Cultivating Questioners

“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” – Margaret J. Wheatly

I have been back to classroom teaching for a year and, during some long rides on my bicycle, I’ve realized that the decision to cut reflective writing out of my overstuffed schedule has not benefitted me personally or professionally. So, here I begin my re-entry into this blog. The work of trying to teach differently remains challenging, messy, and joyful — but documenting the attempt to do so seems urgent in this era of continuing standardization, Betsy DeVos (How? Why?), and shinier-flashier boxed curricula.

Since I last wrote, I spent one year working in an urban elementary school in a non-classroom role and struggled every day with not being the one providing instruction. From where I now sit, I see the tremendous value in the step I took to explore a different perspective and position in education, but wish that the knowledge I acquired could have been gained without such complete severing of my ties to the helm of a classroom. The boxes of school materials I had packed up to take this new position didn’t have time to collect much dust — through an unlikely series of events, I actually found my back to the same rural school (even the same classroom) where I began my career. This year, I welcomed my third bunch of Curious Questioners, a group that tested and challenged me pedagogically, mentally, and emotionally.

Throughout this year, I kept hearing comments about how, as a third year teacher, things get easier, because you know what you’re doing. While it’s true that I know worlds more than I did when I first started teaching, it occurred to me that, while I have created some classroom and learning frameworks that seem to “work,” I still feel a profound dissatisfaction that my classroom and my teaching does not fully embody the ideals that I have for it.

One day in May, I was getting agitated because of students lollygagging on their way to the rug, where I had requested that we meet to discuss or go over something — I honestly can’t recall the circumstances. For some reason, I paused and pondered and then started asking myself a series of questions: Why was I having students come to the rug? Did students need to come to the rug to be successful at whatever was coming next? What did calling them to the rug signal about ownership of learning time in our classroom? Why was I sitting in a “grown-up chair” instead of on the rug with my learners? Why was I getting frustrated with students who wouldn’t stop what they were doing just because I asked them nicely? And then, it hit me — I had, once again, fallen into the trap of routines and traditional teaching when, it seemed likely, that a far better and more student-driven approach could be found.

Of course, there are times when it makes wonderful sense to have students gather on the rug together. But does it need to happen each time an activity changes? And how many times should I be changing activities? Also, why was I expecting all of my students to be working on the same thing at the same time? These questions had fallen absent, as — under the pressures of end-of-the-year-assessment-madness and the weight of (perhaps) too many afterschool commitments — I was struggling just to make it through each day of learning.

But now it’s summer — my most productive season for professional development and instructional reconfiguring. It is my hope for the next nine weeks (and for the next year) to critically examine my practice, to finally go “all-in” on those practices that I have seen bring students (and their teacher) most fully into sustained and engaged learning, and to constantly ask, “Why am I doing it this way?” I hope you’ll join me.