The podcast Choose to Be Curious recently featured a conversation with Patty Gómez, an educator in South Florida who is chair of the world languages department at her school.
The conversation, with host of Choose to Be Curious, Lynn Borton, centered on how Gómez has used the Question Formulation Technique with both students and faculty in her department — and how it has helped her bring a spirit of curiosity and discovery to professional development at her school.
“We can definitely be sure that we are going to set curiosity in motion; it’s going to happen,” she said about using the QFT. She called it “one of the most powerful tools I have used both in the classroom, but [it’s also a] definite amplifier and multiplier when it comes to spaces of professional work.”
Educators are accustomed to facilitating learning experiences for students, and it can be refreshing when they are the ones given space to ask questions and learn, she said.
She said: “In our process of growing, our curiosity tends to be dampened a little bit. We tend to comply more, and we try to get comfort from certainty. So, when we actually discover, or rediscover, this spark that uncertainty brings, that is not a negative spark, but it’s like wide-eyed joy. It rejuvenates your thinking. It shifts the way you see the world and it shifts the way you see yourself.”
Listen:
Here’s the episode, and you can also listen at the Choose to Be Curious website.