Response to Blooming Questions Exercise

1. The "tuning" of another group's questions at first seemed difficult because I was concerned about the possibility of compromising the integrity of the group's original intention. These people felt a need to express something intensely personal relating to the reading using the words they chose, therefore I felt that changing their words could somehow alter their original purpose and did not want that to happen. However, once we began discussing the group's original questions we clearly identified what we believed the original purpose of question was as well as what we thought the author's of the original question intended to express. Once we arrived at this understanding I felt more comfortable revising the work of the original group and believe we actually enhanced the group's original vision using the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

2. Receiving the other group's tuning of our question was quite easy because we as a group were happy to receive constructive criticism and feedback to our original vision. We as educators are used to interpreting the suggestions of colleagues, administrators, and other members of our school communities in order to enhance our professional development. However, I could understand that this could be a harrowing task for groups of people who don't like to receive constructive criticism. Recent studies through the Art of Living Foundation have shown that people are more likely to remember negative feedback rather than complimentary comments. An example is if we were to meet in any given professional situation and I gave you five compliments about your teaching methods and pointed out one area of concern, you would immediately lock onto the negative feedback and disregard the five complimentary comments altogether.

3. I think it would have been more difficult to tune our own questions as a group rather than tuning another group's question because we tend to personalize things and are more resistant to changing our own ideas than others. Tuning another group's question allows us to step outside our own perspective and try to understand that of someone else. Once we established this type of learning environment, the group was able to build upon the original vision by adding what we found most important and relevant.

4. This exercise reinforces my belief that we as educational leaders must also accept that lower level or basic skills should be cultivated as well. I find that administrators are focusing specifically upon teachers implementing the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy into each lesson, while sacrificing or not appreciating the value of developing the basic foundation of the learning experience which is pivotal for a successful exchange of knowledge between the content and our students. Today's students have difficulty with the most basic grammar skills such as spelling and conjugating verbs, yet can create a well-documented thesis statement and provide factual support for it in each body paragraph of an essay. Yet if we were to remove the spelling and grammar tools from Microsoft Word, our students would be reduced to an elementary school level with the most basic skills. This is something that needs to be reevaluated among educational leaders especially since we must understand that not all students learn the same way and our monolithic standardized system of education is failing.

5. The implications of this excercise for school administrators is it provides a wonderful example of a successful technique that should be used in professional development workshops because it engages colleagues in the critical thinking process associated with the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, namely Evaluating and Creating. If we are asking professionals to enhance there teaching methods and participate in meaningful professional development, we as educational leaders must infuze a reflective component that engages colleagues to refine and critique our system of learning for the benefit of today's students. All too often teachers find professional development workshops cumbersome and do not implement the suggestions of the presenter, mostly because they are the victims of the same monolithic standardized practice of teaching that students in there classes must suffer through. However, when we engage teachers in a meaninful reflective and demonstrative process where they observe clear correlations between the workshop materials presented and exactly how they can be used in the classroom, it becomes most meaningful to individuals as well as whole groups of educators.