How inquiry-based learning builds future innovators

Traditional education often prioritizes grades and memorization, neglecting skills vital for real-world problem-solving. 

At a recent public lecture, Van Andel Institute for Education’s Director and Education Officer Terra Tarango explored the power of inquiry-based instruction in fostering curiosity, creativity and critical thinking — essential traits for the next generation of innovators. 

Rewatch the lecture below:

Video transcript

Maranda:
Hello, friends. Thank you for coming today. We’re so glad you’re here. I’m Maranda from WOOD TV8, and I love the Van Andel Institute and the good work being done here every single day. These are our Public Lecture Series and we do these to give you an opportunity to learn about the work happening and all of the different areas here at the Institute. Today’s an exciting topic. We are looking at the present and the future of education. And if you’re like me, you’re like, I have no idea what’s happening in classrooms, but I want to find out, because our kids often know way more than we do, especially when it comes to technology. So we’ve seen it the traditional linear education approach. You memorize, you quiz, you memorize, you do homework, you memorize and test. That approach prioritizes memorizing as a study form — neglecting skills often needed for real-world problem solving.

And when we think about the kinds of students we want, the kinds of employees we want, the kinds of leaders we want, they definitely need to have more than just the memorization piece. And I love how the Institute is jumping in on this. Our Van Andel Institute for Education, they’re here to help. The educators are hard at work, putting together creative ways to bring learning to life that engages kids with critical thinking, creativity and just going outside the box. We were talking about just a few minutes ago that every time I visit the Education Institute, I see those instructors excited about learning and they get me excited to learn new ways to think. Before introducing today’s speaker, I want to give a special thanks to our presenting sponsor for this lecture, the Lake Michigan Credit Union. LMCU is a longtime partner of VAI and the organization has a storied history of supporting education in and around our community. Let’s give them a big round of applause. Thank you so much.

Today we are joined by Terra Tarango, Director and Education Officer at VAI for Education. She’s an accomplished advocate in education industry with more than 20 years of experience in educational publishing and services. She developed award-winning print and digital curriculum and is an expert in instructional climate and culture. Terra has devoted her career to increasing curiosity, creativity and critical thinking in the classroom. She also is an ArtPrize artist entry. Isn’t that exciting? At the conclusion of our program, we’ll have some time for a Q&A. If you’re in the audience, we will, you can raise your hand, we’ll have microphones brought to you. If you are online, we would love for you to use that chat function to go ahead and ask your questions as well. Please join me in welcoming Terra.

Terra Tarango:
Thanks, Maranda. Thank you guys for coming. Welcome. I’m always delighted to talk education with folks. Anyone who’s interested in hearing not only what’s going on in education, what are schools looking like these days, but also, what’s the Van Andel Institute doing about it? How can we be part of the solution, part of advancing innovation? So today we’re gonna be talking about Down The Rabbit Hole: Curiosity As the Path to Innovation. But before I take you down the rabbit hole, we’re gonna start with just, sort of, the landscape of education.

Any ideas? Alright, there we go. Let’s go back. Anyway. Okay, there we go. Tech glitches out of the way. So the educational landscape, we’ll start with that. I did wanna let you know if you haven’t already, if you can join the wifi, you may wanna do that. Because if you want to really get a firsthand look at how is AI really instructing and, and forming classrooms and how students are interacting with that, I give you a chance to do that later. So, do you guys, this is a small group. So dis you get the the code for wifi? Let me know if you need it. We can put it back. Back. Okay. Should we put that back really quick? It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work on my phone. You wanna choose VAIGuest, the password, [password]. I Do think that is case sensitive. We give you a chance to do that. And Those Of You Online, Welcome To You As Well. Hopefully You Are already online. You have wifi but you’ll, alright, we’ll go ahead and look back to that. Thank You So Much.

All right, so I’d like to just start. Some people just sort of wonder what is the state of education. You may have heard things out there. It’s dire, it’s panic, we’re doing terrible, spend more money than anybody else. So I kind of wanna just level set some of the facts here. So one of the main things we look at in terms of our relationship with other countries and how we are doing, is this education system failing, is something called PISA. This is the Program for International Student Assessment.

And it is a test that is given to, you know, students every three years across over 80 countries. So it’s a pretty good indicator of how things are doing. If I can learn to use the clicker we’ll be golden. So this is where we, where we stand. So this is looking at 20 to 2024, I think the latest, or maybe it’s 2022 the latest, um, scores. But, so we are sixth in reading. That’s pretty darn good. Out 80 countries is not bad at all. 10 in science, pretty solid above the average in science. Math has been trailing. That is a little bit of a, of a concern. So we’re about middle of the pack I’d say and, and, in math. So not consistently a top performer, like something like Singapore or Finland you might hear about, but certainly not a failed system where we’re just not even competing with the rest of the country.

So I think that’s important to level set. Then you can look at something called NAPE. This is what we call The Nation’s Report Card. This is a US test that is given to fourth and eighth graders. And this is really interesting to look at. This is where you can see the impact of COVID. So you can see in 2019 our sort of orange, maize for Michigan fans out there far. So you can see that 2019 and it goes to blue for 2022. So that’s the COVID gap across math and reading. Fourth grade and eighth grade you see that huge graph. The most concerning part of this is they really, it’s not necessarily even proportionate the way this gap has has come to be. Those who were struggling already are the ones who tended to actually fall even further behind, right? Which makes sense. Those families that are low income didn’t really have the means to keep that education going in the midst of the pandemic. So you can see that some little bit of rebounds and fourth grade math in 2024. Math stayed pretty stagnant to where it was after the pandemic in eighth grade and then continue to lose a little more grant in reading.

