Chapter 5: Teaching to the Individual, Working with the Group

Teachers often dismiss questions that they don’t think are relevant or don’t require answering. But the truth is, all students’ questions, so long as they are appropriate, deserve to be answered. If teachers’ don’t answer students’ questions and dismiss them as unimportant, it can make the students’ feel like they themselves are unimportant.
I feel this is something teachers really need to pay attention to. No question should be left unanswered, no matter how simple or trivial it seems to be. It often takes a lot for a student to muster up the courage to ask a question about something they don’t understand, because they don’t want their classmates thinking they are stupid. If a teacher dismisses a question, it reinforces the student’s thoughts that they are not important. Teachers are supposed to create a safe and supportive learning environment, and that means responding to their students, because a question that seems trivial might be the one thing a student needs answered to really grasp a subject.