Blog Post #6

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

As teachers our job is to facilitate learning. Learning cannot be had without thinking, and questions are the Miracle Grow for the proverbial thought garden. Hungry for more metaphor? Well questions are a teacher's greatest weapon in the war against ignorance! The point is questions are important! We as teachers must always ask questions and promote the importance of questions. In Ben Johnson's The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom he brings up the fantastic point that many teachers assume that just because their students do not ask any questions about a subject that they understand it. This is most certainly not the case. To battle this be consistent and specific with your question asking. Even if students do not answer, questions could be having an impact and getting their think-engines going! Great questions encourage students to question and critically think about what they're being taught. Ben Johnson brings up another amazing point about general questions when he addresses the problem with the majority of students assuming the "smart kids" will answer the questions so they just do not pay attention. This leads to some students almost never answering questions in class. These archaic methods of communicating with students is detrimental to education in our day-and-age. Be spontaneous and keep it personal with the students to overcome these obstacles. Knowing your students and how to approach them in asking questions is vital to helping them learn. Also keep in mind that they're not the only ones learning. Like I said previously our job as teachers is to facilitate learning. That is not a one way street! In helping others to learn you will inevitably learn much along the way!