In 2010, chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam was diagnosed with a large aneurysm at the base of his thoracic aorta. In his TED talk, Musallam talks about the confidence his surgeon displayed before his open-heart surgery. When Musallam asked where that confidence came from, the surgeon provided three answers:
- The surgeon’s curiosity drove him to ask hard questions about this specific procedure – what was going to work and what might now work.
- The surgeon embraced, and didn’t fear, the messy process of trial and error as he worked to perfect his practice, and
- Through intense reflection, the surgeon gathered information he needed to design and revise the procedure.
And because of these three steps, Musallam’s surgeon saved his life.
Not only was Musallam’s life saved, he totally changed his classroom practices – based on what the patient had learned from his doctor.
Musallam embraced that the first step in learning anything is curiosity. If the learner is not curious, it’s hard to get them interested in the learning and difficult to get them to commit to the hard work involved in the learning process.
The second step Musallam embraced as that learning is messy. It’s an ugly process.
And even though most curriculum guides promote the scientific method as the best problem solver around, trial and error is probably the way most of us are going to solve most of our problems in life. Musallam emphasizes that learners need to commit to trial and error as the third step to the learning process.
Then, in his TED talk, Musallam talks about his four-year-old daughter Riley. Musallam says,
“I could teach this kid anything because she is curious about everything. We all were at that age. But the challenge is really for Riley’s future teachers, the ones she has yet to meet. How will they grow this curiosity?”
Musallam concludes by stating,
“…I would argue that Riley is a metaphor for all kids, and I think dropping out of school comes in many different forms – to the senior who’s checked out before the year’s even begun or that empty desk in the back of an urban middle school’s classroom. But if we as educators leave behind this simple role as disseminators of content and embrace a new paradigm as cultivators of curiosity and inquiry, we just might bring a little bit more meaning to their school day, and spark their imagination.”
Curiosity, willingness to get messy, and reflection.
How many traditional classrooms within our current K-12 school system use these three ideas as the basis of their lesson plans.
I’m afraid the answer is “not enough.”
Til tomorrow. SVB
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