Registration Prep & Meaningful Inquiry

Introduction

This week in class we discussed two very important topics related to our college careers. Monday was a whole overview on registration, and Wednesday led us to talk about asking powerful questions.

Monday - Registration

On Monday, Mrs. Martin came in to talk to us about everything we needed to know about registering for classes. This is a whole new world for us. We've never had to register for our own classes before. Up until now, we had had schedules of classes just handed to us. I don't know about everyone else, but I would've been lost entirely without the help. She showed us pretty much everything we needed to know. We went over how to search for our classes and were shown how to check the prerequisites if needed. The more we talked about it, the more all of us were getting excited to register.

Wednesday - Powerful Questions

On Wednesday, we discussed the article "The Art of Powerful Question." It was all about what makes a question powerful and how they effect people. A question is powerful when it makes people think and contemplate things deeply. Powerful questions are ones that typically leave room for discussion. They often include more of a "why" or "how" rather than a simple "yes or no." A big part of making a question powerful also involves its scope, that is, the audience it's meant to reach. You don't want to make a question too broad. You likely won't get any helpful answers if you do. Another important aspect is the assumptions placed in the question. Assumptions within a question can lead to people getting defensive rather than taking the question in its entirety and thinking about it. Part of our class exercise for the day was discussing some recent event in our lives and constructing our own powerful question in relation. These were left to be anonymous and then we were split into pairs and given two of our classmates responses. We read and discussed the two responses we were given and talked about the powerfulness of the questions posed by our classmates. Most of the ones we heard were pretty good, but I think we all had a few unconscious assumptions behind our questions that we could work on.