The Power of Questions

One of my favorite things about starting a new unit, text, or novel, is when students start asking questions. This happens frequently with plays like The Crucible where people are behaving in ways that appear ridiculous on the surface but offer insight into themes of hysteria, power, language, and justice. The kind of questions I especially enjoy occur when students are incredibly frustrated with the characters and the system of the narrative: ‘why is Abigail lying again?! She is going to get everyone in trouble’ or ‘how could the judges possibly believe these girls?’ or ‘why don’t the townspeople run away?!” 

These questions - which they ask in tones of almost hilarious incredulity, are part of what makes teaching The Crucible so much fun for me. Typically because I field them right back to the rest of the class like “Yeah, Abigail has grown up in a community that deeply undervalues the voice of children and women, so why do you think she is lying?” 

When students don’t ask these types of questions, the lessons fall flat and I feel disappointed. 

Interestingly, it never actually occurred to me that I on a conscious level that their questions were a crucial aspect in the lesson until I read Michael Wesch’s “Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance” where he explains that a strong classroom has students asking questions because “the question itself is the insight.” I honestly felt my eyebrows shoot up in the realization that this is what I am trying to replicate in my own classroom I just never had the words or the why for it. 

This is yet another reason why I am feeling dread about the coming school year. Wesch also argues that the “medium is the message” and that the environment (medium) of learning just as important as the content (message). 

Every year I spend four to five days in August organizing and setting up my classroom with my students in mind. I have been asking for tables instead of desks for years (I doubt that will ever happen now..) and I have a conference table for group work that I am hoping isn’t removed over the summer due to state guidelines for social distancing (it took me so long to find and move this table!). 

But either way -regardless of what happens in the fall, I want to work towards embodying this final quote from Wesh: “I decided to get to work creating a learning environment more conducive to produce the types of questions that create lifelong learners ratty than savvy test-takers”

That is my goal and I am going to make it work whether I am face to face or distance learning with my kids.