So let’s talk about spending. So, this will show you where we fall. So, we certainly spend a little more than the average, about 38% more than the average countries spend, um per pupil but, not the top spender. We’re about, what is it, the sixth? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So that kind of gives you a sense. The other thing that’s important to note about this is it’s also not very equal. This is an average across the United States. So if you are wanting to, you’re curious, which is the theme of today, the state that spends the least on education is Idaho around $9,500. The state, or territory I guess, that spends the most is Washington D.C. at almost $30,000. So you can see there’s a pretty big gap in there, but here’s where the average falls out. About $15,800 per student.

Alright, so is the US education system failing? Another way to look at it. I’d say it’s actually not test scores that are my biggest concern. It’s a people concern. Teacher turnover is a real, real problem here in the United States and not just turnover, we’re looking at about 14 to 16% annually leaving this profession. And that’s been dramatically increased with COVID. The job is really, really tough, if not impossible. You’re also seeing a really dearth of people coming into the profession. There’s not many people going in college saying “Yes, I wanna be a teacher”. So we do have a real teacher shortage issue on our hands as well as this turnover issue, which is really difficult for schools to get traction with that kind of turnover. We also have professional development funding that is kind of at risk, and then taken away, and then reinstated, and then at risk, and then taken away.

This has been going on, not just the latest round of funding uncertainty, but over the last couple years this has been happening. So you have this kind of concerning situation where, just where teachers are feeling the most vulnerable, the most unsupported, you also are taking the rug out under them with not giving you the resources, the professional development, to help them feel like they are, you know, ready and inspired to stay in the classes and thrive. And that’s really where Van Andel steps in. We wanna make sure, no matter what’s happening in terms of federal or state education policies, we’re there to provide teachers with the resources and the inspiration they need to thrive in the classrooms and hopefully stay. So is it failing? I say no, it’s not a failing system but it’s not future-ready either. So this is what I want your takeaway to be from this.

So anytime you see the little mushroom here, that’s a key takeaway. So if you want, when you should pay attention, pay attention when you see the mushroom. So I would say, what I want you to take with that, I don’t even remember that we are sixth and spending or that we are sixth in reading or tenth in science, any of that. I want you to reimagine what counts as success. That’s what I really want us to do. So what should count as success? Well, we asked our own scientists here at VAI and scientists and engineers across the multiple multitude of different disciplines, and we asked them to rank what skills and characteristics here are most valuable to you? And this is how that came out. I’ll make it a little easier by highlighting the top five and the bottom five. So this is what came out. Maybe not too, too surprising, but what do you think happens if I ask teachers what do schools value most?

Here’s how that went. And watch, almost everything that was green sunk to the bottom and everything that was red, you know, raised to the top. Teachers, whether this is true or not, you can argue with administration, but teachers feel like schools value test scores, good grades, memorization and content knowledge. And those are the very things that our scientists and engineers are saying are not as valuable to them. Risk taking is a little bit of an outlier there because I think the scientists interpret that as like someone coming in like destroying the expensive equipment in the lab. Whereas in the classroom we’re thinking about that as being willing to, to fail. We’ll talk a little bit about that. So maybe we need to clarify our question a little bit on that. But I think this is interesting. And as a result of this, we really kind of solidified our teaching around these seven success skills that come out of what our scientists and engineers told us is most important.

And by the way, it’s not just scientists and engineers, it, this is important for. Pretty much, you could argue these skills are good for whatever industry or pursuit that our students want to go after. But collaboration, communication, creative thinking, critical thinking, curiosity, perseverance and self-direction. These are what we really try to instill in every part of our classroom instructions. So now, as promised, I would like to invite you to Wonderland. So how do we do this? How do we make inquiry-based instruction a reality in the classroom? What is inquiry-based instruction? Well I can’t think of anybody best to guide us through this journey then our characters from Alice in Wonderland. So we’re gonna use them as guides as we take them through. This is just my personal, I have the stage. I love Alice in Wonderland. So here we are. So if you don’t, I apologize, we’re going along the journey down the rabbit hole.

So the first character I’d like to introduce to you is The White Rabbit. So The White Rabbit, of course, is always looking at his watch, always in a hurry, racing through the world, which is a pretty good metaphor for the world we live in today. Who doesn’t feel like the world is changing at a dizzying pace? Whether it’s technology, whether it’s cultural change, all the stuff’s just whizzing by us. Meanwhile, our education system is stuck back honestly in the 1700’s, is kind of where some of these systems started. But where this focus on compliance, or memorization, or test scores, which is really not preparing these students for the future that they’re about to inherit. So our messenger of urgency is here. I do think, as I said, it’s not time to panic. I don’t wanna, you know, feed into any of that. It’s not a failing system, but this world is moving by very fast and we do need to make some changes to make sure our students are ready for, our classrooms are future-ready.

So, if, the way you do that is with just small sparks of curiosity or a playful moment of inquiry and never doubt the power of some of those small bits of playfulness and inquiry and what they can yield. So to do that, I’m gonna tell you a surprise story. It’s a surprise story number one of four. So this surprise story is all about playfulness and inquiry. Okay? So never doubt these can be important. So there, let’s go back to World War II and think of the battle ships that are out here on Pacific or the Atlantic. And there’s some really expensive equipment on these ships, right? So we have a naval engineer who is tasked with making sure that these pieces of equipment are stabilized, that they’re not swooshing along with all the swells of the ocean and crash into the floor.

