Educational Innovation: Harnessing the Power of Curiosity

What's the secret behind igniting a lifelong love for learning? Join us as we unravel the answer with Dr. Brian Housand from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Dr. Housand sheds light on the profound role of curiosity in education and how it serves as the bedrock of creativity, problem-solving, and innovation. Drawing inspiration from Albert Einstein's notion of being "passionately curious," this episode promises to change the way you think about intelligence and learning. 

Want to send us a show idea or just say hi?  Email us at: thechangedpodcast@gmail.com! 

Transcript

The Power of Curiosity in Education

Andrew Kuhn 0:00

Welcome back to Change, ed. I don't even know what to say anymore because you guys screwed me up on the first our welcome back one.

Patrice Semicek 0:09

Oh, because we were making fun of you about naming ourselves and our jobs again.

Andrew Kuhn 0:13

All right, this is the top rated education podcast in all of North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Patrice Semicek 0:21

It's very specific this time.

Andrew Kuhn 0:22

I am your host, andrew Kuhn, education consultant from Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, here with me is Patrice Semichak, also out of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. I like how you intentionally skipped your job title, but I was doing that because we are in the presence of another education consultant, but not from the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit.

Patrice Semicek 0:44

Not even from pennsylvania not.

Andrew Kuhn 0:46

That's why our viewership has gone up so high, skyrocketed. In north carolina we have with us dr brian hausen.

Brain Housand 0:53

Welcome, sir uh, thank you so much. Uh, yes, I, I also fall into that category of educational consultant, as well as being the program coordinator of the academically our intellectually gifted program here, of the academically or intellectually gifted program here at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Patrice Semicek 1:09

Oh fun.

Andrew Kuhn 1:10

And is that now? Is that a branch, or is it a totally separate university? Forgive my oh it's.

Brain Housand 1:16

You know, things in North Carolina sometimes are complicated, so UNCW is part of the UNC system, so there's probably 20 different universities that are part of that. So you probably think of the University of North Carolina, which is actually UNC Chapel Hill.

Patrice Semicek 1:34

That's where the basketball team is right. That's what everyone talks about.

Brain Housand 1:37

Well, I am an alumni of the University of Connecticut, so I'd say that the basketball team is at UConn.

Andrew Kuhn 1:46

So this is a farm team for UConn.

Patrice Semicek 1:51

Oh gosh, that's funny. I didn't. I know nothing about basketball, so if they're rivals, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend no.

Brain Housand 1:57

I just know that it takes place in March and or April and there's a whole big bracket system.

Patrice Semicek 2:02

There's a lot, there's a lot. That goes on I love a good bracket.

Brain Housand 2:05

I love a good bracket.

Andrew Kuhn 2:06

I love a good bracket. And it makes people mad. Right, they talk about March Madness. It makes them mad. Yeah, oh, yeah, that's all I got too For that topic.

Patrice Semicek 2:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, moving on.

Andrew Kuhn 2:28

Brian, we've been really diving into to curiosity and what that looks like We've really seen the power of curiosity within education and then beyond education, and we had the pleasure of attending one of your sessions that wasn't specifically on curiosity but amazingly brought itself back to what that looks like. We talked a lot about AI. I'm wondering if you can just drop some knowledge on us with your experience on curiosity and even your perspective on what that looks like, either in education, in our everyday lives or both.

Brain Housand 2:54

Yeah, absolutely. You know, curiosity is, I think, a very curious subject. The more that I've kind of been within this field and really kind of playing that role of educational consultant, I feel like that it everything comes back to curiosity. The more that I talk about, try and talk about different things, then I realize that curiosity is really the root of everything. We're talking about creativity, we're talking about problem solving, we're talking about innovation. It's that spark that you know launched a thousand ships and that's that's out there. You know, I think that when we talk about sort of like genius or intelligence and we always try and name the smartest person in the room, then so often we come back to sort of that Albert Einstein type of a person. Albert Einstein had a lot of quotes sort of attributed to him over the many years. Some of them he probably said, others that he did probably did not say. One of the ones that that really resonates with me on this particular topic is that Einstein supposedly said that he had no special talent. He was only passionately curious.

Fostering Curiosity in Education

Patrice Semicek 4:00

I love that Passionately curious. I would love to see getting off on a tangent here a little bit, but I think I would love to see what that looks like in a school system. So how, I don't even know. Maybe you have the answer to this, brian, I'm not sure. But how do we encourage school districts to cultivate passionate curiosity in our kids?

