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Are questions the answer? |
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By Stephen Martile » One
evening I was talking to a friend who was connected to a client that I
was tutoring in math. My friend had mentioned that Jake, my client,
didn’t like tutoring and that he had lost interest in math. I began to
think of different ways that I could motivate and empower him so that
he could take action and achieve his academic goals.
I became frustrated and I couldn’t come up with anything but my intuition was telling me that Jake and I needed to have a different type of conversation. So at the beginning of our next session, I decided to start by asking Jake some questions.
Firstly I said, “What are you passionate about and what do you want for your life?” I could tell from the way he squinted back at me that he was thrown a little off guard.
As Jake was processing the question, he kept looking back at me with this blank stare on his face as if saying, ‘What are you talking about weirdo?’ but my gut was telling me I was doing the right thing. I waited. I must have waited for what seemed like an eternity and finally, he said, “My band”.
I said, “Okay, what is one of the things you would like to achieve with your band?” to which his reply was, “to create a song that the band could play”. I said, “Great! What other things would you like to do?” This seemed to trigger his thought process, so we began to compile a list of goals:
Jake’s goals:
- write a song that my band can play
- improve my marks in math
- learn how to speak German because I have a friend who is German
- travel to Germany
- find myself a part-time job that I enjoy
After we spent some time on this, I looked at the list on the whiteboard and then looked back at Jake for a few moments. His face was beginning to crack into a smile. It was working, so I decided to take it further.
“What is the order of these goals from the most important to the least?” I asked him. So he started to number the goals from one to five and at the top of the list was ‘improve my marks in math’.
This made a lot of sense to me seeing that his exam was to follow in the next two weeks. Since we nailed down our primary focus, I erased all of the other goals.
I then asked him what it would take to improve his marks in math. From this question, he generated a second list:
Jake’s actions for improving his marks in math:
- take time to study
- ask the teacher questions
- ask anyone he can find, questions on things he doesn’t understand
- do all the assigned homework
When we finished the second list, I looked at Matthew and said, “Do you realize that you generated all of this? You didn’t have a teacher, your parents, your brother, your sister or anyone else tell you the answers. You already had all of the answers. You know what it is that you want and you know what it is you need to do; now you just have to go out and do it!” The smile on his face stretched from ear to ear. He got the message.
My message to you is really simple. If we all take the time to listen to each other, we will always come up with the answers that we need. Jake is the same as everyone else. He always had the resources within him to find the answers he was looking for. It was one of those moments that I felt really proud to be his tutor, mentor and now his coach.
I remember watching a clip from the movie Bowling for Columbine, where Michael Moore conducts an interview with Marilyn Manson. In the interview, Moore asks Manson what he would say to the boys in Columbine. Manson simply said, “I wouldn’t say anything, I would listen to them, which is one thing no one ever does.”
This eccentric rock star said he would have listened to those kids because that was something that nobody else was able to do. Simple, but magical, will you listen?
• Stephen Martile publishes a well-received blog at www.stephenmartile.blogspot.com.
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