“If you learn how to think, you can take what you’ve learned and adapt it to multiple situations.”

– Mike vaughan

“We all have a very different peRspective of what growth means.”

– Mike vaughan

Vaughan’s TEDx talk will resonate with educators everywhere.  Regardless of your school, subject focus, or time spent in a classroom, you know that every teacher thinks about getting better at the art of educating others. Vaughan identifies ‘good question asking,’ as one of the essential skills for top performing teachers.  He makes a great point by reminding us that this applies both to the questions we ask ourselves, as well as the questions we ask others.

How do we ask better questions?

 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  Two great ‘learning experiences,’ have been a part of this provocation.  Recently I read the book Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time by Bob Tschannen-Moran, Megan Tschannen-Moran.

The book focuses on sparking insight through a regular regime of story-swaps between colleagues:

“When coaches and teachers communicate what they are working on with others, the systems and structures in schools shift into alignment. When coaches and teachers share the stories of their design experiments, including details as to how things went, what worked well, and what things were helpful to them, the news begins to spread. Such stories can have a huge influence on school environments.”

That reading was a great compliment to this week’s #TeacherBookClub chat with Bill and Ochan Powell as we unpacked their work Teacher Self-Supervision: Why teacher evaluation has failed and what we can do about it.

Here are a few of the tweets which spoke the most to me:

@MrPhilBruce @FriedEnglish101 #teacherbookclub Art of conversation: adults need to appreciate potential for learning embedded in it

— Bill & Ochan Powell (@BillOchanPowell) May 17, 2016

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@FriedEnglish101 #teacherbookclub To start the conversation, begin w/ unspoken & unexamined assumptions that underlie current practice

— Bill & Ochan Powell (@BillOchanPowell) May 17, 2016

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@FriedEnglish101 #teacherbookclub Trust in schools is not about a warm feeling, but about recognizing our dependency upon each other.

— Bill & Ochan Powell (@BillOchanPowell) May 17, 2016

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What if we started our next meeting with these three questions?

1. Which narrative portraying a teacher has most shaped who you want to be as a teacher? This could be a story told in a film, as an anecdote, or in a book.

2. What story from this academic year best defines the culture of our school?

3. Which experiences have allowed you to trust your own judgement in the classroom? Which experiences have made you rethink your judgement?

Make the time to wonder:

Taking the time to be more curious about our colleagues is an act of kindness and respect. Why is it that we leave it off the agenda? How can we prioritize the art of conversation? Can we offer provocations meant to inspire story-shares? Can we learn more about ourselves by connecting with others? Isn’t that why we come together at schools rather than work from home five days a week?

What is the one best question a colleague has asked you This year?

 

 

Thank you, Flickr, for your bank of Creative Commons Images:

Matthias Ripp