So he’s got a pretty important, serious task and he’s got lots of prototypes in his lap to try to make this work. And you know, as luck would have it one day, he’s a little bit of an oaf and he bumps into his lab bench and one of these sort of prototypes falls to the floor and it didn’t do exactly what he expected. He thought it would just sort of fall as a chunk of metal and just sit there and maybe break apart, but instead it moved kind of strangely and it kind of caught his attention. And a lot of people might have said, well you know, let me just move that along, clean it up, keep going, working on my serious project, but he was curious. He wondered why it did that. And then the next thing he did was he played with it.

He had that sense of inquiry and he had this playful spirit and he found it did some things that were sort of delightful and interesting. And so out of that came something that ended up being a product that sells millions and millions. Something that leads to lots of joy in our life, which is the Slinky. So never doubt that playfulness and curiosity can spark a revolution. Just that simple moment of playfulness led to us all knowing and loving this lovely toy. Again, mushroom takeaway. And notice there, it’s also a great example of two of our seven skills, probably lots of other ones as well, but I’d like to focus on these two. Obviously it was curiosity that really drove that, um this kind of ends up being and he wasn’t given a roadmap. Okay, here’s how you’re gonna turn this into something that the world is going to love, he had to have that self-direction to figure out how to take it from his lab there and then obviously finish off the the task and stabilize the equipment on the battleships but also bring it to the market as the Slinky.

Alright, our next character taking us on this journey is of course the Mad Hatter. I can’t think of a better person to ,or character I suppose, to bring us on this than the Mad Hatter because of course he is the king of nonsense, riddles and endless questions. So if we’re gonna talk about inquiry, he’s a great person to take us on this journey. So I want to first introduce the idea of why is inquiry important. Well, I want to share with you if you haven’t seen the movie Apollo 13 a while back, fantastic movie, must see. And if you haven’t, you’re gonna get about a minute clip of it right now. So let’s play this clip to show us why inquiry-based learning might be important.

All right, so I hope you could hear it there, but my favorite line of that, hopefully you recognize that you’ve seen the film, is we’ve gotta make this fit into this using only that, right? Which is a similar task to things we face in, you know, Alice’s world and our world. There’s all these sort of nonsensical situations to come up with and we have to figure out how to solve these problems. Spoiler alert, they did figure this out and the astronauts of Apollo 13 did splash down safely. So again, highly recommended movie, but I think this is a great illustration of why do we need inquiry? Because you know, if you think about typical classroom setting where you teach something and then you ask the question and then they answer. Okay, that’s fantastic, but these folks were given a question that they didn’t know the answer to.

So we have to give our students practice with tackling problems that they don’t know the answer to already instead of just asking questions that we expect them to already know the answer for. Another reason to do that is perseverance. This is a real issue, I think, particularly culturally. So this, I really am interested in this study. This is a study from the 1970s and they gave first graders and a possible math problem or a possible for them at their, at their level. And our U.S. First graders abandoned this problem in under 30 seconds. The same problem was given to Japanese first graders. And guess how long they grappled with this problem? About 60 minutes. There’s a huge cultural difference there. And that’s something — this was in the 1970s. I wish they would redo this study so we have more recent data, but I, I venture to guess it’s pretty similar. We know our students today really lack this perseverance. Culturally, we lack this perseverance, we want immediate gratification. If not, we’re out here. We can’t solve the problem, we’re done. And I think this is really important, again, whether it’s the Apollo 13, an example, they had to stay with it until they could figure out this problem, you know, that the first solution wasn’t going to work. So for this, I wanna give you another surprise story. All right?

Okay, so make sure I had the right one. Okay, so for this one we’re gonna go back to 1957 and we have a couple of designers. An engineer and a designer, actually, and they are looking to create the most innovative, modern wallpaper of 1957. So they really wanted this kind of futuristic text, textual kind of approach to it. And they wanted, you know, they kind of think about that sort of sleek, innovative style and aesthetic of late 1950s. So this is what they were going for. And so they wanted to work with plastic, they took plastic and they kind of put sheets together, kind of quilted it together, took different things and they were really liking where this is going. This is gonna really stand out and be an awesome wallpaper. So they launched it into the market and guess what? Nobody wanted to put this on their walls.

It was very odd. They weren’t digging it at all. So they’re like, okay, let’s try something else. They tried the market as a insulation for greenhouses. That also didn’t work. So, their idea just kind of sat there for a couple years until IBM, computer company, was looking to get their computer out to the masses. And that’s when the strange quilted plastic sensation finally found its destiny. And it is bubble wrap. Bubble wrap started as wallpaper, which of course went on to revolutionize the shipping industry and to, you know, obviously protect billions and billions of packages and give us of course one of the most satisfying sensory experiences that there is. So that’s why we have bubble wrap. So, I think it’s important to think about, you know, the idea that failure is a part of learning. So if we think about, back to our example, of the study from the 1970s, you know, in other countries they see failure and they see struggle as a part of the learning process, actually a sign that they’re on the right track.

