I'm a learnaholic: I'm vaguely dissatisfied if I'm not engaged in learning new things, and often need to reach for new learning that is beyond my current capabilities. And although I am still in the process of learning to articulate it, I'm what Nancy McClure in "Finding Ways to Help Students Answer Their Own Questions" calls "an expert learner." In the various exercises and approaches we try in this class, I'm striving to model a kind of "metacognition" -- learning ways to gain knowledge on your own. I found this article today, and if you want to understand something about my goals as teacher, and about how to develop your metacognition around inquiry, I recommend it. A brief excerpt:

Teachers who find ways to help their students answer their own questions are teachers who are helping their students become more metacognitive–or knowledgeable about and in control of their cognitive resources. Research on metacognition has focused on what students know about their thinking processes, what students do when trying to solve problems, and the development and use of compensatory strategies (1). The ability to reflect on one’s cognitive processes and to be aware of one’s activities while reading, listening, or solving problems has important implications for the student’s effectiveness as an active, planful learner. As an expert learner yourself, you automatically monitor your understanding and adjust by filtering irrelevant information and pursuing additional information as needed.