Students' Asking Good Questions

“What does the sun look like from other planets?” This question from Jasmin Ramzinsky’s 3rd grade class at Parkside Elementary School in Austin reflects how education can be turned around almost on a dime by simply challenging students to assume more control of their own learning.

How do they do this? By being encouraged to ask good questions about the content they are studying and then pursuing what International Baccalaureate calls “purposeful investigations.”

And how do we encourage students to get interested and excited enough to pose questions about a subject we have to teach?

First of all, teachers must be willing to model their own curiosities about the subjects we teach. If we aren’t curious, why would our students be? Modeling tells our students that we are inquisitive, that we don’t know everything and that asking good questions and searching for answers is very exciting! And this is what we do throughout life.

Second, we need to share with students subjects that are intriguing, sometimes full of mystery and puzzles to figure out.

For this unit Jasmin’s students read a short book and she wondered, “Why is Pluto no longer considered a planet? What is a `dwarf planet’?” These questions led off the unit with the guiding question Is Earth the only planet with life?

These teacher wonderings sparked other curiosities from students:

“How did the sun get into space?

How many galaxies are there?

What’s a nebula?

How big do asteroids get?

How many seasons are there in space?

Is it legul [sic] to color with markers on the moon?

And, my favorite, “What does the sun look like from other planets?”

Sometimes it takes a younger person’s questions to present us with entirely different perspectives on what we think we know a lot about, like the sun and the planets.

From these questions Jasmin helped her students find answers.

You can imagine their excitement, total engagement and purposefulness as they researched questions they wanted answers to.

Before Jasmin adopted this inquiry-based approach, she would assign students’ questions; they would then conduct the research and write a one or two page paper.

After completion of this solar system unit, Jasmin asked her students to

comment on how this new approach compared with what they did previously, answer questions she posed for them. Here are some of their comments:

"Mrs. Ram, that doesn't make any sense. Why would you ask questions about my planet. You weren't doing the research, I was."

"Mrs. Ram, I bet your kids kinda got bored with finding the answers to your questions."


"Mrs. Ram, How did you know what your kids wanted to research? Did you ask each kid before you wrote the list of questions?"

Indeed, why do we assume we can dream up the kinds of questions our students would be intrigued by? (Because we have stuff to teach, to “cover”?)

Why would we assume that the old approach would generate interest and engagement in the topic? (Because that’s what we’re used to?)

We have made and continue to make these assumptions throughout our educational system.

Teachers who afford students an opportunity to pose their own questions related to the designated content report that students become:

1. More highly motivated.

2. More engaged intellectually and emotionally.

3. More in control of their own learning and, thereby, more responsible for achievement.

As a matter of fact this problem-based/question-based approach led one student to tell her mom that now she was “in charge” of her own learning.

There are many, many Jasmins across this country who know the benefits and wisdom of challenging students to pose meaningful questions and conduct purposeful investigations about content that matters.

Inquiry that leads to problem solving and critical thinking are all so-called 21^st century skills (as they were last century and the ones before that dating back to Socrates!)

One of the questions to pose and answer is “How do we know they’re getting better at these 21^st century skills?”

Jasmin can see the growth of her students’ questioning in science, math and in reading dating back to November. All because she’s put a priority on changing the classroom dynamic from one in which the adult asks all the questions to one wherein both teachers and students are asking good questions, searching for answers and learning together.

Bringing Mom to First Grade

There’s nothing “half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats,” said Water Rat in the Kenneth Graham classic, Wind in the Willows. The fun of just messing about in and around stuff.

The sheer joy of it all!

And there’s nothing quite like bringing your mom into first grade so children can get to know about her life, the times she lived in and what she valued.

I had this pleasure recently at the Mulgrave School in Vancouver, British Columbia. On a not too unusual cloudy February day, I brought pictures of my mother, Elizabeth Ferguson Barell, into Monique Vodrey’s class to model how one might challenge students to become good observers and questioners of folks who lived before them. They were studying change across generations and I’d already admired some of their family trees.

I showed the students six or seven photos of Elizabeth from age twelve to eighty-five and asked them to arrange them in chronological order. This they were able to do upon the second or third try. What distinguished one photo from another was my mother's height, “She’s taller here!’ and the presence or absence of her son, me.

Then I focused on one black and white picture, that of her standing next to a Model A Ford probably circa 1927, the first year of production. It was most likely her father’s black car and I’m sure he took the picture in front of their house in LeRoy, NY.

