I was in a second-grade classroom recently, and I posed what felt like a lovely ambiguous task:

“The answer is 12. What do you think the question was?”

Without missing a beat, many of the students said, “6 + 6.”

Now, I have a lot of feelings about that response. Why 6 + 6? Why not 10 + 2? Or 11 + 1? Or 4 groups of 3? So many of my thoughts center around fairness. They center around how often kids are taught (implicitly or explicitly) that a “balanced” or “even” equation feels the most right. The neatest. The most acceptable.

But what really stuck with me wasn’t the answer. It was how quickly and confidently it came. And it made me think about how often, as teachers, we reward that kind of quick certainty. Not just in students, but in ourselves.

And here’s what I keep coming back to:

Curiosity doesn’t grow from a teacher projecting certainty.
It grows from wondering with students.
From modeling curiosity instead of correctness.

We say we want curious classrooms. But curiosity doesn’t flourish when the teacher always seems to have the answer already lined up. It doesn’t thrive in a space where student ideas are immediately measured against a fixed standard of “right” or “wrong.” It can’t grow if we’re so busy moving forward that we forget to pause and explore sideways.

Curiosity grows when we ask a student why they chose 6 + 6. When we invite others to offer their questions. When we pause the momentum of the lesson just long enough to say, “Huh. I wonder…?”

That kind of wondering isn’t fluff. It’s not slowing down. It’s not giving up control.
It’s teaching.

And it’s what we’re building inside Friends of Flynn Education. We’re working on a space where teachers get to be learners again. Where we practice pausing, noticing, asking better follow-ups, and listening harder. We’re not just trying to make math more engaging. We’re trying to build communities where curiosity isn’t a strategy, it’s the culture.

We are so glad you’re here with us in this collaborative! Let’s keep learning together.