Brain Housand 4:25

Yeah, well, first, I mean I think that we have to, you know, recognize just the potential of curiosity and that, you know, it is sort of that root of creativity. If we are wanting our students become these innovative, creative, productive individuals, then we have to allow them that opportunity to ask questions to figure out the things that they're interested in, to explore things over long periods of time and to get really deeply involved in them.

Brain Housand 4:52

I think that you know some of the research over the past couple of decades has been really interesting, particularly as it relates to curiosity and academic achievement.

Brain Housand 5:02

For me, I always kind of go back to what I consider to be like almost where I started with within this field for curiosity research was this meta-analysis that was conducted back in 2011. This was a, you know, a study of studies about curiosity, and what the authors did after they kind of compiled, you know, dozens, if not hundreds, of different research studies together. They looked at three basic factors they looked at curiosity, they looked at IQ and they also examine effort or task commitment or perseverance, whatever. However, it is that we're defining it with I don't know sort of a grit mindset that's out there, and what they found after looking at all of these studies is that, while IQ still tends to be one of the best predictors of academic success, that curiosity combined with effort rival that of intelligence alone, and they suggested that having a hungry mind or a curious mind might be this previously underestimated factor related to student success in schools.

Patrice Semicek 6:09

That's interesting. I or do you know the name of that meta analysis?

Patrice Semicek 6:16

I do not know the name of it, that's okay, but I'm curious to read that Cause I think that's really interesting in the impact of that and the impact if kids could know that, if kids could know that if they were curious and had resilience or grit or whatever. I feel like sometimes we get stuck in this cycle where kids feel like I'm not the smartest person in the room so I can't answer this question or anything like that. I think we've put a a lot of pressure on kids to feel intelligent, to act intelligent, to get the right answer, and so if they could know that being curious and continuing to be resilient could make them more successful than someone who just knows the right answers. I feel like a lot more kids like I'm thinking of my son, micah. Right, he's really intelligent.

Patrice Semicek 7:00

He doesn't feel like he is all the time because he also has a learning difference, so if he and I'm going to read this so I can talk to him about it but I think that if he knew that, if he continued to stay creative because he's super creative like you should hear him or see him building in his he's got these worlds that he builds in his meta quest, so he's building AI worlds all the time. And he said to me the other day. He's like Mom, if I could do this for school. He's like imagine if I was like 20 and I could build these professionally. I was like, yeah, bud, like you totally could, you're already building it. So I think that he is smart, just in a different way, and I think if more kids knew that, they might get excited about school in a different way.

Brain Housand 7:40

Yeah, I mean I think that school should really be full of those opportunities where there's more than one way to, you know, go about expressing yourself. We don't always need to have all of our students doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same direction at exactly the same time. I mean, they're not really to develop a wide range of skills within all of our students and really again helping them realize that, hey, there's going to be something that that I'm really good at, that you are not necessarily good at, and we can really work together in order to collaborate on these projects. Like, you don't have to be good at all of the things. You can really specialize in this one thing, however niche it might seem at that particular moment in time, but you're going to need to find that thing that you're going to be excellent at and also the thing that you really love to do. We want both of those things, not just the things that you're good at, that you don't like, but the things that you love and are good at.

Andrew Kuhn 8:46

Now, are there ways to measure curiosity? Is this like a potential energy and we can kind of measure that? Or is that one of the reasons why, you know, because it is so hard to measure that, you know it's not one of these factors, right, we hold IQ higher because we have kind of a process to actually get to a finite spot.

Patrice Semicek 9:07

It's an interesting question.

Brain Housand 9:09

I mean certainly there. You know there's a number of kind of curiosity surveys that are out there, you know, finding out how you're curious or in what ways you might be curious. I think that the problem, one of the potential issues with looking at things like that, is really trying to define what curiosity is with looking at things like that is really trying to define what curiosity is.

Brain Housand 9:25

Certainly there are people that are far more steeped in that research than I am, who've really devoted that academic portion of their careers to finding that out and like most things, I think, within the academic world there's a lot of debate and discussion. You know, the more that we find out things, the more that we're curious about things, the more that we dig deeper into those things, and it's going to be constantly evolving to what curiosity might look like. I think it also probably is going to vary over time and place and it's going to look different in different people at different times and under different certain circumstances.

