Be Careful of Loaded Questions

This morning, I was teaching a kindergarten reading group of four adorable students. We all sat on the rug in the corner of the classroom. As we previewed the book we were about to read, one of the students commented on the pictures.

“Mrs. McGowan, this lady looks like you when you were a young lady.”

In fact, the drawing bore some resemblance. She had brown hair and brown eyes, just like me.

The other students all shook their heads in agreement, indicating that I did in fact look like the lady in the book.

Playfully, I replied, “Are you saying that I am not a young lady?”

“No. You are now an old woman.”

This student’s honesty had me chuckling inside, but I couldn’t help but be slightly offended. I am old enough to be his grandmother, but the amount of money that I spend on hair color should take away the appearance of a few years. Right?

Determined to change his mind, I tried to persuade him that I was not an old woman. Thinking quickly, I said,

“Do you really think I am an old woman? How many old women do you know that can sit like this on a rug with you?

“Just one!”

The moral of the story is…

Always be careful of loaded questions!

Advertisement

4 thoughts on “Be Careful of Loaded Questions

  1. Haha we had that talk today! If only o wrote down half of my experiences with students lol. I have learned …maybe not so well….(since we taught prek together) that you ask the questions and think the answer is going to be ok….. and they throw a curveball lol. All I know is years ago….when I said to a fiesty preschooler…okay lets pay attention and look at me because I’m beautiful”…she said …”you would be if you had more jewelry on becauee it sparkles”…LOL! Out of the mouthes of babes and as teachers we have to go with it haha

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Julie, good blog. I did not realize you were again doing your blogs and perhaps deleted one or two. I remember teaching Sunday school (second grade) and letting my hair go white and one of my students saying “Mrs. Josephson, your hair is all white, you look so old….”. Honesty of children is hard to hear.

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s