Finding the balance...

Inquiry questions of the day: What does balance mean to me?

Lately, I haven't had a lot of balance in my life. While this post isn't about inquiry based learning per se, it is about teaching and its power to be all consuming.

I'm a mad scientist. I'm that person that gets an idea and goes with it until it's completely overtaken my life. I don't get enough sleep, and I wake up at crazy hours in the morning with a burning desire to create. I become all consumed with my creations and passion. Without time in my life to pursue my artistic interests, creating assignments and units has become my creative outlet. Inquiry based teaching has sparked my creativity and I'm flying at 100 mph. It's fantastic and I love it, but I'm going to burn out. I can't sustain this pace.

So, what does balance mean to me? Ideally, I want to do the best job I can as a teacher, a mother, a wife, a friend, and the C.E.O. of our household. Notice how I didn't put myself into that equation? I never put myself into the equation. I'm like so many mothers - especially teacher mothers. We are the last on our list of priorities, and truthfully we never get to the bottom of our to-do list.

In the last few weeks my balance has been so far off that I haven't been a very good mother, wife, friend, or C.E.O. of our household. When your balance shifts, it happens so slightly that you don't really even notice it. It's about just getting through this week, this day, this next event. One day you realize that it's been two months since you took time to cut your toe nails, and it hits you: I don't have time to cut my own toe nails? How did I let this happen? (I apologize for the gross imagery)

This is the paragraph where I'd like to write my epiphany. Here is my great learning and I've realized how to achieve the balance: I'm coming up blank. I'm seriously telling myself that I can figure out the balance thing after this day, this weekend, next week, and the first of November. Logically I can tell by my thoughts that I could let this keep happening until the Christmas break, and then again after, and so on.

It's time for a plan. It's a small idea, but I'm going to let it worm itself through my brain until it becomes a concrete idea, and then hopefully reality: I'm going to do nothing. I'll do this nothing one day after school and one morning on the weekend. During this nothing time I'll try to enjoy the sunshine, the breeze, my kids laughing, my husband, and maybe even myself.

Teacher burnout is high. We all go through it. We're either in the phase of burning out or burnt out. Those teachers who have learned to find the right balance are far and few between, and I say that because I don't know if it's possible. Is it possible to meet the demands of the job and find balance? I say no.

Remember the TV show Boston Public? When a young teacher asked Harry Senate does it ever get any easier. Harry replied, "Not if you're doing it right."

And that my teacher friends is why I think we have a hard time finding the balance.

Tweaking the question

On Friday I had the opportunity to hear a woman speak on the topic of inquiry based learning and questioning skills. It was about more than that, but the questioning was the part that I fixated on. I've worked on my math teaching skills, my management skills, my organizational skills, but not my questioning skills. Once I managed weight time and the reasons for questioning versus the type of questions, I never really gave it very much more thought. Turns out, it's a skill that needs to be practiced, and it can help your students to activate their higher level thinking skills.

I'm still sorting this new learning out for myself, but I will try to give an example from my current assignment as to how I "tweaked" the question. I gave my students an assignment about human rights. It asked them to formulate a question and then research the answer. Then I let them go to it. Really and truly, I never thought about how I worded the assignment - except that I wanted to make it clear. Here is how I first wrote the assignment:

 

As you can see, it's a pretty basic (maybe even lame) assignment. I know the students were interested in the research because the topic was so captivating, and everything we had done up to this point helped to build their enthusiasm. When I typed out the assignment, I was focused on the research aspect. I had started to notice that the children wanted to "google" everything. The books displayed in our classroom were not being used. I put more thought into how I'd get them to use books than I did the question.

After our in-service, I spent way too much time worrying about this assignment. I finally put it to rest by telling myself that I wanted to go to this school to learn and grow as an educator. This is my first opportunity, and I just need to grab it. So here is my attempt to write a better question:

So, is it perfect? I really don't know. I haven't wrapped my head around asking questions that get at that deep critical thinking. I think I have a lot more reading to do, but I do know this: The wording of my second assignment is more fun, and children are more motivated when an activity is perceived as fun.

My colleague across the hall has a wonderful bulletin board about thick and thin questions. I've taken a few of my students into her room to look at the board and then decide if their question is too thin or if it's thick. Thankfully, my colleague told me that she has a second copy of the bulletin board and that I can have it. When I get it from her, I'll post it on here for my colleagues who are interested. The basic idea is that asking questions like: When did it happen, who discovered it, where did this take place, are thin questions. They can be answered in one google search, and one sentence. A thick question gets kids thinking. A question like what might a child soldier be feeling is a much deeper question. Can you imagine a child researching child soldiers and then trying to explain what they might be thinking or feeling. That's higher level thinking.

To recap, I've learned that one good question can take your class from a lower level of thinking to a higher level. It's really quite exciting. We were also directed to check out a website called The Critical Thinking Consortium. They have activities and good questions for all grades and across a lot of the curriculum. There are free samples that you can download as PDF files. The Stewart Resource Centre also has all of their print material to borrow. A membership is $40 for a year. I believe the public system has a membership for its teachers, but our division does not. Here is a link: TC2

To any of my teacher friends who have made it to the bottom of this blog, thank you for reading and if you are so inspired to focus on your questions: happy tweaking.