How to Facilitate Healthy & Respectful Conversations from a Presentation for the Tarrant Foundation

                       QUESTIONS AS EVIDENCE OF HOPE

 I came across this post  from Bonnie Lewis,  managing editor of C-3 Teachers. For those of us who believe in inquiry teaching, it is  an inspiring and important read:

 "We began this COVID season with a group of teachers generating a set of compelling questions. What is the balance between freedom and security? Will a virus heal the partisan divide? How will disease change the world? When this list of questions was first published, no one knew if we could answer them but, like the teachers we are, we planned to try.

We generated these questions in a spirit of hope and thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, right? We hoped the months of March and April were the worst of the year--that time would tick on and things would get better. But, we didn't know that 2020 had more to throw at us and that, instead of answering our questions, the “worst” continued to unfold into new questions: Can we return to normal? Does law and order mean justice? When does a moment become a movement? What will it take to unify America? Is this broken? Can we fix this? Now, it seems there is no respite for our tired feet as we trudge through this year’s remaining months. What new questions will 2020 bring in its remaining days?

Sitting with these questions, I am reminded of Zora Neal Hurston’s words: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” This is a year which asks questions, and boy are they hardballs. As social studies educators and C3 Teachers, we continue to question and encourage our students to inquire about the world because we continue to believe in the magic of the classroom that moves to the beat of questions, tasks, and sources. As long as we continue to question, we haven’t given up hope. At the end of the day, our questions are evidence of our ability to hold out hope for the future.

This year, two things remain obvious: We need good  teachers. We might not be able to answer all the questions we have, but we need to keep asking and answering what we can. We are, indeed, hearty people who will carry on the work of inquiry".

Now, from me..

As we  go into the final weeks of 2020, let's focus on what we believe in about teaching and learning, what  gives us JOY in the classroom and continue to look for the inspiration that we can give to and receive from one another.  This year is presenting us with a myriad of questions that  profoundly challenge us. Perhaps it is enough just to "live the questions"  and to support our students in continuing to ask them. In the words of  Rainer Maria Rilke, 

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

  

"The most engaged classrooms aren't the classrooms where teachers are asking good questions, they are the classrooms where students"