QUESTIONS

I’VE OFTEN BEEN TOLD BY MY FAMILY THAT I ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS. THEY’RE NOT WRONG...

I love asking questions. In fact, one of my favorite parts of this job is getting to know new people each year. This year, it started with welcoming 230 freshmen students and reaches to their parents, guardians and extended family. Then, there are the many potential teaching candidates who we interview each spring and summer resulting in new employees that we bring into the family as Holy Cross educators. Finally, the new AP Language students I teach and basketball student-athletes I coach each year never fail to teach me something...it is a thrill to build new relationships and learn from their journeys.

Getting to know people with a sincere curiosity and zest for discovery is woven into my DNA from my experiences as a student at Hoban when mentors like Brother Joseph LeBon, Brother Ed Libbers, Jeff Stetz and Sister Kathleen King showed interest and curiosity in my life.

Asking good questions really connects to our new OCSAA accreditation cycle as well. OCSAA, which stands for the Ohio Catholic Schools Accrediting Association, sends an administrative team to Hoban to approve a four-year school improvement plan that is built on two pillars: Catholicity and academics.

If approved in March, our school improvement plan will center on building curious critical thinkers academically and prioritizing our Catholic calling and Holy Cross core value of inclusiveness. Currently, our goal statements read like this:

Catholic Goal

Students will deepen the embodiment of the Holy Cross core value of inclusiveness, demonstrating a higher level of dignity for the individual in academic and cocurricular settings.

Academic Goal

Students will become curious critical thinkers who seek deeper meanings, persist toward mastery of essential standards and communicate their understanding in multiple contexts.

The first year of the four-year academic cycle will focus on the types of questions we ask our students in the classroom and on formative and summative assessments. Master teachers teach by asking great questions. Like the legendary Greek philosopher Socrates, master teachers create classrooms that are student-centered, engaging and leave the learner craving more information.

To understand this deeper, perhaps it’s best to evaluate a “bad” or “mediocre” question.

Imagine a history teacher asks her students [for a test] to memorize the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights and then write it word for word. Does that question engage and deepen learning? Not really. Do we need to memorize things when the answers are a few keystrokes away? Not really. Although recall certainly still has its place, this leans toward a bad question.

Now, take the same topic and imagine the text of the Fourth Amendment was written on the test to be used to answer questions:

[Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized].

1. Consider what type of actions the British soldiers committed that encouraged the Founding Fathers to create this amendment?

2. Create a scenario in which this amendment would protect the innocence of your family or friends.

3. Analyze the effects technology may play in complicating the legal application of the Fourth Amendment.

These questions beg for extended thinking, application and engagement. These are good questions.

The book, "Now That’s a Good Question," by Erik Francis, is a valued resource on this topic. Francis writes, “If your students are demonstrating and communicating--showing and telling--the depth and extent of what they are learning, then you’ll know you’ve asked a good question.”

Francis continues to mention that when teachers craft great questions, the following happens:

It stimulates deeper thinking.

It deepens student knowledge, understanding and awareness. It expands students' knowledge and extends their learning. It piques curiosity, imagination, interest and wonder. It encourages students to share the depth of their learning.

Good questions not only deepen academic learning and seeking, but they also deepen relationships. Good questions will help us build a culture of inclusiveness, allowing us to strengthen Hoban's Catholic goal.

Yes, I ask a lot of questions. But isn’t that how we learn?

T.K. Griffith ’89 Principal