My intentions

My goal with this blog is to track my efforts to bring QFT (Question Formation Technique) into my teaching at BHS (Brookline High School, in Brookline, MA).  I'm hoping that blogging about this will help me figure out how to do this and perhaps keep me from ditching the project when the going gets tough.

I teach two classes: three sections of a class for seniors called Public Speaking and Public Writing; and one section of a course for 9th grade students of color that is part of the African American Scholars Program (even though at least 50% of the students at this point are Latino--long story).  These four classes, about 100 students in total, are a relatively diverse group, academically, though there are far more middle to strong students than there are truly weak students, and certainly very few would fall into the "struggling student" category (though I've not yet met this year's classes; I'm basing my assumptions on the students I've had for the last several years).

The students at BHS are far less passive than students I've seen at other schools, though they can be a bit complacent.  In general, they are eager to please and eager to get their voices heard (many of them, any way), but they're not great at coming up with good questions--that is, with questions that they're willing to invest their own time and energy in.  The seniors end the year with a senior project that requires them to pursue their own question about a local issue or problem, and they struggle to come up with this--not all of them, but many of them.  Over the years, I often have felt that I end up giving them the questions to pursue--once they tell me their own interests--and I'd like to not do this any more.

With the Scholars, I'm concerned about the fact that they are often relatively silent in their classes--not in the Scholars' class that I co-teach but in their other classes (English, Math, History, etc.).  Part of this (I suspect) is due to the fact that when they are in these classes, many of which are honors classes, there are few minority students in the classes with them.  But I also wonder if part of the problem is that they (like many students) are not all that good at coming up with questions on their own.  So, with this group, I'm interested in discovering how they do with this method in my classroom but also whether they then bring what they've learned with them to their other classrooms as well.  (I'll need to check in with their other teachers to track this, but that won't be hard to do.)

I completed the QFT course about a week ago, and I'm making my way through the book, "Make Just One Change," the guidebook of sorts for this method.  Once school starts--as further motivation to stick with QFT!--I'll share this blog with the QFT website and the Facebook group that was set up after this summer's workshop.  That way, I can get some feedback and support as I get into this project.

For now--from now until school starts in September--I'll try to blog semi-regularly about the reading I'm doing in "Make Just One Change" and about my thoughts as I prepare to introduce this method this year.

We'll see how it goes.