Andrew Kuhn 10:01

To kind of paraphrase or just totally steal an idea from children's duly chunks about that same type of phrasing as it refers to giftedness what are you know, as we, as we think about curiosity and we here in Pennsylvania we have new steel standards and a big thing about the direction that we're going in science is to foster this curiosity. Are there things that you've seen that are successful in doing that? Is it, you know, a complete mind shift for us as educators, or is it just fostering, you know? Let me sort that over. One of the things we we've really focused on is student engagement. You know, can we insert that over? One of the things we we've really focused on is student engagement.

Brain Housand 10:46

You know, can we?

Andrew Kuhn 10:46

engage our students farther. I guess my question is is that different than curiosity, engaging our students? If so, how is it different?

Brain Housand 10:55

Uh, yeah, I think that they're probably closely related. That engagement piece really is about piquing students' curiosity, finding that thing that they're going to really have that head-scratching moment on. That's going to kind of motivate them to want to go and find out. I think sometimes when we don't create that sort of element of mystery there in the learning process, then our students just become disinterested. They don't want to go on and find out what the next thing is. If you do that enough times they, I think, don't develop those curiosity muscles so they really begin to atrophy. They're thinking like gosh, you know, if I'm just wait even 10 seconds, then they're just going to tell me what the answer is. And we, I think, need more opportunities to kind of be stuck in that struggle of like not necessarily knowing or just having enough information, but really wanting to know more.

Patrice Semicek 11:56

You want to go on to that next thing and if we don't set up learning opportunities like that to really build that mystery of learning, then I think that we're, in a lot of ways, like we do a very good job of stealing their struggle, and when we steal their struggle, we're stealing their opportunity to learn, and I think, given some opportunities for AI, some opportunities for rote instruction, some things like that, they do exactly what you said right we're stealing the opportunity for them to learn, and I keep saying to my kids and kids that I work with outside of the IU, like we need to struggle so that you can create those pathways in your brain, and without those pathways, like you kind of have like a very smooth, shiny brain and no one wants a shiny brain, you want a wrinkly brain, right?

Patrice Semicek 12:55

So I think that the hard part, though and maybe, brian, you can help us is like when you think of instructional strategies to continue to other than doing the normal, like wait and pause, and figure that out. Are there instructional strategies that you're aware of that that teachers could implement that would allow for more of that curiosity in the classroom?

Brain Housand 13:18

yeah, I mean, well, I think that you know, we as educators, or you know as parents or caretakers of kids, that we, we want to create those safe spaces for them. And when we see our kids struggle and sort of like you know, thrash about, even mentally, then we want to be like those lifeguards.

Patrice Semicek 13:35

Swooping and save them Rushing, especially as elementary people.

Brain Housand 13:39

Yeah, and we see that and we see that, that struggle. But I think that when we do that, then we're robbing them of that opportunity to understand, learn from that experience. I talk a lot, as do others, about this concept of productive struggle. A good friend, andy McNair, tells the story of the butterfly and the chrysalis, and so, as we see, butterflies emerge from the chrysalis then, there's all of this struggle.

Brain Housand 14:11

It seems really, really messy Like gosh. They're probably in pain right now. I really want to rush in and save them, but my understanding of this is that, as the butterfly is going through this process, that sort of the blood is beginning to pump within the wings and the wings are beginning to get coated with all of sort of this fluid. And if we rushed in to cut them free from this chrysalis and this experience, then their wings would never grow strong enough in order to fly away. If we aren't giving our kids that same opportunity to struggle in that experience in an academic-safe environment, then we're robbing them of that ability to fly.

Patrice Semicek 14:52

Oh my goodness, I love that.

Andrew Kuhn 14:54

That's really good, yeah, and it's actually something we talk about a lot as well. Is is we, you know we talk about? We just had a conversation about scenario that happened. Where can I talk about your love of your life, johnny, or whoever? And you didn't want to say the next one. What, remember? You said you had sorry, you had a teacher, oh what. You had the teacher who said that your drama is your drama. Oh, okay.

Patrice Semicek 15:21

I'll tell okay, this is my story to tell. Oh, my goodness Okay so my middle school self was not the most intelligent human being.

Brain Housand 15:31

So middle school, we're putting this on a podcast this is great.

