Unanswered Questions Fuel the Love of Learning

Unanswered Questions Fuel the Love of Learning My creation I still strive to know as many answers as I can, however, I believe it is acceptable for teachers to be stumped sometimes, and more importantly, I think its permissable to allow students to know you’re stumped. That’s hard for some students, some parents, and even educators themselves to deal with given that teachers should be the one with the answers. We all want highly qualified educators in our classrooms, but we also want educators who have a love of learning. Many of my students, as young as they are, comment from time to time concerning the breadth of my knowledge regarding American History and my ability to tie in what they are studying in Language Arts to their Social Studies. Students say, “Gee, elementaryhistoryteacher, how do you know all this stuff? How do you remember all of those dates? ” Of course, my little dears have no inkling as to the amount of planning and research that go into a unit. They are clueless concerning the fact that I review a unit for several weeks before teaching it, and I constantly add and take away components of a unit depending on the needs of my learners.
One thing my little dears do have knowledge of is their teacher absolutely loves what she teaches. They understand that I have a rabid love of learning for any type of history and that I love a good question to research. We would quickly loose our love of learning if we knew all the facts or had all the answers. The hunt for answers is my biggest attraction for what I do, and I want to translate that for my students. I want them to know how to search for answers themselves and string together facts to arrive at an answer. Yesterday I came across a little factoid that caused me to travel down Internet sidestreets attempting to discover the answer to a question that involved a gold ring, strands of hair, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the presidential inauguration of 1905. Intrigued? I was. To see what I found out you will need to click on over to my newest post at the American Presidents Blog. You will need to scroll down past the mosaic of Roosevelt and Lincoln to read the second half of my post.