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ARE WE ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS?

1/23/2021

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Written by: Hans Appel
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“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.”
-Thomas Berger
​Questions lead to answers like leadership leads to culture.  While great leadership builds amazing culture, weak leadership can foster toxic culture.  Educators and students are co-leaders in an Award Winning Culture.  In terms of learning, in order to discover helpful answers we must learn to ask the R.I.G.H.T questions.
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​Modern educational thought leaders have emphasized the learning power in asking smart insightful questions.  In essence, there is an entire body of research to suggest that educators should be striving for learners to question and interact with academic content rather than seeking an ongoing answer factory.
Questioning helps students generalize skills beyond a limited set of circumstances.  Despite our knowledge on the importance of questioning, I’ve long wondered why school seems to regularly devolve into a repetitive question/answer series of activity.
​It’s important to understand standardized assessments came about because of a need to make things simpler to compare, contrast, and label.  For instance,  it’s ‘easier’ to grade and therefore assess student knowledge if there’s an obvious answer to a predetermined common assessment.  On the other hand, simplicity for educators, parents, and lawmakers does not equate to value for learners.
​My colleagues, who preach alternative assessment options like standard based grading or student conferencing, might be quick to point out the fallacy in traditional questioning models.  Additionally, these same colleagues would explain how this limited inquiry based approach prevents learners from stretching up the pyramid of Bloom's Taxonomy or reaching higher levels on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge.
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Furthermore, lower forms of questions reinforce barriers to learning like gender and racial bias.  If a question doesn’t allow room for me to wrestle with big ideas while infusing my own uniqueness into the answer, it’s probably a poorly conceived question.
Educators get what they model and practice in their own learning.  It's time to start thinking about some of the questions we ask of our peers... ​
​Are you a part of any ongoing learning community? Maybe a PLN, PLC, Facebook group, etc.  I’ll bet some of the questions below look familiar.
​Here’s a few common low-level questions I regularly see in online learning communities:
  • Does anyone have a good kindness lesson I could use tomorrow?

  • Do you have a grid on cell mitosis I could check out?  
 
  • What’s a good teacher appreciation gift?
 
  • Suggestions for improving student, staff, or parent engagement?
 
  • Ideas for increasing attendance?
 
  • How do you discipline students who refuse to wear a mask? 
 
  • What’s one must-read leadership book?
 
  • I have a budget to spend on my room, what’s your favorite classroom item?
 
  • What reading curriculum would you suggest for high school students?
 
  • Ideas for improving performance in remote learning?
 
  • I need a fun ice-breaker for a staff meeting next week, any ideas?
 
  • What ideas do you have for building relationships in a virtual setting? ​
Some queries don’t even take the form of a question:
​
  • Virtual Open house--GO!!
 
  • Go-to strategies for building staff buy-in.
 
  • Pros and Cons of SSR.
 
  • Staff book study suggestions.
 
  • Looking for creative incentives.
 
  • Programs to increase homework completion.
​On the outside these targeted questions seem to drive specific shotgun answers that might help guide educators; but, in reality there’s a common thread underscoring each question.  These routine inquiries from educators lack the PASSION, PURPOSE, and PRIOR KNOWLEDGE to ignite game-changing professional development.  Receiving a laundry list of ideas or suggestions, is nothing more than an efficient way to poll.
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​It’s much more relevant and helpful to understand the thinking that goes behind the answer.  Why do I value this kindness lesson, leadership book, or ice-breaker?  The real answer to any of the above questions is-- it depends.
​It depends on your school and class culture.  Please don’t assume that one educator’s must-have program, strategy, or thought is exactly what your community of learners needs.
​In order to answer these questions effectively, we’d need to know more about the BIG PICTURE.  Where are you going? Who’s the audience? What are your goals? Why is this question important to your classroom, school, or learners?
​If educators hope to expect deeper levels of questioning from our students we must DEMAND the same rigor in our own learning.
​Sometimes the right questions are the ones we ask OURSELVES.
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”
-Margaret J Wheatley
​Locating the strongest educational learners is pretty easy, they’re the ones CREATING, REFLECTING, and CONNECTING.
​They reframe knowledge based questions into metacognitive analysis of thought:
  • Does anyone have a good kindness lesson I could use tomorrow?
    • Reframe: What gets in the way of student kindness?

  • Do you have a grid on cell mitosis I could check out?  
    • Reframe: How might students create a cell mitosis grid for next year’s learners?
 
  • What’s a good teacher appreciation gift?
    • Reframe: How am I demonstrating appreciation to my teachers each week?
 
  • Suggestions for increasing student, staff, or parent engagement?
    • Reframe: What does engagement look and feel like for students, staff, or parents?
 
  • Ideas for increasing attendance?
    • Reframe: How might I build connection and purpose into my daily lessons to inspire learners?
 
  • How do you discipline students who refuse to wear a mask? 
    • Reframe: How might I build awareness of mask wearing through student voice and choice?  
 
  • What’s one must-read leadership book?
    • Reframe: What’s one leadership skill I’d really like to work on and why? 
 
