Hailley Bradbury-January blogpost

Invasive curiosity is intruding upon, rather than respectfully exploring. To me, it is expressing curiosity without respecting the boundaries, or acknowledging the fundamental humanity of others. I think that we can hold space to best model positive curiosity, while still encouraging and supporting students to be vulnerable and take risks, by laying sturdy foundations of compassion, empathy, kindness, and respect in our classrooms. If we model empathy, active listening, and respect for our students, selves, and others, and if we work to make students feel safe in their own being, then they can come from a more expansive space with one another. Their lens can be far less fear-based and distrusting, and more open to exploration. I also think we can help support students to do this by gently guiding them to ask questions about their thoughts, what they might be based on, and providing ample opportunity for self reflection and even research! We can also hold this space by leading as educators, and not being afraid to enter this figurative unfamiliar territory, not being afraid to encounter awkward comments and conversations, or questions that we ourselves may not even necessarily have an answer to, I think that we can show students that we too are continually learning, growing, and expanding our understanding, but we can all do it with grace for one another.

Having reflected on our recent discussions, I am already working to integrate more responsibilities for responsible decision making in our classroom setting by asking for written student input on who they think they would work best with in their center groups, with a focus on being productive and being able to show quality work from their center time. I have been really delighted to see very thoughtful reflections take place about how they interact with different peers. I am also working to provide students with more chances for responsible decision making by allowing students to choose (at times) the order in which our activities will occur, and at times to pick which activity we will allocate more time for. Ex., if we opt to continue one activity (like a mini craft-and-create workshop), it may take time from their centers to complete some assignments, which means that they may then have to take it home to finish as homework. Even when they don’t all agree, I have already seen how much my students appreciate feeling like they have more of a say in the decision making process in our classroom. I hope to find even more ways to integrate the much needed skill of responsible decision-making as we proceed!