Would you stop asking so many questions!

In middle school math, my teacher always asked me at the end of class if I had any more questions. I left the course at the end of the year feeling like math wasn't my thing. Years later, as I was packing up some stuff from my parent's house, I found a certificate for a provincial math competition that I had not only competed in but placed in the top 5 in the province! I was stunned I only remember being told I asked too many questions. As someone who has been told they ask too many questions, I was excited to read the first three chapters of Warren Berger's (2014) book A More Beautiful Question as well as complete a quickfire questioning session about problems of practice.

I connected with so much of this book. Berger (2014, p. 2) uses a description of what questioning does: "It enables us to organize our thinking around what we don't know." Upon first reading, I thought it seemed obvious but also something that did not seem to occur much. With further thought, I realized that while it should seem obvious, how can you solve a problem if you don't know everything about the problem, we are often required to make quick decisions about the problems thus are not given the time to question it through. Am I doing this with my own problems of practice in my class? How much time am I actually spending on making decisions about actions I am going to take?

Given what I know about myself it would seem that I would find the Questions Quick-fire, where we were asked to ask question about problems of practice for 5 minutes, would be easy. Think again! At first I didn't know which of my many questions I should start with. I wrote one down and then tried to think about that problem of practice and connect my questions. There was no flow. So I tried again and the second time I just went with writing as many questions rather than focusing on if they were connected. This time it was easier. I was less focused on thinking of more questions about one topic and just questions about my practice in general. I actually ran over my 5 minutes and then circled back to add in arrows to connect questions.

Figure 1: Questions from my quick-fire session before connections. Image by Elicia Bullock, created on Figma.

Figure 2: Questions from my quick-fire session after connections. Image by Elicia Bullock, created on Figma.

All this questioning led me to thinking more about my practice. I used to have a parked question lot for students questions that were not directly linked to the days concept, at the end of a unit we would come back and see what we could answer based on our learning. Many of these questions were what if or scenario questions that did not have easy answers. Because it always pulled us "off topic" I found it challenging and restricted the questions to not include "What if scenarios". Berger now has me thinking... Is there a better way to use these questions? How might this engage students in more inquiry? I am teaching the reproductive system to Grade 6 students currently and always have a question box out so I am thinking it might be a good opportunity to practice some of my questioning skills and help develop them in my students. So in the end I actually have so many more questions. How can I help change the culture in my class to that of one open to questions?

This read was powerful and I finished up with more question and connections than there are room for in this post. But, I also learned a little bit more about myself as well. It reassured me that I am ok to question why things are done the way they are and if I know all the factors of a problem (something similar to measure twice cut once). My favourite quote was actually from David Cooperrider who said "we all live in the world our questions create", a powerful reminder that good vibes are ok but good questions are better (Berger, 2016, p.18)!

Want to find out if you are a beautiful questioner according to Berger? Find out more on his website here

References

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. Bloomsbury.

Bullock, E. (2025). Question Quickfire [png]. Figma. https://www.figma.com/board/4uIcq8ZqLeXZ6TEtOMQ55W/Untitled?node-id=0-1&p=f&t=3LY2m8OFYC2BrfaN-0