Post Quickfire Brainstorming
As a teacher, I'm constantly answering questions from students, parents, and administrators, but I rarely pause to ask my own. The ‘quickfire’ assignment instructions suggested five minutes of brainstorming, but I found myself coming back to it multiple times over two weeks, and each time the questions got deeper.
What struck me most was that asking questions isn't actually hard (at least to me). What is hard is creating the space and time to ask good questions. My first questions were practical and immediate. But the more time I spent reflecting, the more my questions shifted toward social justice, equity, the vision of the International Baccalaureate Organization, the fundamental purpose of education. The existential questions didn't come first, they only emerged after I'd worked through the surface-level stuff. Looking back, the questions that felt most unrelated were often just approaching the same problem from a different angle. You can see this progression in the screencast below exploring my brainstorming.
Berger's point about students losing their questioning ability as they move through school really resonated with me, but I realized something else too. Professionally, we might stop asking questions because honestly, they just create more work for us. Deep questions demand answers, reflection, maybe even change, and that's exhausting when you're already stretched thin. It's way easier to just keep doing what you're doing than to question whether it's actually serving students well.
Citations:
Berger, W. (2024). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas (10th ed., rev. & updated). Bloomsbury.