I asked kids to observe it closely and tell me what they saw: “the car—not like my Dad’s car at all!” and lots of comments about the car, the windows, so many, the hood, the tires without hubcaps, the running board and the roof. They were fascinated by the roof. They were curious about the windows, why so many, the car’s color, why black, and the spoked wheels.

The point was to help them become good observers, because inquiry starts with being keen observers of objects and experiences. Go here to view a video clip of students making their observations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg3j3-1wzwg

Next, I wanted them to pose good questions. I was sitting on a couch and held up a color picture of my mother and me when she was about 85. Then I said, “If my mother, Elizabeth Barell, were sitting right here, what would you ask her?” You can hear from the tape how kids asked questions about life when she was born and then they asked a question that really surprised and delighted me, “What was her life about?” (View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWMaYbM7l04 )

Wow! “What was her life about?” Behind me were all the pictures arranged in chronological order and one wonders what she might have said in response.

“What did she like the best?” one other student asked.

I think her life was about total devotion to her children, loving them, sacrificing for them especially when there was a family need. As a single working mom, she drove from Wellesley, MA everyday in her later life to work at Dana Farber Cancer Research Center in Boston as a researcher, then drove home, made my sister, Robin, a delicious meal, without ever, ever complaining, or asking Robin to make it herself.

But it was also about loving life. She was one of the most curious persons I’ve ever met. On her shelves, before she passed away last September, were books about Leonard Bernstein, nuclear physicist Richard Feynman, stories by A. A. Milne, and Ann Taylor and audio tapes of her favorite comics, Bob and Ray. And, scattered about the apartment were cross word puzzle books galore!

Now that she’s gone we miss her and find different ways to keep her in our lives.

At least first graders in Vancouver got to meet a lovely lady who once summed up the meaning of her life thusly: “Mind your own business! Because if you don’t, somebody else will.”

Christina Taylor Green

Nicholas Kristof of The NY Times interviewed two brave women in Liberty Square, Cairo last week (2/3/11). Brave because they were out on the streets, surrounded by thousands of mostly male demonstrators, not concerned about their own safety and subject to the attacks of pro-Government armed men crashing in on horses and camels.

These two sisters Amal and Minna, “had their heads covered in the conservative Muslim style, and they looked timid and frail as thugs surrounded them, jostled them, shoute

d at them.”

But these two “stood their ground. They explained calmly to the mob why they favored democratic reform. . .”

“We need democracy in Egypt,” they told Kristof. “We want what you have.”

They and their brothers want what we too often take for granted: the rights guaranteed in those first ten amendments, guaranteeing us all the freedom to dare, to dream, to question authority and wonder about possible worlds we can create and inhabit, “here, th

ere and everywhere.”

Amal and Minna remind me of Christina Taylor Green, that all too young nine year old gunned down in Tucson as she stood listening to congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords. All she wanted was to learn more about our democracy, how we can work together to live a good life, everybody potentially able to live out a dream.

She should live on in our collective memories as an example of childhood curiosity, wonder , trust and enthusiasm!

President Obama elevated her curiosity to national heights:

“I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us, we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”

What were Christina’s expectations? That she could observe her government at work on the corner, that she could, if patient enough, someday participate at a state or national level as she was doing in her own school’s Student Council. That maybe she could be one of thos

e people who works to help others live as she had, growing up with loving parents, a splendid brother, a terrific school that challenged her to imagine life as full of possibilities and a community that cared about all of its citizens. She probably knew how fortunate she was.

Christina probably wanted what most of us want, to raise our hands with questions about something that is mysterious, intriguing, puzzling about our world—how people did or didn’t live in harmony, what was that "Milky Way" spread out so brightly over Tucson’s warm evenings, how do animals think, and what makes some music so weird!

With a grandfather and father in baseball, I imagine Christina loved the rough and tumble of various sports, playing them for the sheer joy of participating, dreaming of winning, learning to live with the losses, but always laughing up the thrill of being on a team.

I’m sure Christina loved reading, escaping with a good story that took her “lands away,” into Narnia, away with Charlotte into that web and way, way off to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

And I imagine she loved exploring the landscapes around Tucson, skipping, laughing and dancing her way toward what e.e. cummings called that

“. . .keen


city which nobody’s ever visited,where

always

it’s
Spring)and everyone’s

in love and flowers pick themselves”

God bless you, Christina Taylor Green!

"Simply reeks with class"

During a recent breakfast with my aunt, Anne Cooper, I learned of one of my mother’s favorite movies, “Top Hat,” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.