Whereas here in America, we tend to see struggle as a kind of failure. And that’s a real shift that we need to make in our classrooms so that we can embrace inquiry, can embrace mistakes, as stepping stones to innovation, right? That’s another reason why we do it. So I look at these and I think about Apollo and how the creative critical thinking was important there. Our study of perseverance, right? And how that’s important. So again, we bring in three more of those seven skills into this situation. Alright, so what does inquiry look like in the classroom? Sometimes it’s just flipping the order that you do things. So let’s say we’re all students here. And I said, all right, we’re gonna learn about circuits today. Everybody turn to page, I think that’s maybe 422 in your textbook and read this chapter on circuits. Are you excited?

Alright, well don’t worry because we’re gonna have some hands on stuff afterwards. As soon as you learn about that, we’re gonna go into the lab and we’re gonna make circuits. Great! To confirm what you already know. Do you think that the scientists upstairs here are just confirming what they already know in their labs or are they actually doing something to figure out an answer that doesn’t exist yet? So we just flip it and we say, alright, here’s a battery and a wire and a light bulb. See if you can get it to work. Okay? We just start with that. Let them mess around, let them have those playful moments of inquiry. Again, it’s not just fluff, it’s intentionally, get them thinking, and then they have a purpose. So it doesn’t matter if they were successful or not, if they were successful, you can say, would you like to know why that worked?

Then let’s turn to page 432 and read this. So it’s not like inquiry means you don’t ever read anything anymore. You’re not getting scientific knowledge anymore, you are. But maybe sometimes just the order is switched. Now you have a reason to read it. Or, if you didn’t get it to light would you like some help and understanding? Because you want find that sweet spot, right? Where there, where there, you know, that struggle, that productive struggle, but not where there’s like frustration and tears and you get parents all of that. So you wanna find that sweet spot and then you say, would you like to have some help here? Read page 432 and see if you can get it to light then. So again, you give them a reason, a purpose for learning this, which we’ll talk a little bit more later. And that really kind of, another thing that inquiry looks like in the classroom is really celebrating those moments of creativity.

So I’ll share with you a story from Cory, one of our teachers, and he teaches us a class called Ecosystem Explorers. And in this activity the students are different organisms that are flying organisms. So there’s birds and there’s bees and they’re flying around the classroom and they can get nectar from different flowers. And the trick is, different flowers will give you different amounts of nectar and your goal is to get as much nectar as you can. Now the birds, the, the trick to the game is you can’t talk, there’s no communication in the game. So, but this group of middle schoolers, the bird group in particular found a clever way to get around this rule and they created some hand signals to tell the other birds which flowers were gonna give them the most nectar is what they had planned. Which would’ve been fine, except the problem is Cory planned this so that the bees almost always win.

So then in the last round, he kills off the bees and then the students realize how important bees are to your ecosystem because the entire ecosystem fails. So now that the birds won, his whole lesson was, was toast now. But, a great educator, and this shows you what his classroom is like, it’s gonna celebrate those moments of creative thinking, right? You can figure out a way to get your message across, but it’s a nice way to see that the students were trying to think creatively out of the box, even if it was a little bit around what the teacher had planned. So this is our own classroom, but of course these are always fun to look at because these are the, the students that we would love to see if when they call for team solving these problems. So here’s a few more just from the internet.

Here’s one, what ended in 1896? 1895. How about this one? Find X. Here it is! <Laugh> or “Write a question using ‘why'”. “Why?” Love it. Very efficient. And this is my favorite. Motivate your answer. I’m not really sure what they’re going for, but “Go answer, go!” It’s so cute. So again, let’s just look at these not just for the humorous, kind of take on, on playfulness of childhood that it is, which it is, but also these are those moments where we wanna celebrate and see this as having an actual role in the classroom. How can we nurture that type of creative thinking? Alright, our next character to take us on this journey is the Cheshire Cat. And the Cheshire Cat is always pointing Alice in strange directions. And the reason why I wanna mention that is because that gives her a purpose, a reason to collaborate with those around her to figure out where she needs to go.

So the idea of having a purpose and collaborating and communicating with the purpose is something that I think the Cheshire Cat can add to education. And why does this matter? So it’s not just about those skills, it also does lead to achievement. So when we have real world connections or project-based learning or authentic learning, pick your buzzword of the day, but the idea that you’re embedding your content into activities and projects that engage students, and actually making the world a better place. And when you do that, here’s several studies out of the George Lucas Educational Foundation recently they come from Stanford, from University of Michigan, from Michigan State University, from the University of Southern California that are all showing that when you teach this way, and don’t get me wrong, this does take effort, it does take time. Something teachers don’t have a lot of, but it does pay off. We do get advances in actual achievement with those. So that’s one reason why that matters.

Okay, so this surprise story I want to tell you about a community. This is a community that’s really remarkable. They share resources freely, they support one another. If someone needs support, then they’re able to sweep in there and quietly give support to them. Some of the weaker folks in the community are supported by the stronger, the younger, supported by the weaker. If there’s danger, they’re actually able to share messages with their neighbors to make sure that they can prepare. This is not some hippie commune in California or anything like that. This is a community that actually is sort of all around us, not too far from us. And it is not a community of people, but a community of trees. So let me introduce you to what scientists call the wood wide web. So underneath the forest floor there is fungi that is intricately connected.

