The Power of Questions

Questions in our minds are like plants waiting to unfold. Think of fiddleheads, the early stage of a fern, shaped like question marks. Fiddleheads have all this coiled up energy that wants to reach upward and expand into an amazing full-grown fern. In order to learn, you need and deserve to have your questions answered. Building a foundation of knowledge in a discipline is based around making connections between a lot of information, and questions help you activate your thinking and process the relationships between those pieces of information. To gain skill in an area, you get involved in the questions that those who are active in that study.

Questions that you ask open up your mind. I notice that when students ask questions about what they are reading about, they often write about those questions and thoughts relating to those questions later. Oftentimes, it is the process of asking the question that opens up and engages the mind. It's the creative brainstorming phase of exploring that is so much fun.