Into the Great Wide Open

I talked to one of my students about this multiple times. He’s a straight A, all star athlete that doesn’t actually care a whole lot about what he’s doing as long as he’s winning at it. I told all of my students that they need to find what they love. I would start each class with a question on the board for them to answer. Sometimes I would use sample questions from Odyssey of the Mind spontaneous problems. Questions like: 1. What would be a bumper stick for a space shuttle? 2. Summer time is like __________. 3. Describe the contents of a box of happiness. 4. The answer is 36 inches. What is the question? My students would look at those questions and many times kids would ask me for clarification. They wanted to know how many answers did they have to give. I had students incapable of answering a question with no real wrong answer. I believe that schooling has the possibility of sucking the passion out of students and beating down those who are different.