One day during its movie debut, 1935, my mother, Elizabeth Ferguson, returned home with a girl friend simply roaring with laughter about one of Astaire’s lyrics. They saw him in top hat, white tie and tails before an entourage of over twenty similarly attired men, all sporting the walking cane dancing and singing about “dudein up” his shirt front, “puttin’ in the shirt studs, polishin [his] nails.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fizrfcAI13A)

But, according to my aunt, one line sent my mother and her girlfriend, both probably twenty years old and in college, into gales of laughter was the following: “I’m steppin’ out, my dear To breath an atmosphere that simply reeks with class. . . “

My mother loved that line about breathing in an “atmosphere that simply reeks with class.”

What did it mean to her, I wondered? What represented “class” to her in 1935?

Surely, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. FDR? Her father, the famous scientist? Her mother? Douglas Fairbanks?

Nancy and I wondered what we meant by that word and she offered this definition: “Some one with class has a personal style, is self-confident and performs with humility and without arrogance.” Others have noted that to have class means to be very respectful of all others and to have “an innate sense of appropriateness” in social situations.

I usually think of someone with class, like Astaire and Rogers, as performers on the grand stage of life, but surely one doesn’t need to be famous to have class.

We then considered who amongst us, past and present had class.

Here’s a brief list:

Cary Grant

Jean Arthur in any of her splendid movies

Audrey Hepburn

Admiral Richard E. Byrd treated me upon first meeting him when I was a young teen-ager and in awe of him as a member of his family. He definitely had class. See Quest for Antarctica.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Anne Frank

Abraham Lincoln

Former Senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel

Former Senator from New Jersey, Bill Bradley

Former Congressman from Bridgeport, CT, Christopher Shays

Senator from Illinois Richard Lugar

President Barack Obama

Physicists Isidore I. Rabi and Richard Feynman

Astronomer Carl Sagan

All the Tuskegee Airmen

Marion Anderson

Oprah

Joe DiMaggio, even on that one occasion when he kicked up some dirt at missing a home run. And, of course, Yogi.

Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics

Walt “Clyde” Frazier of the NY Knicks

Connecticut women’s basketball team (of 90 straight victories) coach Gino Auriemma after recently losing to Stanford, “I think they played an unbelievably good game.” Had to.

Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga who, on 3 June 2010, pitched a perfect game only to have the last out nullified by umpire Jim Joyce, who admitted he blew the call. Galarraga treated this terrible disappointment with class, no thumping around ranting and raving about “I was robbed.” A true gentleman and sportsman.

And who doesn’t have class, you ask? Any of the sports figures who feels it important to “hot dog” after making a routine play on the field—sacking the quarterback, scoring a touchdown or hitting a home run. Strutting around pointing to themselves, thumping their manly chests, all to their own greater glory.

Of course, I would also nominate Elizabeth Ferguson Barell, for courage during the darker days of her life. Simply reeked with class.

Whom do you nominate as a person who has or had class?

One Team

Last week Nancy and I visited Lincoln Center to hear the West Point Band playing Christmas and Hannukkah music with the New York Philharmonic Principal Brass Quintet. A marvelous performance of traditional holiday music from sparkling brass players and vocalists.

Just before the performance I met one of the West Point Band’s officers, thanked him for his service and then said, “As a former Navy person I offer my condolences for yesterday’s game on the gridiron in Philadelphia.”

Army lost to Navy 31-17 for ninth straight time, a record winning streak in this service rivalry.

He smiled broadly and then responded, “It’s all one team.”

All during the magnificent musical performances that followed this brief encounter I recalled players from the football game and announcements that this Navy quarter back would be serving on destroyers upon commissioning and that Army running back had signed up for infantry or this wide receiver would be assigned to field artillery.

Many of these cadets would be serving in Afghanistan before the end of next year, perhaps supported at sea by their navy comrades in arms.

Very sobering thoughts. Regardless of one’s political persuasion we pray for the life of each of these future officers and the enlisted who serve with them.

“One team.” That phrase kept resounding in my mind as I watched the lame-duck session struggle mightily, it seemed, to pass several major pieces of legislation—repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; the huge tax bill; 9/11 first responders health and ratification of the New Start Treaty with Russia.

It seems as if politics has, indeed, changed since the last election. Democrats are working with Republicans to pass significant legislation. Somebody said, “We ought to bring them in for only six weeks and set them loose!” Has the era of Good Feelings returned?

Probably not. The hyper-partisanship that has characterized the political wrangling during the past year made me sick of the whole process for a while. It was worse than sausage making. It was like small boys in a schoolyard yelling and screaming at each other when they didn’t get exactly what they wanted, and that meant everything.

