Navigating from passively compliant to actively curious
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The first mindshift that supports the Objector Compass point is navigating from passively compliant to actively curious. You are actively curious when you desire to understand and see the world through questions such as why, what if…, and what might be? Objectors who are actively curious lead and learn by asking questions of the system and the people within the system. They challenge the status quo and the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mindset. Being actively curious means withholding judgment and instead fostering an intentional willingness to think again based on new information.
Examples: Identifying the need for
Varied styles of assessment outside of the grading paradigm
Cross-curricular and site-based learning
Asking learners what they want to learn and do and how they want to do it
Engaging in deep conversation around learning goals, paths, and opportunities
Non-Examples:
Just tell me what to do.
How do you want me to do that?
Another school did it this way. Let’s just do that.
I can’t ask questions. It will affect my evaluation.
Questions I might ask myself:
How do I define curiosity? What does it look like, sound like, or feel like to be actively curious?
In which parts of my life do I feel most actively curious? Why might that be?
When was a time I chose to be actively curious? What were the conditions that led me to embrace curiosity?
In my current space, what constraints or roadblocks keep me from being more curious? What might keep others from being more curious? What might keep me from empowering others to be more curious?
Shifting from being passively compliant to actively curious asks us to challenge the current system and the paradigm it exists in so we can wonder about schools that are designed to be more human. The active curiosity that is developed through this mindshift helps us to unlock a different way of thinking and responding to the status quo and to one another. This is also the mindshift that encourages us to dream big and begin to envision a different kind of schooling and school system.
