My Two Favorite Questions

My previous blog post was about answers to leadership questions.  This blog post will be about questions - two of my favorite questions, actually.  But first, a digression about questions in general.

A mentor of mine always said, "The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning."
The older I get, the more I find this to be true.  The student that is talking is the person most engaged.  This is true when dealing with academic issues as well as behavior issues.  Whoever talks the most owns it.  This is why technology has evened the playing field in classrooms because everyone can be "talking" at once using various tech tools.

Questions are an engaged form of talking.
One year of teaching, I focused on student-generated questions.  To encourage and celebrate quality questions, I covered my entire chalkboard (yes, a chalkboard ...) with paper and wrote student questions on it all year long.  Students were elated to get their questions on the board, and it created an environment that celebrated inquiry.  And Danielson recognizes teachers who create classrooms where students generate the questions.

End of digression.  Now to my two favorite questions.

My daughters are very used to me asking them these two questions many nights after school.  It's become somewhat of a routine over the years:
• What questions did you ask today?
• What did your teacher do or say that was funny today?

The first question, "What questions did you ask today?" tells me if my own child is engaged in the thinking that is happening in her classroom, and by extension, if the teacher is creating an environment of inquiry.  Remember - the person asking the questions is doing the learning.  Believe me, the questions they asked when they were younger were very simple (i.e., "Can I go to the bathroom?")  Did I celebrate those questions?  Absolutely!  Then we talked about what other kinds of questions they could ask.

The second question, "What did your teacher do or say that was funny today?" gets at relationship building.  Is my chid in a environment that celebrates the the joy of learning?  I tell my kids that teachers do and say funny things constantly if they pay attention to it.  But that happens because the teacher uses his/her personality to create a purposefully engaging classroom.

Any questions?