Chelsea Lawrence is a mid-career Spanish teacher at an independent school in Mobile, Alabama. She discovered the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) in 2021, soon after the Covid lockdown ended and her students returned to in-person classes. Troubled by how disengaged many of them had become, she signed up for a workshop developed by RQI in partnership with National Geographic on how to help students ask their own Geo-Inquiry questions.
“It made me realize that I was the only one in the classroom asking questions. I never gave my students the opportunity to ask questions, especially in the language they’re learning. No one ever taught me to ask questions! I thought wow, this is really powerful.”
Fast forward to winter, 2025, and Chelsea has not only taken both of the Right Question Institute’s classes through Harvard, but with the full support of her school administration she has built a thriving professional learning community (PLC) focused on the QFT, for teachers from a wide range of subjects (English, world languages, math, history, and science).
Uncharted territory
The idea for a PLC came to her at the end of her second RQI course, Questions at the Core: Extending the Question Formulation Technique to Sustain an Inquiry-Based Culture in Schools. Participants are encouraged to come up with a plan for both strengthening and sustaining their own inquiry-based practice and also sharing it with others. Chelsea decided to go to her school principal with a proposal for a new PLC.
The school had never had a PLC instigated by a faculty member, so it was uncharted territory for both the administration and Chelsea. Together with the curriculum and instruction department, Chelsea worked to lay the groundwork, planning how to introduce the QFT to faculty and make sure that everyone had ample time to learn, reflect, and implement the practice within a supportive community.
Seven teachers joined the first series in September of 2023. Three were world language faculty who had heard about the QFT from Chelsea over the years and were already hooked. The other four were English and math teachers, known in the faculty community for their willingness to jump in and try new things. All of them remain centrally involved in the PLC.
“We don’t want to stop. We want to add more.”
The group met seven times, wrapping up two rounds of implementation in their classrooms by February. At that point they’d gone through all the steps Chelsea had planned. “What now?” she asked her colleagues.
The unanimous response was, “We don’t want to stop. We want to add more.” So the group immediately started another round, opening the PLC to more faculty. Several history teachers and another world language teacher joined — a natural fit as the two departments collaborate frequently.
The PLC was now composed of faculty who were completely new to the QFT and others who’d had several months to learn and experiment. Chelsea wanted the newbies to feel welcomed as beginners — and at the same time, she knew it was important that the more experienced teachers continue to see value in participating. How to make sure the group would continue to mesh and strengthen?
She came up with a plan to spend part of each session briefly introducing a new way to use the QFT. She chose applications they hadn’t touched on previously, such as how to use it in assessment or as exit tickets. The new participants could bookmark these ideas for the future, and the more seasoned teachers could begin to incorporate them right away. This strategy helped the group form into a safe space where all the teachers, no matter their level of experience, could ask for help and get feedback. Many of them began opening their classroom doors so newer participants could observe the QFT in practice.
Strengthening and growing a community of practice
As the 2023-2024 school year was wrapping up, the teachers expressed to Chelsea that they not only wanted to continue the PLC the following year, they wanted additional professional development time to kick off a full year of implementing the QFT together. They approached the curriculum and instruction team with a request: Give us three full professional development days in late summer so we can learn and practice before students arrive.
The PLC started the 2024 school year with 10 members, including new faculty from two departments (math and science) that hadn’t participated in the past. The three days of professional development gave the group a powerful jumpstart, with opportunities to learn together, brainstorm ways to implement the QFT in their classrooms, reflect, and strengthen their community of practice. Faculty began to take turns facilitating the monthly sessions.
“I can be creative through asking questions”
A focus for the PLC this year has been creating a pre- and post-assessment tool to evaluate the impact of the QFT on students’ learning. Members worked together to come up with a survey based on a Likert scale, using the QFT to help them refine the questions.
Several teachers used the tool to survey their students at the end of the first quarter and again at the end of quarter two, finding positive growth in response to statements such as, “I feel more confident asking questions,” “Asking my own questions has helped me understand course content better,” and, “I have remained curious about course content.”
Student responses to a reflection prompt included comments such as “I feel more curious,” “I know more Spanish than I thought I did,” “I can be creative through asking questions,” and “I’ve learned that before coming to conclusions, it always helps to ask questions first.”
Students now expect to ask questions
At times, teachers have wondered if students will get bored doing the QFT in so many of their classes. But as it becomes more embedded in curricula across disciplines at the school, what they’re seeing is the opposite: Students now expect to be able to ask their own questions, whatever they’re learning. One key, Chelsea says, is making the QFocuses strong and following through on student questions so that they see it as an authentic inquiry practice, not an instructional gimmick.
As Chelsea reflects on her own classes — where the QFT has been fully integrated for several years now — she says the impact on her students is palpable. The practice “brought them back” to more engaged learning. She sees improvement in their language learning as well as their higher order thinking skills, with increased ability to draw connections among the different topics they study.
Chelsea reports she now feels more confident as a teacher in releasing control over to the students. “There’s a mutual understanding that we’re all learning. If a student poses a question and I don’t know the answer, I can say, ‘I don’t know, let’s go look it up.’ I find myself asking more questions, too.”
The PLC has led to more sharing between departments and improved communication between middle and upper school faculty, aiding the transition for students into the upper school. The teachers say they particularly enjoy the feeling of camaraderie that has developed as they discover that they all have similar challenges — and can find solutions together.