So trees of different species can share nutrients with one another. They can literally send chemical messages when there’s danger in the forest. All this is meant to give the community the best chance of survival. So we have this common purpose. So I’d like to use this story to talk about the idea of giving your learning purpose and that gives you a reason to communicate and collaborate with purpose. Communities thrive and communication and collaboration are woven together with purpose. So here you got the last two or seven skills, communication and collaboration. So what does this look like in the classroom? Sometimes it comes in the form of real-world experts. So this is one of our teachers, Jon, he had a, I think this is Disaster Detectives. Yeah. So each of these students were, these groups of students were coming up with devices that could save someone’s life in a disaster.

So pick which disaster they’re interested in, come up with these ideas, make little prototypes for them, and then they got to pitch them to actual experts from our community and they picked a winner. So this just gives them some, it’s an immediate engager because students, they love performing well for teachers, they love performing well for parents, but they really don’t wanna mess up in front of an expert. So they really put their best foot forward and come up with some really great ideas. So just having a real world expert there for students to present their work to immediately enhances that sense of engagement. It gives them a purpose. Here’s another one. We have Michael in the house. This is one of his. And if you, I’m gonna invite you later to take a five minute journey down to our education facility and you can try some of this stuff yourself and he and Ben will lead you in some activities.

But, this is one where you have real-world application. If the students are working on understanding what animals need to survive, okay, great, they can read about that. Or, they know what a zoo looks like. They can design their own habitats. So, this is a whole zoo created by these students with the animals that they chose and what they’re going to need to survive and thrive in this zoo. And the cool thing about this, this shows you the engagement of it, is, one of these students, and Michael, shared the story that the student went home and all week was giving zookeeper lectures to his family at home. So, we have a future zookeeper just by giving this instruction some real-world application, something they can sink their teeth into. Another one, again, the brainchild, this one’s in the house too, we’ve got, Ben thought of this project.

This is a project called Moments to Remember where students are partnered with an elderly person and they end up learning about their life and writing a biography of their life, which you can see an obvious tie into history. They’re gonna learn, you know, what was going on in the United States while this person was alive. They’re gonna learn about English language arts, they’re gonna learn the elements of the biography, they may learn about theme. What was the theme of this person’s life? Was it overcoming obstacles or or was it overcoming diversity or obstacles. Was it love of family? What was it? So there’s lots of things that are easy with social studies and english language arts, but what about science? You can also integrate that. We would pair students with a senior citizen that was born in the same month and they could talk about how the night sky was the same even though they were born 60 years apart.

And so, they learned patterns of the night sky that way. Or younger kids, maybe they’re gonna bring a plant to the classroom. They learn about the needs of a plant and what it takes to survive. So you can weave in science, math, the elderly person’s life is a timeline, so anything that you’re gonna do on a timeline. Young kids, you can work on simple addition and subtraction. Older ones, you can work on multiplication, division. You can work on fractions, decimals. Anything you can do with timeline might as well tie it to a person’s life. Again, giving these meaningful experiences, these real-world connections.

Here’s another one for my Swifties in the house, this was a summer camp. One of our teachers, Jamie, put this on. And this has got authentic engagement. It’s not fluff to meet your students where they are and to try to do things you know that are going to engage them because they transfer their love of Taylor Swift right onto a love of coding. So in this case, the students were challenged to create a Taylor Swift city. They each were gonna pick their era, or album, for those of you who are not Swifties, and they’re gonna create all the buildings and streets that go along with that era. And here’s the thing, they have to create this Sphero not create, they have a Sphero, it’s like this little tiny robot ball, and they have to code it to give a tour of their part of the city.

So it, it has to do things like light up at certain parts or make sounds as it goes through. So those of you who are Swifties are gonna recognize this as the Midnights era. You go through the Lavender Haze through the Midnight Rain tunnel. So, I have to share this because I am a Swiftie. Again, it’s my stage, I’m gonna do it. So, but again, this enables these students to transfer their love Taylor Swift to a love of coding. And we’ve also done this with, you could do it with golf. So we’ve had them create little mini golf courses and they can maneuver through those. So the idea is finding what your students love and figuring out a way to teach what you need to teach in that context and it can really make for some really exciting learning opportunities. Alright, last but not least in the section, I’m gonna give you an opportunity to think about this question.

How can AI help with inquiry? So we do a lot of workshops with teachers talking about what does AI look like in the classroom. A lot of it’s aimed at how do we make this easier for teachers? Go ahead and you can click that QR code right there while I give this a little preamble. And it’s gonna bring up a place where you to put in your name. Put in your name, and then join that group and I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do. So some of it’s saving time. It can create lessons for you, it can write letters of recommendation, great, but it can also be an assistant in helping bring inquiry in the classroom. So if I said, would you like to read about photosynthesis or would you like to ask a leaf? What is life to go through photosynthesis? Here, you have an opportunity to do that.

So if you will, those of you online, feel free to bring out your phone onto your screen and capture this QR code. Enter your name and you’ll be given a prompt there where Leafy the leaf is saying, hello, I’m a leaf and I’d like to take you on this journey. So I’m gonna give you a minute or two to just interact. This is how students would interact and we’re helping teachers learn how to create these. So go ahead and ask what, a question you’re curious about, ask Leafy what it’s like. What are you curious about? So I’m gonna give you a little bit of time to do that.

See where it takes you. And some of you may have already done this because you were that kid, but if not, I encourage you to be that kid who tries to go off task. Maybe ask it, you know, what you should have for dinner tonight? I don’t know. And you’ll notice what it does. It has a clever way. So this isn’t just the broad AI, this is something called SchoolAI, which has been pretty popular in terms of AI platforms in schools and has some guardrails to it. And one of them is it will help them stay on task. I think I tried it, I asked what should I get my grandmother for Christmas? Like, I appreciate that you’re thinking about kindness and gift giving, but maybe we should get back to the leaf. So it sort of gently nudges you back into the content at hand.

