"Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it." – Madeleine L'Engle

A common question coming into Inquiry 101 is "What is inquiry?" and this is a question that I hope you continue to ask all semester. I'm not going to give you the one, right, simple answer to that question, but instead give you many opportunities to explore your own answers and push you to ask ever more sophisticated questions that springboard from your original exploration of that question. Inquiry is not just about the answers that I bring to the course; it won't be a very good course unless everyone brings something to it, maybe a unique way of looking at something or a different question for us to think about.

In many ways, Inquiry 101 is a mini version of the university in general. A college education can be transformative if you take advantage of the potentials it offers. But change doesn't just happen; you need to make change happen for you. Before coming to college, many students have been expected to be "learners": those who follow directions and take in the knowledge given to them by teachers. Now, however, you are expected to become "thinkers": those who frame the questions, pursue knowledge, create new ideas and new meanings. This class will be a semester-long immersion into the process of becoming a college-level thinker and knowledge-creator. That type of transformation isn't always easy and won't completely happen in one semester of course, but here we will start growing the seeds.

Our blogs will record our process of inquiry as it grows and changes in our individual and collective ways. The brain work required to focus our ideas into coherent blog posts will provide the constant practice needed to hone our skills of thinking, writing, reading, processing (The blogs are our mental push-ups, and by the end of 16 weeks, we will all have some new muscles to show off). I am hoping that the blogs will also be a place to be creative, take risks, start new ideas, weed through some ideas, get feedback, learn about failure, and learn about improvement. From a different angle, the blogs will also be a way to simply document this whole adventure.

Tonight, at just about midnight before the first day of class, I am excited about the possibilities that lie ahead for all of us. What does inquiry mean? So many things: autonomy, creativity, activity, discipline, agency, curiosity, leadership, involvement, community...and more.