Essential Questions
Before we left for our international field experience, TGC asked us to frame “essential questions” for our travel and education experience. As discussed, an essential question should be: relevant in any cultural context; broad; open-ended; significant; complex; provocative; authentic; and outcome-based. This overarching question was something that was to guide our thinking during our travel experience, and revisited once we were home. A sign of a good essential question would be that it would be something that you would want to ask every teacher you met in (Ghana), or a question you would bring up in a casual or philosophical conversation. One thing we talked about is the way in which cultural norms and expectations can be radically imbedded in people’s assumptions; thus, having some cultural awareness and sensitivity towards exploring these questions is key. For example, in the U.S. we may say that we educate students in order to be competitive in a global economy. In Ghana, the same question might be answered: We educate students to be morally upright citizens. Same question, very different answer. So we were tasked with developing an essential question for ourselves to guide and structure our thinking during our travel experience.
This was very hard for me. I have a lot of questions. I also am not usually sure or confident that my questions are the “right” questions. I think about a lot of things, like—how does where we come from influence who we are? How do our place in the world and our language affect our identity and the way we see ourselves? In my mental meandering, I kept coming back to a few key questions—what does education need to be in order to be most meaningful to students? And, needing to acknowledge my own personal position and perspective, what I really want to know is: How can education lead to individual and societal empowerment and equality? My Understanding by Design unit plan was a jump-off from my unit on Orwell’s Animal Farm, and in that unit I posed questions for myself and my students such as: What is power, and where does it come from? How do societal institutions garner and wield power, and how and why do citizens cede their power to those institutions? What I really want to know is: How can we be agents of positive change and social justice in our world? And so, educationally speaking, I wanted to know:
What should school look like in order for students to be able to be agents of change and social justice and empower them to claim their power?
That is a bit unwieldy for an essential question, so I boiled it down to an extremely basic:
What is education for? What should education be? Who is it for?
Embedded in my extremely basic essential question is this query as to who education is for—as in, is education for the individual, to really empower her to achieve her greatest potential and freedom? Or is education for the state and the corporation, to enable those institutions to have the largest stock of competent and productive workers? Truly what I want to know is, How can education lead to individual and societal empowerment and equality? But I decided that if I could ask and answer my very basic essential question, I would be able to eventually arrive at an answer for my true questions.
There are many assumptions embedded in my questions. For example, my entire perspective is predicated on the assumptions that: education is “good”; that knowledge is good; that the more you know and understand, the better off you are; that individuals should want to realize their potential; that more education equates to more justice; that equality of opportunity is good and should be a goal; and most importantly, that education can and should be empowering and liberating. These assumptions are natural to me, but may not be universally accepted.
What is education for? What should education be? Who is it for? How can education lead to individual and societal empowerment and equality?
These questions beg more questions: How can we be agents of change and social justice in our world? What should school look like in order for students to be able to be agents of change and social justice, empowering them to claim their power?
What I came up with in response to our readings on global education and global competences and in drafting these essential questions was this:
Education has to be real-world. It has to be relevant to students. It has to be something they care about and are interested in. It has to connect to their lives and the context in which they find themselves. They have to have the opportunity to discuss it and think about it. They need to get the necessary background knowledge and information to guide their understanding. But then they have to be able to do something with the material they've been presented with. And they need to be able to give input and create something real with it.
In order for schooling to be a place where students can become agents of change and empower themselves and others to work for social change, education must be relate to the real-world context in which students find themselves; it must provide students with the necessary knowledge, information, tools, and support to build their understanding; it must be relevant and interesting to students; and it must provide students with the opportunity to think about, discuss, act, and create in expression of their and others’ ideas. I don’t present this as some new paradigm; I only offer my experience in having experienced a few moments where this really came home and true for me. Two moments in particular stood out. The first was when I began my Understanding by Design unit on persuasion and social change moments with my class, and my student M. took the notion of persuasion and ran with it—challenged with applying the use of ethos, pathos, and logos in a persuasive speech, she wrote a speech decrying bullying and declaring herself as an “upstander” rather than a “bystander.” The other moment was in Ghana during and after my guest-teaching experience. I delivered a presentation to a Ghanaian class on the Chesapeake Bay and the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, asked students to compare the problems of pollution and run-off in Maryland to the environmental problems in the port city of Tema, and challenged them to come up with suggestions and solutions. The students of Chemu Secondary had so many ideas and so many things to say. After class their regular teacher expressed his surprise, saying that he thought that he and his colleagues might not remember at all times how much their students have to offer. I found that somewhat sad but also very exciting, in that perhaps all teachers can remember how much their students have to offer, and how badly they want to have a meaningful experience in their education. If we can just find and tap into that innate need, maybe we can all get what we need out of education.