So that’s one of the cool things about it. Keep playing with it. Another cool thing about it is it, like I said, it has some guardrails, it’s made for students. So some of the things you just don’t want to show up in here are not gonna show up. But also as a teacher, you put your name in there. I’m not gonna do this I promise, but I can see all of your responses. I can go in and see what was Maranda asking? What was Sarah asking? So I can kind of keep tabs on things and also helps me know what do they interested in, what do they need to know more about? What do they seeming to grasp? What are they not seeming to grasp? So it’s a great way to have them have that self-directed inquiry, but also can kind of keep tabs and use that to inform my instruction.

How are we doing? So, really cool tool. This is SchoolAI. Just one of many, many new things happening with AI in the classroom, um, that’s pretty fun to think about. All right, last character on our journey is of course Alice herself, who is the curious child who questions everything. And I have to say because of that, she’s sort of unexpected hero to me. Someone who asks questions, keeps that curiosity alive no matter what she’s doing. So I consider that, like I said, unexpected hero. So I’ll leave you with one last surprise story, and for this one, we’re gonna go to the 1980s and we have a, a boy scout troop that’s out in the wilderness in Wyoming, near Yellowstone. And one of the kids starts to meander off a little bit, meanders a little bit more. Before he realizes it, he’s lost. He tries, retracing his steps, but it’s not working.

He’s now miles and miles and miles from where he’s supposed to be, and it’s starting to get dark. But he’s a boy scout, so he is like, okay, I can weather this, this is fine. And then he starts to hear that distinct sound of thunder coming. So there’s a storm coming and sure enough it’s dark, it’s raining, and luckily there was a flash of light with lightning that just kind of illuminated just enough to him to see a cave. My boy scout self tells me I should probably take some shelter in there. So he goes to the cave, cuddles up, spends the night there. For 18 hours, he’s been missing. Meanwhile, he’s hoping someone’s come to rescue him. And sure enough, the Boy Scouts did send out the all alert. They asked for any volunteer helicopter pilots in the area start to rescue pilots to start circling the area.

And we could really use your help to find this poor child who is wandered off. So when he wakes up, sure enough, he starts to hear the of the helicopter and he sees first he realizes that he’s gotta get his attention. So he has his belt buckle. So that Boy Scout training is coming into, coming into play as he puts a glimpse of light into the sky. Helicopter pilot sees it. And so he starts to dip down, circle around and starts to land. Boy sees it, starts to go to rendezvous, all’s gonna be well. So he gets there and sure enough, he is rescued and the boy’s name is Cody Clawson, which you may not know, but you may know the rescuer who is none other than Harrison Ford. So he got rescued literally by Hans Solo, Indiana Jones. Do this is where I might get a little bit jealous of Cody Lawson <laugh>.

But what a cool story and again, an unexpected hero. So what I want to connect that for you is inquiry prepares our students to be those heroes that we don’t see coming, right? It gives them a chance to have that courage, that confidence to do that. And I wanna share with you one of our own unexpected heroes. So this is, I don’t know what happens to her name there, but this is Kathy. She was in our, as a fourth grader. She had tons of curiosity. Her parents noticed that, and enrolled her into our afterschool cohort program. And she loved it. She got to study all kinds of things. She stayed with it for three years. This is her in seventh grade. This was in, around 2015 to 2017, I think maybe sixth grade. Sixth grade. And she serious studying how Coke can affect corn plant growth.

So she really loved this, this fell in love, this idea of inquiry and asking questions. And a few years later, she’s at, I don’t know what language that is or what’s <laugh>, but she is at the University of Boston and she’s studying biomedical engineering. This is her freshman year of 2024. And she’s gone on to have internships in China. She’s really making an impact. And it’s just awesome to see one of our own students become one of these unexpected heroes. Oh, this is a quote from her, which I won’t remember because she really liked it. <Laugh>. I think it was something about the afterschool program helped her answer all these questions she had about the world, which is really cool. All right, so I wanna tell you, you can be an unexpected hero too. Of course we appreciate our sponsor, Lake Michigan Credit Union, super generous helps us do all this great work.

But really you don’t, it doesn’t have to be all of that. All you have to do is tell a teacher, if you know a teacher, we don’t wanna be the best kept secret of West Michigan or the United States. Tell a teacher that these are resources that are available. Have them visit vaieducation.org, and you can be an unexpected hero for us as well. And the other way you can do that is, like I said, by marching down after this, five minute walk down to, and see our classrooms and get to see what these interactive activities look like yourself and have, have some fun with it. I think you’ll really enjoy it. So I want you to come for that. So lastly, we’re gonna just take away, or go through, our mushroom takeaways. There is, first takeaway, reimagining what counts as success. These are seven skills.

Let’s, let’s imagine success is that. Not PISA scores, not NAEP scores. Let’s remember that playfulness and curiosity can spark a revolution. Remember the Slinky? Let’s remember that inquiry embraces mistakes as stepping stones to innovation. Nobody wanted bubble wrap wallpaper, but certainly was a stepping stone to innovation in other ways. Remember our wood wide web—that communities thrive in communication and collaboration—are woven together with purpose and we have real-world application. And, that inquiry prepares kids to be those heroes we don’t see coming. So, thank you for going down the rabbit hole with me and for visiting VAI and all that we have to offer. If you have any questions, I think we’re going to have a Q&A here, but also there’s my email and our URL, if you’d like to follow up with any of that.

