The Right Questions
I continue to read and be inspired by The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros (@gcouros). This blog post will continue my reflection of
his work and the connection to not only Central Woodlands, but to our education
system across the world.
Innovation starts not
by providing answers but by asking questions. #InnovatorsMindset
This proposition is interesting to think about more deeply
and to tease out the implications it can have for us in education. A few weeks ago, I was able to take several
CW staff to the MACUL conference in Grand Rapids. MACUL is the premier educational technology
conference and always pushes our thinking in terms of how to meet the needs of
students.
The keynote speaker at this year’s conference was Jaime Casap,
a chief educational leader at Google. I
think about how some of his message resonated with this idea of asking
questions. Here are some tweets inspired
by this theme:
@jcasap-Change conversation from, "who do you want to
work for" to "what problem do you want to solve" #edchat #edtech
@davidsimpson512-Generation Z is global, social, visual, and
technological… #macul16
How do we meet their needs?
@davidsimpson512-We need to think about the questions we are
asking our Ss? Are we making their thinking visible? Do we provide for #deeperlearning?
#macul16
@davidsimpson512-How do we make all of our schools “passion
based?” Maybe the first step is in asking our Ss the right questions! #macul16
Asking questions is nothing new in our world. In fact, renowned author, John Maxwell, even
wrote a book called Good Leaders Ask
Great Questions. In his book, he argues “if you want to be
successful and reach your leadership potential, you need to embrace asking
questions as a lifestyle.”
If we really want to innovate in education, maybe we should
start thinking more about how questions can drive purpose….questions can drive
action…questions can drive innovation.
However, it has to be more than just questions that leaders
ask. It has to be more than just
questions posed by thinkers in education.
It has to be more than questions asked by parents. It has to be more than just questions asked
by students.
I believe true innovation will occur when we create the
opportunities for the intersection of these questions to truly reimagine what
education can be in our world. When
groups of people with students having the loudest voice come to the table with
questions, might we move from a neatly set table with preconceived notions of
what a table should look like to something we haven’t even imagined?
Without asking questions, we fall into the trap of a fixed
mindset for education. We see something
that has worked or that we feel comfortable with and we become static. It is the same for our students as well. They become comfortable with the “game of
education” and will fall into the trap of negotiating this game on the surface,
while simply falling in line with the system.
What if we give students an authentic voice? Push them to ask questions? Push them into deeper thinking about owning
and personalizing their education?
Instead of creating an educational environment that is beholden to
standards and rigidity, let’s create an
educational environment that has our students solving problems of the world as
they develop a deeper learning and thinking approach. I think sometimes we underestimate the
thinking of our students. However, by
allowing them to innovate and ask questions, the synergy of ideas connected
with questions coming from multiple voices will have the power to change the world!
Let’s start today.
Let’s begin to think differently about what education can be. Let’s wake up on Monday morning and embrace
the questions of our students. Let’s
push them to find their voice. WE CAN DO
THIS!