This was very hard for me. I have a lot of questions. I also am not usually sure or confident that my questions are the “right” questions. I think about a lot of things, like—how does where we come from influence who we are? How do our place in the world and our language affect our identity and the way we see ourselves? In my mental meandering, I kept coming back to a few key questions—what does education need to be in order to be most meaningful to students? And, needing to acknowledge my own personal position and perspective, what I really want to know is: How can education lead to individual and societal empowerment and equality? My Understanding by Design unit plan was a jump-off from my unit on Orwell’s Animal Farm, and in that unit I posed questions for myself and my students such as: What is power, and where does it come from? How do societal institutions garner and wield power, and how and why do citizens cede their power to those institutions? What I really want to know is: How can we be agents of positive change and social justice in our world? And so, educationally speaking, I wanted to know:
What should school look like in order for students to be able to be agents of change and social justice and empower them to claim their power?
That is a bit unwieldy for an essential question, so I boiled it down to an extremely basic:
What is education for? What should education be? Who is it for?
Embedded in my extremely basic essential question is this query as to who education is for—as in, is education for the individual, to really empower her to achieve her greatest potential and freedom? Or is education for the state and the corporation, to enable those institutions to have the largest stock of competent and productive workers? Truly what I want to know is, How can education lead to individual and societal empowerment and equality? But I decided that if I could ask and answer my very basic essential question, I would be able to eventually arrive at an answer for my true questions.
There are many assumptions embedded in my questions. For example, my entire perspective is predicated on the assumptions that: education is “good”; that knowledge is good; that the more you know and understand, the better off you are; that individuals should want to realize their potential; that more education equates to more justice; that equality of opportunity is good and should be a goal; and most importantly, that education can and should be empowering and liberating. These assumptions are natural to me, but may not be universally accepted.
What is education for? What should education be? Who is it for? How can education lead to individual and societal empowerment and equality?
These questions beg more questions: How can we be agents of change and social justice in our world? What should school look like in order for students to be able to be agents of change and social justice, empowering them to claim their power?
What I came up with in response to our readings on global education and global competences and in drafting these essential questions was this:
Education has to be real-world. It has to be relevant to students. It has to be something they care about and are interested in. It has to connect to their lives and the context in which they find themselves. They have to have the opportunity to discuss it and think about it. They need to get the necessary background knowledge and information to guide their understanding. But then they have to be able to do something with the material they've been presented with. And they need to be able to give input and create something real with it.
In order for schooling to be a place where students can become agents of change and empower themselves and others to work for social change, education must be relate to the real-world context in which students find themselves; it must provide students with the necessary knowledge, information, tools, and support to build their understanding; it must be relevant and interesting to students; and it must provide students with the opportunity to think about, discuss, act, and create in expression of their and others’ ideas. I don’t present this as some new paradigm; I only offer my experience in having experienced a few moments where this really came home and true for me. Two moments in particular stood out. The first was when I began my Understanding by Design unit on persuasion and social change moments with my class, and my student M. took the notion of persuasion and ran with it—challenged with applying the use of ethos, pathos, and logos in a persuasive speech, she wrote a speech decrying bullying and declaring herself as an “upstander” rather than a “bystander.” The other moment was in Ghana during and after my guest-teaching experience. I delivered a presentation to a Ghanaian class on the Chesapeake Bay and the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, asked students to compare the problems of pollution and run-off in Maryland to the environmental problems in the port city of Tema, and challenged them to come up with suggestions and solutions. The students of Chemu Secondary had so many ideas and so many things to say. After class their regular teacher expressed his surprise, saying that he thought that he and his colleagues might not remember at all times how much their students have to offer. I found that somewhat sad but also very exciting, in that perhaps all teachers can remember how much their students have to offer, and how badly they want to have a meaningful experience in their education. If we can just find and tap into that innate need, maybe we can all get what we need out of education.
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