Stop Searching for Answers, Start Asking More Questions

What a year of learning this has been!  As I sit here trying to write my next blog post, I can hardly believe that the Cohort journey is coming to an end…or perhaps, as @jmedved and @gnichols have mentioned, it’s really just the beginning…and I truly believe that now.

When I first started the Cohort 21 journey, I thought that by this April meeting I would’ve done some interesting things in the classroom, but come the final F2F I would’ve continued doing what worked for me in the classroom all along.  I was wrong – and I’m so happy that I was.  I truly feel that I am at the beginning of a new chapter in my teaching career.  My action plan originally started off with a HMW question around engaging and challenging the gifted learners in the classroom.  However, as I got talking with my colleagues at Cohort, my question shifted from the gifted learner to all learners in the class.  What I came up with was, “HMW ensure that every student in the classroom is being appropriately challenged in their thinking?”  (see final blog post here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zwa1UKBbeYKuiI7h-ZnrdbnV2detSFTgVjejxfQa8ho/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.g1b90633f89_0_298) I fell in love with this question because I think the amazing thing about Independent schools is that we have small class sizes, which allows us the opportunity to get to know each student as an individual as opposed to trying to create a one size fits all teaching model.  

Since the last F2F, I wanted to test out a design thinking model in my classroom.  As a hook, I decided to use Canada’s 150th.  We are still currently working through this project, but I have been so interested in the ‘How Might We’ questions my students have come up with.  In order to hook them into this, we talked a lot about what Canada represents as a nation and what being Canadian means to us.  We focused on some of Canada’s history, and I’ve had students look at current issues facing Canada or Canadians as individuals.  As they got to choose their own problem, some of their questions focused on Canada or Canadians on a smaller scale, for example within a school community, whereas others focused on provincial problems and even national problems.  As my students continue working through these projects, I will share updates on where their learning has taken them.  

While it may sound like everything has run seamlessly thus far, that simply isn’t true.  I have encountered some resistance from some students, which I wasn’t expecting.  Some of my students are looking for more of a teacher directed approach where I am telling them what the end product of an assignment should look like.  What’s interesting about design thinking is that every student’s end product is going to be different, because the question they are tackling is unique to them.  So rather than telling them what their final solution will or should look like, I am giving them the appropriate steps for their learning in order to arrive at their own end product.  I am grateful to be giving these skills to my students early on in the hopes that they will continue asking the questions, rather than expecting the answers, in years to come.  

As we come to our final F2F, I have mixed feelings about where I am at in my action plan.  On the one hand, I feel like I have stepped out of my comfort zone and am trying a new method of teaching in my classroom; however, it is almost the end of April and I wish I had implemented design thinking from the beginning of the year as I feel like time is running out!  I already have big plans on how I want to rework my teaching strategies for years to come, and I look forward to seeing the questions my future students ask and the innovative solutions they come up with.  Thank you for this amazing opportunity, Cohort 21, and stay tuned to hear more about the innovative solutions that come out of the Grade 6 classroom at Trafalgar Castle School!