This lack of conversation across the aisles—the almost total grid-lock on the field of politics—this hyper-partisanship--led to the recent formation of a new movement called “No Labels” led by Republicans and Democrats.

But reason seemed to prevail during these last weeks, even though die-hards claimed “There’s no time. . .we’re not going to rush things.” Well, both sides passed significant legislation.

But where is the sense of “One Team” for 2011? I remember former Congressman Chris Shays, Republican of CT, saying he got up every morning realizing he served not only Republicans in his Bridgeport area district, but Democrats and Independents as well. There aren’t too many folks in Congress who reflect that spirit of attempting to solve America’s problems first, not working to ensure that President Obama serves only one term or to eliminate certain tax cuts.

“One Team” means that we think, for example, of the economy, the need to mount huge efforts to compete with the Chinese who have just invested almost 1 trillion dollars in new green energy. We must think not as ideologues from one party or another, but as Americans needing to solve a problem. Too often what passes for legislative problem-solving is acceding to the wishes of one’s political base to ensure re-election.

We think of what Senator John McCain said about what he would have done post 9/11: ask for “shared sacrifice.” Such sacrifices would mean that we think first about the best ways to deal with immigration policy and not about who are our campaign contributors and ideological soul-mates.

“One team” means that we realize that those men on the gridiron serve one nation, one America. We don’t ask them to pull the trigger in defense of Republicans or Democrats, the poor, or the middle class or the rich, but of all citizens.

Yes, we’ve had our divisions since the first Washington administration when you had Madison and Jefferson strongly disagreeing with the advice Hamilton was giving the President (see Madison and Jefferson, 2010 by Burstein and Isenburg) about building standing armies and assuming a large national debt. Political discourse became rather vituperative, accusatory and inflamed at times.

My fantasy is that one day I would be given 60 seconds to speak before a joint session of Congress. During this presentation I would mention McCain’s call for “shared sacrifice” from all Americans. Tell them of my parents’ many contributions during WWII (See “Mutual Sacifice” 11/23 below) —along with millions of other American citizens.

Then I would ask them for one week—even one day—to shed any semblance of party loyalty, forget their always imminent re-election campaigns and work diligently to solve the problems we face as men and women whose only allegiance is to all the voters in the country.

Be Chris Shays for one day, just one day!

Fantasy? Sheer fantasy. Yes, I know, but I keep rehearsing my lines.

The men and women from all of the military academies serve our country—we owe them our supportive acknowledgement that we are, indeed, “All one team.”

Peace for this holiday season!

Great Askers

Great Askers

Driving north toward Albany recently to visit a high school where they challenge students to think by solving real-world problems, I happened to turn on an XM radio station that played a very short clip from a Glen Beck radio broadcast the previous day. In this segment Mr. Beck said the following (slightly paraphrased from memory):

“What is the number of Muslims who are terrorists. 1%? I think the figure is closer to 10%.”

I heard nothing of what might have followed that claim.

The person who played it, of the opposite political persuasion, however, asked the right question, “How do you know? What evidence do you have to make this seemingly outrageous claim?”

Reminded me of Beck’s similar claim on TV that President Obama was “anti-white,” that he was “deep down a racist.”

We’ve heard this claim many times over, but I’ve never heard of anybody’s challenging him to support this judgment about the President. What was it based on?

Made me think that if he’s anti-white, he must be schizophrenic, in the common definition of that term as being of a split personality.

Then I asked, “Well, which portion of himself does he hate, since he’s both black and white? The lower/upper half?”

I never heard the logical follow-up question, “What leads you to that conclusion?”

So, driving back from this terrific high technology school in Rensselaer, NY where they foster 21^st century skills such as inquiry, problem solving and critical thinking, I was wondering how Mr. Beck models for his radio/tv audiences arriving at logical conclusions using valid, representative evidence?

I’ve heard Mr. Beck so many times laying on his audience that they should fear the coming revolution, just recently, the approaching chaos that will result in a communist state or the dreaded one world government. Several nights later on TV he claimed that “They [I think he means progressives since they are mostly the big bad wolves here] they feed on fear and violence.”

One way to propel your own agenda is to characterize what others do to conceal your own use of the same tactics.

This from a spokesperson who sees the coming of a Reichstag-like fire incident that would lead to dictatorship, just as a similar event led to the Nazi take-over of the German government in 1933.

