By Rebecca Sharkey Curiosity Cultivators.
In case I have neglected to mention, prior to becoming an administrator, I was a high school English teacher. As an English teacher, I was secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) anti-science teacher because I thought they had it easy. They could light things on fire. Make things blow up (reasonably so). And, just do some really cool things to spark curiosity. And there I was with my…poem.
Due to my competitive nature, I decided I had to find a way to out do science. I had to find a way to spark genuine curiosity in my students about what we were doing. It was not always an easy task, but with every lesson, my personal goal was to promote student inquiry. I would even invite the typical, “Why are we doing this?” as it was a question easily redirected back to my students. In order to promote student questioning, I would start with some questions of my own. These questions were designed to start the thinking and the wondering about what we were doing that day. Outside of the questioning, another goal was to ensure that 100% of my students had an opportunity to speak about what we were learning. Now, this doesn’t mean that they would speak about it with me necessarily. Sometimes it was just a conversation with table partners. Regardless, every student had an opportunity to discuss their thoughts about our topic with someone else. Now this led to a classroom filled with what has been dubbed “organized chaos.” If you can embrace the noise, they will embrace the opportunity.
Finally, my goal was to make sure my students knew that they could be risk-takers without the fear of being “wrong.” That is one of the most challenging parts of the process. But, once I was able to convince my students that there was no penalty for thinking aloud (which would encompass some trial and error), we were able to reach new levels of inquiry that would rival any chemistry experiment. So, I claimed.
So, my hope is that each of us will have the opportunity to inspire curiosity within our students each and every day and continuously raise the bar. To encourage the childlike level of inquiry where they continuously want to ask why, but then provide the opportunity and the tools to go and discover the why for themselves.