The Fast and the Curious

What is curiosity? How have you experienced curiosity in your life? Did you find an answer? How?

-Monday's journal prompt

I can tell that they are done writing because they start talking. Fifth period, the chaotic fifty minutes directly after lunch, is classic for this kind of behavior. I've written the two sentences to keep Ms. D happy, and now I'll talk for another four minutes while she scowls at me from that little stool at the front of the room. All of my classes do this, and honestly it's part of my job to be aware of their pace. If they've finished writing, sometimes it is because they're being lazy, and sometimes it's because I haven't given them much room to respond. In this case, I suspect the latter.

"OK. Clearly we're done writing. Now, I want to talk about this one." Not every journal entry merits a conversation, but this one is the introduction to the Ninth Grade Research Project, which will haunt their waking hours in the next month, so I feel it's necessary to pause for a moment on the deep importance of curiosity in the research process.

"So... what IS curiosity?" I ask, writing the word on the overhead.

I hear the answers, popping like battle gunshots, around the room. It's wondering. Being nosy. You know, when you want to find out. Everyone is talking at once--what madness. I wait for them to realize I'm writing down none of their many-voiced gibberish.

"Thanks for raising your hand," I point and call a student's name. " What is it?"

"It's... you know, when you want to know more about something, and so you look for the answer."

"Excellent! Now, do we have more to add?" I point to another student.

"It's just trying to learn something. Trying to understand."

"Good," I nod. They're really getting somewhere, this brilliant class. "Now, what you need to understand is that curiosity drives learning. It makes you want to know. Remember when I told you the end of Othello?"

They groan as one; they remember. It was only a few weeks ago, actually, that we put down Othello after reading Act I and they all bemoaned the difficulty of the text, complaining at me for choosing it and at Shakespeare for "not writing like, you know, real."

"What happens in this book, anyway?" someone whined.

"I'm not telling you the ending."

The masses rebelled, wailing and moaning again about the book and declaring that it would be better if they knew now. They claimed it would make them care. I thought they might be right.

"Do you really want to know?" I asked.

Resounding cries in the affirmative.

"Even though it will spoil it?" I pressed.

Even if that was the case, they insisted.

"OK. Othello kills Desdemona."

Perhaps it was the shock of having a teacher actually give them something they wanted, but I have never heard the classroom so quiet. They stared back at me for a full ten seconds without responding. Then the questions had poured down on me. Why? How? What made him do it? Wait, this Othello? Kill his wife? They just got married! They're on their honeymoon in Cyprus! Impossible!

To their dismay, I wouldn't tell them anything else, nor did I give away any more plot details as we read the play. They were the only class of my five sections that knew the ending almost from the outset.

"Yeah," they answer now. "You told us the end. SO mean. Why'd you do that?"

"You asked me to," I shrug. "But really, as soon as you knew what happened, you were full of questions. Way more questions than any of the other classes. Didn't you want to know how they would get to the end? You didn't even believe me."

One boy, in the front row, is nodding. Others have a knowing look, and for a moment I am almost bursting with pride in them, these urban ninth graders, most of whom have stepped so far out onto the limb of imagination and language to conquer a terribly difficult work of Shakespeare. They understand this play, and even now they understand what I'm getting at.

"When we knew the end," the nodding boy said. "We wanted to know how to get there."

"Good. Perfect. You wanted to know. It's that wanting to know that is going to make you learn on this project. Hold onto that."

"Hey," someone asks. "Did you, like, mean to make us curious when you told us the end? Are you like a genius, or something?"

How tempting to pretend I'm omniscient! (They've already called me Superman today, because I saw a kid in the back row unfold his cell phone underneath his desk). I would love to claim that I knew the effect, beforehand, of their probable reaction to hearing the end of the play we were reading. Instead, I shake my head.

"You didn't? Then why did you tell us?"

"Because you were irritating me," I laugh. "Making you curious was an accident."

"Ha. It worked, though," the front-row supporter mused, looking oddly old and wise for a fifteen-year-old.

I smile. How often, these days, are my greatest successes mere accidents! Curious young teacher, I step around on the edges of my profession, waiting for the ice to crack and remind me of my limits, or for--miraculous serendipity--the footing to hold. In these providential, accidental moments, we chase learning with our desire to know, running in curiosity through far-away worlds unknown.