Warren Berger’s, A More Beautiful Question one way to start achieving this is through questioning.
As I learn about questioning, the importance of it and what questioning looks like. I hope to bring some of these ideas about questioning back into my classroom. I also want to help my students become inquirers who are not only unafraid to ask questions but who also are unafraid to explore a variety of research that may lead to more questions. Unfortunately, like Dennie Palmer Wolf discovered in her research when I reflect on my current questioning practices I find that they are mainly being used to “check up on students” (Berger, 2014, p. 56) and trying to see if they are understanding the current concept that we are covering. Moving forward though I want to adjust my questioning practices to try and spark interest in and for my students.
Since I started off this blog post with a little cliché I feel that I should wrap it up with one as well. There is no such thing as dumb question, so do not be afraid to ask it or try to spend time inquiring about it yourself. It may even lead you to more questions.
References
Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Jansen, C. (2021). Quickfire question post-its. [photo].
Tyrala, L. (2021). Free question mark stock photo. [photo]. FreeImages. https://www.freeimages.com/photo/question-mark-1238622