A teacher friend opened up her current events assignment from its previous scope after some family pushback. Current events being what they are, some families sniffed an agenda where there was none. Still, it worried the friend.
She wants her students following contemporary informational texts across a span of time. She wants them tracking how stories are told about a specific event or idea. She is not so much interested in shaping her students’ political leanings.
This was not what the families thought was happening.
She went the route of being less helpful.
Together, her students brainstormed a list of every possible current event they could think of. Everything on the table.
And, just before the brainstorm, a letter home to parents and caregivers.
“Hey,” it said, “your kid is about to start asking questions about the world. It can be about anything happening in said world. Would you help a teacher out and help them pick something that lines up with what you care about as a family?”
I’m paraphrasing.
Then, the students started submitting the topics they thought they might like to dig a bit more deeply on. The swath, my friend has told me, is much wider than could have been imagined.
This does not surprise me. Given the opportunity to ask questions about the world and a little assistance in thinking about which parts of the world, our students will always astound us.
The next thing for these students to do is use the Question Formulation Technique developed by the folx at rightquestion.org to come up with mound and heaps and oodles of questions about their topics. Then, they get to set about the task about finding the answers and, if they’re doing it right, more questions.
The relieved teacher friend and I were talking.
“Of course this is better,” I said, “You’ve proven you don’t care what they think, but that they think and think deeply about their world.”
It doesn’t matter the topic. That skill is transferrable.