Maranda:
Thank you, Terra. First of all, isn’t it great to see someone excited and eager to make new ways to continue to work with our kids? So thank you for the good work you’re doing. Your, some of your team is here, you’ve got some of the best of the best. Talk to me a little bit about how you inspire teachers and your Science on the Grand program that gets teachers thinking the way you and your team think.

Terra Tarango:
It’s interesting because, you know, if you asked me this maybe 15 years ago, I’d be convincing teachers or trying to convince teachers that this is the way they should be teaching, right? We need to have more authentic context, we need to have more real-world application. But that’s not the issue anymore. Most teachers know and expect and embrace the idea that this is the way we should teach kids how, but don’t have time. So the way we really approach this is by being very sensitive to that. We don’t need to give them, you know, lectures on the importance of authentic learning. We need to give them practical tools that can save them time so they have the resources and the time to actually pull this off in their classroom. So we take a very practical approach and that’s how we hopefully can win teachers over or just support them in making this happen.

Maranda:
Well, over the years, your Science on the Grand program, if you’re not familiar with that you bring in teachers literally from around the globe who come and sit in this very auditorium. They move through different classrooms and sessions. You bring in some of the best of the best to get teachers thinking and asking critical questions and I applaud that. So we’re not just trying to change what happens in the classroom. We’re, we’re giving us the agents of change and giving them the tools. I love it.

Terra Tarango:
Yeah, that’s one of the things I love to do. A lot of folks that are giving professional development to teachers are no longer in the classroom. And, so, the fact that we are still working with students in the classroom and able to take the best that we, you know, find the, the best solutions, the best resources, and then share those with teachers, that’s my favorite thing to do. So we’ve got Science on the Grand every July. We get about 150 teachers that come here. And they’re super passionate and they’re going back to see the exponential impact of that, not just that year’s classroom, but year after year. So every teacher that comes here and gets this, I just feel so proud of what they’re bringing back to the classroom.

Maranda:
Good work. I want talk about AI because I think people, if you’re here because you saw that invitation and you’re like, what is happening? Are our kids plagiarizing everything? Are they, you know, what’s happening with AI? What are those positives? I mean the leaf experiment. Perfect. Are you more concerned about artificial intelligence in the classroom and how our kids are using it? Or are you more excited and why?

Terra Tarango:
Well, I’m an optimist at heart. I’m an Alice in Wonderland, you know, geek, so I’m more excited. But I do acknowledge there are things, but it’s not unlike any other new technology. When radio came out, there was worry about that, you know, when the internet came out, there was certainly worries about that. AI is just another one of these. Now, I, I don’t mean to discount those worries. We do have to think about how do we use it ethically? How do we use it responsibly? But I do think if it can save teachers time, that is their greatest resource. Again, they want to teach this way. They don’t have time to. So if there are things that AI can do to save time, I’d love that for them. If there are things that AI do can do, you know, let’s say, you know, teachers are like, I wanna have these creative ideas, but I’m just not a creative person. Which, that’s a whole nother conversation we can have, but AI takes that argument away completely. Give me a creative lesson about photosynthesis, give me a—and it can do that for you. So, I am optimistic about the time saving it can have and the ability to bring more creativity, if we can get teachers to embrace it for that purpose.

Maranda:
Love it. Do we have any questions from the audience or from our virtual friends? We’ll get you a microphone so our, or you can ask the question and I can repeat it.

Audience Member 1:
Okay, great. Yeah, I love all this stuff. I can see it in my own career. What scale are you at with school kids these days and what are your plans to scale it larger?

Terra Tarango:
In terms of how many students we’re serving and whatnot?

Audience Member 1:
Yes.

Terra Tarango:
Yeah, so we’ve have been really fortunate to have tremendous growth, especially over the last five years. Right now, we serve over 7,000 students a year. Most of those are coming through in field trips that they come, but also summer camps. We have an afterschool program that I mentioned. So lots of direct work with students. In terms of teachers, we have a couple different ways we measure that. We work with about 5,000 teachers every year directly giving this professional development. And this is all over the state, even all over the country. We, we travel around to do that. And then we also have a membership that we just launched actually, where teachers can access resources, and we have over 130,000 teachers that are accessing those resources or get the newsletter on, on a weekly basis. So we are looking to grow all of that. It’s been really exciting. So that, that’s fun to see this growth and a lot of word of mouth. That’s why I say you could be a hero by, by sharing this information as well.

Maranda:
Next?

Audience Member 2:
Question from the online audience. What are your thoughts on nature-based learning?

Terra Tarango:
Nature-Based learning. So I often, I use the joke that whether it’s project-based learning or place-based, which is another word for, for that what is it? Project place pro, products or I, there’s a problem, problem-based. I said, pick a “P”, any “P”, it doesn’t really matter. It’s all this idea of just sort of authentic learning. So I love it. Who doesn’t love nature-based? Anytime you can get out there and see it hands on, that’s great. We have to have to be mindful that that’s not something that everyone has access to. So we have to make sure we’re able to find ways to do that. But if you can, absolutely, the more authentic we can make that instruction, the stickier it is, the more engaging it is, the more you can connect to it, teach more, you know, within a short amount of time.

