It’s like Vuja De for the Very First Time

Most people are familiar with All-Star Yankee’s catcher and accidental philosopher,  Yogi Berra’s, statement, “it’s like deja vu all over again”.  However, not as many are familiar with comedian George Carlin’s reference to “vuja de” in which someone sees something familiar in a completely different light.  I didn’t grow up listening to Carlin’s routines centered around vuja de, but came across this idea of vuja de while reading Warren Berger’s  “A More Beautiful Question”.

In this book, Berger mentions the value of asking questions and how the best questioners are not necessarily the experts, but rather those more unfamiliar with the topic.  However, most of us often don’t want to ask questions for one of two reasons:  We either don’t want to look foolish or we don’t want to come across as disrespectful.  I have often said, “It’s easy for me to ‘play dumb’, because I am a natural at it” when referring to having certain conversations, so not asking questions because I might look foolish isn’t my problem.  At the same time, I do find myself not asking questions because I don’t want to “offend” or come across as being disrespectful when having a conversation.  I am finding I need to get over that feeling of being disrespectful for asking too simple of a question because as Berger mentions, “Part of the value in asking naive questions, is that it forces people to explain things simply, which can help bring clarity to an otherwise complex issue” (Berger, 2014, p.80).  He also references Shunryu Suzuki’s quote from “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” which basically points out that the beginners mind allows for many possibilities, but an expert’s mind is often limiting.  Sometimes our understanding can get in the way of our curiosity.

I find that happening to me currently as we are revisiting our grading practices K-5 and in particular how those practices are being reported.  We are finding that the report card often seems to dictate the pedagogy instead of the other way around.  As a results, we are following practices that are not necessarily best practices because they meet the needs of reporting or quantifying student learning.  Somewhere in here is a vuja de moment where asking the right question with a beginner’s mind will help to flush out the next steps.  The key is for us to sit down, pause, and give ourselves the opportunity for this to take place.  That is a step we often skip because we are in too much of a hurry to get to the solution to the problem.  I suppose, on the positive side, my limited experience with K-5 or in creating a report card might lead to asking the right “simple” questions that gets folks reflecting.  I just need to remind myself to get past the idea of potentially coming across as disrespecting teachers when I ask them elementary questions about their grading practices while at the same time together we need to create an atmosphere which protects and encourages naive questioning.  If we can do this, we just might see the obvious answers that were right in front of our nose the whole time and it will be just like veju de for the very first time.

References

Berger, Warren (2014). A More Beautiful Question.  New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.