This from a person who plays tapes of students in London and Berkeley demanding free education and concludes that this is evidence that we’re headed for a socialist/communist state and a loss of freedom.

But the critical thinker asks, “How representative are students at Berkeley of the entire US? What other evidence do we have that the country is headed for a dictatorship or any stripe?” Yes, there are groups here and there that might give suggestion of that idea, but what say the three major branches of the federal government, to say nothing of their state and local counterparts? Where’s the preponderance of evidence?

Makes one think that evidence/data/facts/verifiable information is of little or no consequence. Say what you will. Nobody will challenge you and some may agree. (What Jonathan Schell recently, in The Nation, called "casting off factuality."

We must be so careful in listening to folks in the media.

Each side throws claims around that baffle the mind of an educated person:

“The Obama Stimulus Effect? Zero?” (WSJ, 12/9/10) Why did they say that? Because spending almost 800 billion dollars did not lead to significant “purchases” by the states that received the money. Are there other criteria for success?

You have economists on the other side from Harvard, for example, claiming on Charlie Rose “I can’t explain why the wealthy got tax breaks.”

One wonders who amongst the young people at that NY high school accepts these kinds of claims without the requisite and healthy skepticism that demands we ask probing questions like “How do you know? What leads you to that conclusion? How good/representative is your evidence?”

Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a most revealing book, The March of Folly (1984) about governments that pursue policies “contrary to their interests.” She cites British policy in our Revolutionary War and ours in Vietnam as examples of “folly,” that is, “perceived as counter-productive in its own time. . .[with a] feasible alternative course. . .available. . .” (p. 5) A better policy would, I imagine, be based on solid evidence to the contrary.

To avoid such future disasters Tuchman concluded that “What government needs is great askers.” (385)

What society needs to counter claims that seem outrageous, that represent only one ideological point of view, or that are merely presented without any supporting evidence are “great askers” at home, schools, in the media, and in all political parties, people who daily challenge us to examine issues in accordance with evidence, who ask us to do what very few people are willing to do, that is ask, “What’s the other side of the coin? What evidence contradicts my favored point of view?”

This is the nature of good citizenship, especially in these days of hyper-partisanship in Washington politics.

The King's Speech

The King’s Speech

As the movie critics sometimes say, “Run, don’t walk to see Colin Furth in The King’s Speech.”

Why run? Because Furth delivers a most moving portrait of a monarch, George VI, as he ascends the throne after his brother Edward’s abdication to marry Mrs. Simpson in 1936.

George VI suffered from what they then called a “stammer.” He choked up when he had to speak in public and this is something a monarch does rather often, especially if his country is heading into World War II against a man with Hitler’s articulate passion for enflaming his people against the world.

Furth recently recalled that he had what actors call an emotional memory of his fear of public speaking:

When he was eight years old he was caught talking in class and the punishment was rather severe. “The teacher said, `Oh, do you want to give the lesson?’" The following week, after several sleepless nights, Furth was made to teach an hour-long class on the topic of soil. "It’s the only thing I ever really learned during my entire school years,” he said. "I still remember words like loam and subsoil, and different levels and layers. I brought in samples and little test tubes.’” (The New Yorker, 12/6/ 2010, p. 30)

Here we see the efficacy of teaching. If you want to learn something, teach it. If you want to know if students understand something, challenge them to teach it to those who are novices.

Of course, there is the element of total fear about this learning experience and we would not want to terrify our students by putting them in Furth’s position. The actor said, “It was punishment.”

“The King’s Speech” demonstrates once again the vitality of our speech patterns, our ways of communicating. We can joke, as The New Yorker did recently, about being the only “between you and me” chap in a “between you and I” world. But for those of us who really care about “the King’s English,” as my mother always did, it’s vital to pay attention to words, their pronunciation, usage, their connotations and denotations and even their derivations. What a joy it is when we learn that “stammer” is derived from the Old English word “stamerian. . .related to stumble." That’s just what Furth did as King George VI, stumble over his words as if he had these natural or psychological blocks deep within his psyche.

Language usage sets certain expectations.

I always remember Elizabeth Barell correcting those in the media for saying, “This is a really/most/very unique experience” or rather strongly chastising them for mis-pronouncing the word “dour.” The latter drove her crazy.

What are words? They are our means of communications amongst ourselves, our concepts for understanding the world (from pen and peace to Pater Noster) and, finally, they are most assuredly magical, mysterious human creations for exploration and discovery of newer worlds of awe and wonder.

Words reveal our souls, passions, aspirations and the stories we tell with our lives.

Attention must, therefore, be paid.