  • I have a budget to spend on my room, what’s your favorite classroom item?
    • Reframe: If I were a learner in my classroom, what do I wish was available?
 
  • What reading curriculum would you suggest for middle school students?
    • Reframe: How might available reading curriculum support my desire to build lifelong readers?
 
  • Ideas for improving performance in remote learning?
    • Reframe: How might I foster mastery learning to intentionally increase student autonomy of passion projects within my content area?
 
  • I need a fun ice-breaker for a staff meeting next week, any ideas?
    • Reframe: Who’s a charismatic student, parent, or teacher who would love to lead a cool activity at an upcoming staff meeting? 
 
  • What ideas do you have for building relationships in a virtual setting?
    • Reframe: What elements of virtual learning could I capitalize on to support relationship development?
 
  • Virtual Open house--GO!!
    • Reframe: What elements of Character, Excellence, and Community might I infuse into a virtual open house?
 
  • Go-to strategies for building staff buy-in.
    • Reframe: How is implementation science guiding my work with empowering staff leaders?
 
  • Pros and Cons of SSR.
    • Reframe: What role does educator modeling play in the success of sustained silent reading?
 
  • Staff book study suggestions.
    • Reframe: What are the cultural impacts that we might observe by designing personalized book studies to support educator’s individual professional development?
 
  • Looking for creative incentives.
    • Reframe: Who can help me build a student survey to learn more about what rewards they desire?
 
  • Programs to increase homework completion.
    • Reframe: What does the research say about homework and how might that inform my lesson design?  ​
​Before seeking level 1 input from external sources, start by reframing your basic questions into reflections to rekindle your WHY.  When exploring professional development pursue multi-points of entry into your passion.  Focus less on seeking answers and more on practicing an award winning mindset driven to discover and develop YOUR OWN JOY.
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​In Award Winning Culture, I wrote about what prevents others from asking questions, “educators in an award winning culture recognize current and past barriers toward seeking help and actively create safe and welcoming conditions to support students, parents, and educators.”
​Taking it a step further, the additional barrier is ensuring we’re asking ourselves and others the deeper level questions while wrestling with ever-changing answers.
What’s one thing you’re struggling with this week that might benefit from a reframe? Are you asking the RIGHT question?
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About the Author

Hans Appel is an educator, speaker, and writer deeply committed to inspiring the whole child.  He’s the author of, Award Winning Culture: Building School-Wide Intentionality and Action Through Character, Excellence, and Community.  Additionally, he’s the Director of Culture for the Teach Better Team, Co-host of the Award Winning Culture podcast, and the Co-Creator of Award Winning Culture. 

He’s worked as a counselor in the Richland School District for the past 19 years and at Enterprise Middle School since it opened.  He’s passionate about school culture, servant leadership, and kindness.  In 2018, EMS was awarded the ASCD Whole Child Award for the State of Washington and the Global “Class Act Award” for creating a culture of excellence through kindness, service, and empathy.  Additionally, they were selected as a finalist in the 2019 PBIS Film Festival and took top prize in the Community, Parents, and Staff category.  

In 2018, Hans launched his own blog about School Culture and rolled out a student-led leadership podcast called Award Winning Culture: Hosted by Wildcat Nation, which can be subscribed, listened or reviewed on iTunes Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, PodBean, and Libsyn.  

Hans’ blogs have appeared on DisruptED TV magazine, CharacterStrong, Teach Better, AIMS Network, and PBIS Rewards.  He’s written social-emotional lessons for CharacterStrong.  Furthermore, he has been featured on numerous educational podcasts speaking his brand of school culture into existence.  

He’s been a contributing writer on four educational books: “Teachers Deserve It,” “ Define Your WHY: Own Your Story So You Can Live and Learn On Purpose,” “A Teacher’s Reflective Impact Journal,” and “ALL IN: Taking a Gamble in Education.” 

Hans believes that education at its highest level is about inspiring others to discover and develop their JOY. 

He can be contacted at hansappel094@gmail.com.  Follow Hans on twitter @HansNAppel. Follow AWC on twitter at @awculture @awcpodcasting or Instagram @awardwinningculture.  #AwardWinningCulture

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    About AWC

    Award Winning Culture was created by Hans and Jennifer Appel with the sole purpose of creating an educational mindset of Positive INTENTIONALITY and ACTION; with a daily mantra to make our sphere of influence stronger through Character, Excellence, and Community.  Part of AWC's mission is to highlight outstanding educators, companies, and resources that support an Award Winning Culture.  Both Jennifer and Hans work at Enterprise Middle School aka Wildcat Nation.  Wildcat Nation received the 2018 ASCD Whole Child Award in Washington, for its award winning culture and the ​2018 Global "Class Act Award" for Kindness.
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  • Home
  • AWC Books
    • Award Winning Culture
    • Featured In Books
    • Children's Book Series >
      • Award Winning Dog
      • I'm WHO...
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    • Student-Led Podcast
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  • About
    • Meet Hans and Jen
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