Thinking about Critical Thinking

We had a school staff training regarding the critical thinking component of the evaluation rubric recently. Some of us found that this was a difficult skill to implement into our every day teaching. I wondered why. That evening, I wondered if it is because we are used to being the traditional teacher. Let me explain. Teachers are thought to be a human dictionary, encyclopedia, or computer. Basically, we should be "know-it-alls." How many times, (fellow educators), has a friend asked you a trivia question or how to spell a word, and when you didn't know...They replied..."I thought you were a teacher!" Yep. So maybe that stigma carries over into how we teach. We might feel the need to teach the kids all the information we know about a subject instead of allowing students to discover it for themselves. SO what if...we "channeled" Kay Toliver and used questioning to guide students towards the answers we want them to realize. WOW, huh! You can see the wheels turning of Kay's students when you watch her teach in this questioning way. I think this seems like a good starting place as a way to promote an environment of critical thinking in my class.