Over the past few weeks, I explored questions regarding my professional context. One question that caught my attention was, "How can our school develop a school culture that provides equal learning opportunities and a supportive learning environment to Emergent Bilingual Students (EBS)?". This question can be categorized as a wicked problem due to the fact that there are several interconnected factors and variables and that possible solutions to this problem are not "right" or "wrong," but "better," "worse," "good enough," or "not good enough." (Here's a link to my previous blog posts about my wicked problem journey). In order to find some "good enough" solutions to my wicked problem, I conducted a survey and did some research on the topic. After analyzing the data and knowledge gained, I was able to come up with some possible solutions! The multimodal presentation below includes more details about my wicked problem and possible solutions to it: As I mentioned in my Multimodal Wicked Problem Project Presentation above, here are the two documents I created as part of the solution to my wicked problem - Emergent Bilingual Collaboration Form and Post-Exit EBS Monitoring Form. The primary purpose of these documents is to foster collaboration between EBS teachers, content area teachers, and school administrators. Please feel free to download and use them to support your EBS students. Also, if you have any questions or suggestions regarding my wicked problem, please write them in the comment section below. As much as the teamwork between EB teachers and content area teachers working at the same school matters, I believe that collaboration between any teachers with a common goal is valuable. "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." - Helen Keller Resources:
Kim, H. (2020, Aug 11). Wicked Problem Project [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Jl3xbvGQ-hI
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Questioning is an essential part of our daily lives. Questions make us think and also act upon our thinking. One question I am currently spending a lot of time with is how can our school develop a school culture that provides equal learning opportunities and a supportive learning environment to Emergent Bilingual Students (EBS)?. This question is complex due to several interconnected factors and variables. Therefore, it can be categorized as a wicked problem. As a current ELL teacher and as someone who was once an Emergent Bilingual Student (EBS), this question is significant to me on both professional and personal levels. We all know that the population of EBS is rapidly growing, and I think that we have to constantly question our classroom and school culture to monitor educational equity. I believe that building a school culture that provides equal learning opportunities and a supportive learning environment to EBS would not only reduce the achievement gaps but also help Emergent Bilinguals reach their fullest potential. This week, to better understand and gather possible solutions to my wicked problem, I created a survey. Here’s the link to my 14-question survey, and I would greatly appreciate it if you could spend 10 minutes to share your experience working with Emergent Bilingual Students. Designing a survey was harder than I thought. After reading the article, Survey Design Best Practices, I revised, rearranged, and iterated my questions to make them engaging and yield useful data. While I wanted to collect as much information as possible, I tried to keep my questions simple. I limited the use of open-ended questions and even made some optional as this type of question usually takes more time and energy to answer and also might lead to survey fatigue. Resource:
Pixabay. (2017, March 05). Question mark illustration [digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.pexels.com/photo/ask-blackboard-chalk-board-chalkboard-356079/ While taking one of my Grad courses, I came across a book titled Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction. It is a teaching resource that focuses on students’ early literacy skills. One thing that I really like about this book is that it provides lists of words that teachers can give their students and have them sort the words according to any patterns as long as they can justify the process. Through this activity, my students not only had fun but also were able to improve their literacy skills. This week, I was in my students’ shoes. While I was not asked to sort words, I had to organize my Quickfire questions in categories, just like how my students had to arrange the given words. (Feel free to check my Question Quickfire blog post). As I sat down to brainstorm ideas on how to best organize my questions, I heard my teacher voice asking, “What do you notice?” which is a question I often ask my students when they have difficulty starting the word sort activity. Pondering on the questions as well as the categories where they belong, I was able to see how they relate to each other and to have a deeper understanding of my questions. It was overwhelming to consider these many questions about my professional workplace side by side. I had to constantly remind myself not to worry about the solutions but to focus on the questions. Spending time with my questions, as suggested by Berger (2014), the author of A More Beautiful Question, led me to more questions such as “Am I asking the right questions?”, “do I have a different mindset when dealing with different questions?” and many more. Reference: Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York: Bloomsbury. Kim, H. (2020, July 26). Question Quickfire [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/3XNtA17Iyts Why is the sky blue? Why is fire hot? Why is ice cold? Why are there so many languages in the world? Why do we have to sleep? Why do people get sick? Why? Why? Why? When we were young, most of us have experience of bombarding our parents or any adults around with too many questions that they eventually got annoyed. This week, I was given a chance to participate in an activity that required me to generate questions related to my practice and not answer them (just like what I did when I was young). Unlike my childhood experience, for this Question Quickfire activity, I used a technology tool, Padlet, and a timer. I set the timer for 5 minutes and sat in front of my laptop to write down questions. At first, I did not know which questions to ask and had a hard time getting started, as the activity was unusual for me. But as soon as I wrote my first question, "What are the challenges my EBS (Emergent Bilingual Students) face in their mainstream class? Why?" other questions followed, and the 5 minutes flew by so fast that I spent a few more minutes writing some more questions after turning the timer off. Here's a screenshot of my Question Quickfire activity: [Figure 1] Question Quickfire. (Kim, 2020) Berger (2014), the author of A More Beautiful Question, defines a beautiful question as "an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change" (p. 8). [Figure 2] Entrepreneurship as an instructional model. (Imittler, 2019) Some of my questions fall under Berger's (2014) definition of a beautiful question, ambitious yet actionable. I felt inspired and overwhelmed at the same time. But I held myself back and reminded myself not to worry about answers or actions, and just focus on the questions. Then, I noticed one interesting thing. I had more What and How questions compared to Why. I began thinking about the reason behind it, and I realized that as someone who has been in the field of education for about a decade, I assumed I knew the answers to the whys, and so I jumped and started asking what and how questions thinking that I was saving time and being more efficient. However, Berger (2014) suggests that to be a good questioner, you should step back and look at the situation with fresh eyes. He adds that if we do not ask thinking that we already "know" the answer, then we are relying on "expert" knowledge that is limited and may be outdated and even wrong (Berger, 2014, p. 13). Asking questions not only encourages us to observe the situation with fresh eyes and be innovators but also leads us to organize our thinking (Berger, 2014). Some of the questions I wrote during the five-minute Question Quickfire activity are not new to me. They have been at the back of my mind since I started teaching Emergent Bilingual Students. Through the activity, I was able to organize, and clarify the questions that were floating in my mind. Next question, how does questioning look like in classrooms? Today, we live in a world where change is normal. "In this current environment, questions are rising in value while answers are declining" (Berger, 2014, p. 23). Hence, it is critical to teach students how to be good questioners that also lead them to be lifelong learners and engaged citizens. When reflecting upon the opportunities I give my students to be good questioners; I realized that while I try to encourage my students to ask questions during class time and through activities such as Genius Hours, I do not give students enough chances to generate their own questions and work on them. To name a few reasons (or excuses), which are also mentioned in Berger's A More Beautiful Question (2014), overloaded curriculum and accountability system make it challenging for teachers to give students time to question. Again, I am not here to give answers, but this post is all about asking questions. So, I will leave you with one: being aware of the value of questions, as educators, how can we guide our students to be great questioners who can make a difference? Reference: Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York: Bloomsbury. Imittler. (2019). Entrepreneurship as an instructional model [figure 2]. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/lmittler/entrepreneurship-as-an-instructional-model Unless otherwise noted, the image presented on this blog is the property of the blog owner. |