remaining curious

(crossposted at leadertalk)

About a week and a half ago, the night before beginning at a new school, I wrote a post called Allowing Curriculum Planning to Remain Curious. I
wrote about how I needed to remain curious about my students and their
contexts in order to create meaningful curriculum for them.

Today
I am struck with how important it is to remain curious. One of the
reasons I reminded myself to remain curious, to not fall back on old
assumptions about learning, is because I am in a new school. With a new
school comes a whole new culture and different sets of needs and
expectations. Christian Long helped me towards this reminder when he wrote, in his note to self on the eve of his own first day at a new school, “You have plenty of time to share new ideas,
but listening, watching, and respecting is the first rule of business.
Listening and watching is your best trait going forward in this first
year.”

My mind keeps returning to that notion of remaining curious. How easy
it is to be curious now that I am in a new school, but I am already
noticing that I have created opinions about my students and the school
that I take for granted after only one week! So, how much easier it is
to create assumptions and rely on them rather than question and try to
understand!

I’m coming to the realization that remaining curious about what I do
as a teacher, a program planner, a member of a school community is
precious. By keeping myself open to possibilities, by trying to
understand the hows and whys of things, I keep education alive for me
and it remains my passion.

So my task going forward is remembering to remain curious.