Perhaps I'm Curiously Hopeless...or Hopelessly Curious

I came across this quote earlier this week and had to stop and think....

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

I've always been curious. This means I'm always asking questions. And, one rabbit trail leads to another and another. It also means that I'm frequently sharing tid-bits of information with friends and asking more and more questions to learn things from as many perspectives as possible. And then wondering even more.... it's a vicious cycle :-)

One of my passions as a teacher was to determine ways to make my students more curious. Curiosity leads to questioning, to action, to a quest for knowledge. During my first year of teaching, I read a book called Developing More Curious Minds. (I highly recommend it!) Great book--lots of neat ideas. While curiosity isn't one of those traits that you can learn about in a book, this book does have many great ideas about how we can infuse curiosity into our classrooms and curriculum. We don't need to dump information into students' heads... we need to make them wonder, to spark questions in their minds, to ignite their own passions.

I'm still stumped with regards to curiosity. I think I agree that there's no cure for it, for to cure curiosity is to kill inquiry and passion. But I'm not so sure that there's a way to make someone curious either. I was always convinced that teachers had the power to do so.... but not all kids are inspired to curiosity. However, those who come to us curious or who develop a deep sense of curiousness while with us are empowered to greatness!