Any Questions?

I have been thinking a lot lately about a talk given by educator, writer, and scholar Richard Weissbourd. I heard him speak three or so years ago to an audience of heads of school in California. Weissbourd explored the imperativeness for moral education in our schools and in our parenting – from how we create the reflex in children to internalize a responsibility and obligation to their communities, to the notion that moral development is essentially about justice, to the notion that constant complimenting of our children can actually be constant assessment. (Weissbourd wondered if children are being “blizzarded by praise.”)

A last suggestion from his talk, that perhaps endures with me most, is the idea that nothing signals more to a child than the questions we ask them. Weissbourd asserted the most powerful tool to impact the formation of a child’s moral identity – caring deeply for others and internalizing values of honesty and fairness – are our questions.

A child comes home from a soccer game. Do we message with the question, “Who won?” Or, do we message with, “How did your team work together?” At dinnertime on a school night, what would it mean for us to ask “Who did you help today?” or “Who helped you today?” instead of the more default question, “How was school today?” or even a parental tic that Wendy Mogul cautions against, that of interviewing for pain: “Did you get left out again today at lunch?” As I think about home and school working together in partnership, I’m excited for us to be ever-conscious of the questions we ask.

In the classroom, studies are often guided by a big overarching question, “How does food get to the table?” or “What makes up a neighborhood?” Educator, scholar, and writer Theodore Sizer espoused the practice of curriculum being guided by “essential questions” – rich, textured questions that can be asked over time and that have no one *right* answer, ever.

Questions are powerful vehicles to pursue curiosity. Westland teachers also ask children what they want to learn about. This practice is actually one starting point for democracy in the classroom, because student voice gets honored in powerful ways when a child’s question is pursued by the full group. At the beginning of a study, teachers invite the children to make their questions public. In their study on family, Group One-ers were asked, “What do we wonder about families?” Children shared their questions and watched them being recorded on chart paper, from, “Do people in families have different heart sizes?” to “Why do people in a family have different skin, hair, and eye color – sometimes?” and “Why are babies red when they come out of the uterus?”

From this Group One example, topics of health and human development, genetics, identity, and even beauty and love can be pulled out from these questions. It was Helen Keller who noted, “A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers." From the start of their Westland experience, children develop the habit of question-asking. A study, even done every year, can go anywhere because of children’s questions and their current context.

Deconstructing question-asking at Westland even more, I am also struck by the power of adults modeling to the children, “I don’t know the answers to all of these questions – let’s research them together.” I am also thinking about the child who asks a specific question, and then has that question followed up on. The empowerment that comes for that child when a book is found and shared with them! Or a guest speaker is invited or a field trip planned because of their questions. Westland teachers provide children the experiences that create that special satisfaction of moving from not knowing a whole lot about something – then –  through mixing the ingredients of curiosity, research, discussion, hard work, and play, the children become a bit of an expert on a topic. This experience is cyclical. In some ways, culminations at the end of a study are just the beginning. This is the stuff and sweet taste of life-long learning and it all begins with questions.

I recall that the first letter I ever wrote to the Westland community was on questions. Just yesterday while reading Rebecca Solnit’s Recollections of My Nonexistence, I underlined absentmindedly, “Perhaps I will always live in questions more than answers.” Not only am I excited about being ever conscious of the questions we ask children and in turn the questions they ask us, but also the questions Westland is asking on an institutional level. An obvious form of evidence are the questions we ask during the hiring process of prospective candidates. Value-patterns can be teased out. Here are some examples of our questions to candidates this past summer:

●      Westland is a decidedly progressive school where we want children to thrive. Sharing your personal philosophy and the underpinnings of your philosophy, how do you honor the whole child and a child’s identity?

●      What is your approach to collaborating with colleagues?

●      How do you integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice into your teaching practice?

●      How have you integrated two or more subjects in a unit or around a theme?

●      What strategies do you use to have children feeling supported and safe?

Progressive education, social justice, child development, social studies integration, cooperation and collaboration, and how we optimally support children are values that emerge. As I think about our full community’s upcoming work together this school year, I also ponder the value that emerges from the very last question we ask candidates: “Do you have any questions for us?”

Let’s always keep that question at the top of our minds too, perhaps in all of our conversations and meetings. If we don’t ask that question of one another, what gets unsaid? Missed? Not explored? Tucked away? Or worse, what might get held onto as a resentment if not put out into the open? Inviting questions of one another communicates we are curious, that we care, that we want to listen and connect to each other. That we want to learn! Questions provide a powerful way to express ourselves.

Question-asking gets at important elements of Westland’s mission too: critical thinking, problem solving, cooperation. Sizer wrote, “A good education teaches you how to ask a question. It’s knowing what you don’t know; the skills of critical thought.” So here’s to knowing what we don’t know yet and to the question asking that will keep us on Westland’s road of life long learning and community building. Perhaps I should end with a question: Where will our questions take us this year? I am indeed excited to find out.