Maranda:
Next question. I want to know from a parent perspective, and if there are parents in this room, we all are probably thinking, how do we do this at home? This is something we can do around the dinner table. Can we ask questions differently than, “How was your day,” “Who did you play with,” um maybe we, maybe we talk differently. Maybe we flip that whole thing.

Terra Tarango:
Yeah, I think there are several things. One, some, one is try to ask more open-ended questions. Less, you know, um but another one I would say is, is don’t feel like you have to always give the answers. You know, so when they ask a question, you know the answer. You don’t necessarily have to answer it. Say, “I don’t know, what do you think?” You know, just flipping that back. The more times you can get them thinking. The person doing the most talking, the person you the most, is the one doing the most thinking. So if you’re the one answering it, you’re the one thinking you’re reinforcing that knowledge. So I think just turning the back on them, say, “What do you think?” Or “Can you show me another way?” All these things are, are ways to get them just thinking beyond whatever their first initial response is.

Maranda:
I really like the idea, if we have grandparents in the room let’s have our kids show us how they use AI.

Terra Tarango:
Oh, absolutely.

Maranda:
And they can teach us how to use that platform and so many others. That’s all good.

Terra Tarango:
Yeah, I mean a super fun one. I mean, I, we did this at Thanksgiving, was make place cards for everybody, that was, you know, who all’s coming for, for Thanksgiving today? What is your, you know, favorite animal? What they, what’s your favorite food and what’s your favorite hobby? You could put into, you know, ChatGPT, any of these AI engines. Create an image of a kangaroo eating a hot dog, playing the violin. And boom, you’ve got it and there’s your place card. Super fun way to get them using AI. So you could ask them to create place cards like that for, for your next Thanksgiving dinner coming.

Maranda:
I’m gonna steal that idea. What’s your best advice for all of us in the room who might be intimidated? We might not be educators, but we’re very interested in supporting education.

Terra Tarango:
My best advice is honestly to trust teachers. Those who are closest to the students in the classroom. Let’s stop degrading them. Let’s stop telling them what they’re doing wrong. Just because, you know, you feel like, everyone feels like they’re an expert because they went through school. But, I would say trust your teachers if you have, you know students in school, and, just ask your teacher, what do I need? What can I support? The student, they know your child. They can’t sit through the day. That’s what they got into this for—making those connections. They know your child, they know how you could help. So ask them questions. Trust if you’re not, don’t have, you know, children in school, just trust teachers. Don’t trust, I don’t need to get too down the weeds, but don’t trust the politicians. Don’t trust the, you know the talking heads. Trust the teachers, what they say they need. And I think that will go a long way for helping to support. Again, the systems aren’t failing; we can do better. But by and large teachers are are really earnestly trying to do a great job.

Maranda:
I can hear teachers clapping, who joining us virtually. Oh, thank you for supporting it. Any other questions? Yes.

Audience Member 3:
I work at Aquinas College in the School of Education. So, what are the different types of programmings that you offer for teacher candidates who are studying to be teachers and ways to encourage them to continue in that profession?

Maranda:
I’ll repeat that. So our online friends can hear. Educator or instructor at Aquinas College, what programs does Van Andel Institute for Education offer people who want to go into teaching?

Terra Tarango:
So, a very practical one I’ll offer is Science on the Grand. We offer that free of charge to any teacher students. Because we think it’s so important for student educators to get this kind of experience and be able to take that. So, they can come tuition free every summer to the Science on the Grand conference. But also, we have done professional development for several teaching colleges. And how do you create inquiry-based classrooms? How do you create inquiry-based projects? We have a very clear process for how to create a project-based learning unit that makes it very tangible for teachers, bcause it takes something that’s really hard. It’s really abstract. How do we, here, go, infuse your learning into make, having the kids make the world a better place. Go. You know, it is not an easy thing. So we’ve broken that down into some really clear steps and do project, do professional development on that. So if you want to go to vaieducation.org, you can look at some of those. Email me, I can definitely connect with you and we’ll do that.

Maranda:
Thank you. Anything else? I love seeing how this ties into the work being done right upstairs. And it’s fun to think that students who’ve come through the program right here from West Michigan and as third graders will some days be sitting at the benches looking for those cures for cancer, Parkinson’s, all of those diseases. So thank you for getting our next generation of thinkers ready to go and to get up there and get work for cures. Thank you.

Terra Tarango:
You bet.

Maranda:
As mentioned, her team would love to show you around the Education Institute, which literally is right down the street. They’ll be out in the lobby afterwards, and they can walk down there with you, and you can just kind of peek around and see what they see. They have a massive tortoise and other people cool creatures, so you’ll wanna get some photos of them as well. But that will happen as soon as we’re done here. Wanna thank Lake Michigan Credit Union once again for supporting education and the good work being done here. And if you enjoyed this lecture series, we have two more left this year. Head to our website vai.org to see what those topics are. And even if you look at them and you’re like, “I don’t even understand what that is”, great. Be curious, come and find out more. It’s a great way to just continue to build a great community around this whole idea of science and learning. So thank you so much for joining us today, and I hope you can come down and see the good work being done right down the hill in the education area. Have a great day.

Terra Tarango:
If you guys wanna raise your hands so they can see you, who to follow, yeah. You’ve got Ben and the blue shirt, Michael and the maroon shirt. They’re gonna be your hosts down there, so if you want to follow them down to the Education Institute, you’ll be all set, and have a great time.