Patrice Semicek 15:39

This is great. Middle school was a lot, middle school's a lot, and I believe I was in sixth grade and he was not the love of my life. Anyway, I started dating this guy in middle school so like that meant we sat next to each other once in a while and maybe held hands right. So our teacher let us choose our seats and of course I was like I gotta sit next to him. So we sat next to each other and then like a week later we were done, it was over, it was middle school. So he looked at someone and I was like I'm out or something stupid.

Andrew Kuhn 16:13

But a middle school week is like a month long relationship. That's a really long time. We were on the way to the aisle.

Patrice Semicek 16:19

So anyway, I was heartbroken Not really, but it ended. So anyway, I went to my teacher and I was like listen, like this is not copacetic, I don't really want to sit next to him anymore, Bad blood. And she looks me dead in the eyes and is like you made a choice and this is where we're sitting for the quarter. Like you need to figure it out. Basically and Andrew is now using that as a public shaming opportunity for me to share about how I learned how never to sit next to boys in a class so I learned a lot from that struggle for nine weeks when were you going with this, andrew?

Andrew Kuhn 16:57

Well, what you said, which I appreciated, was you said one variation of the telling of this story was that you said the teacher said your drama is your drama.

Patrice Semicek 17:03

Yes, you did say that You've got to figure it out. Your drama is your drama, figure it out.

Andrew Kuhn 17:06

And so then I asked a question kind of to the table. I said is that something that we'd still hear today? Is that something that we'd still hear today? And so it kind of led to like the productive struggle, and what does that look like and how? You know, how are we interacting with others in a bigger conversation? I guess what I was thinking was you know, if we are unintentionally or intentionally stealing their productive struggle, is that also a byproduct of also stealing their curiosity?

Andrew Kuhn 17:34

Are those things are? They are those two somehow connected that we might you know that could be collateral damage.

Patrice Semicek 17:42

I'm leaning towards. Yes, I think so. It could be.

Andrew Kuhn 17:46

Yeah, we don't have time to answer that. We need to get part out. It's just where we're going with that.

Patrice Semicek 17:50

You just wanted to publicly shame me. It's cool.

Brain Housand 17:53

Yeah, that sounds like the opportunity, just for public shaming.

Patrice Semicek 17:56

Next podcast. Thank you, ben.

Brain Housand 17:58

Next podcast we're going to air out Andrew's dirty laundry. Oh gosh, I hope I will be invited back for that.

Patrice Semicek 18:05

Nothing says a good time like uncomfortableness right.

Brain Housand 18:08

Oh yeah, you know, I mean, I think that uncomfortableness is really what it's about, though you know we've got to be willing to kind of sit in that and as I'm sitting through this uncomfortableness and trying to like wrestle with this in my mind, then it's allowing me to kind of create some new connections or think about some things in some new directions. I think that for many of our best and brightest students in school, they don't have those opportunities really, for that cognitive friction especially in a safe environment.

Brain Housand 18:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they come to school already successful in many instances, and they're just kind of cruise through for long periods of time and they start falling into this trap where they think that to be smart is to do things quickly and easily. Faster that you can do things, the easier they are for you to do. Then that must mean that I am super smart. And sometimes being curious or facing a real challenge makes you not feel so quick and easy, and for many of our again best and brightest students, they want to hide that uncomfortableness for as long as possible. They want to avoid those moments of not knowing. They also are told repeatedly oh, you're so smart, you're so smart, how do you know all of this? And I think that that also sends potentially the wrong message, because if you're so smart and you are always knowing what the right answers are, what happens when you don't know what the answer is?

Brain Housand 19:57

what happens if you have to ask a question or if you have to be curious, then suddenly maybe you're not so smart anymore and they don't want to put that out there or kind of demonstrate that, oh gosh, I don't know what the answer is, but I also don't want to ask the question because somebody will think that I'm not smart.

Patrice Semicek 20:19

It makes me think of going back a little bit to like the asking questions thing. I'm sure you're familiar with Ken Robinson's Ted talk that he did around the part of it. He's done a few, but one of them stood out to me about the asking questions. In kindergarten they ask a bajillion questions a day and by the time they reach high school they ask like one question a month, and so I think that we've done a very good job in our system. Most of our classrooms have done a good job of schooling see what's going on outside and then try to make as many questions as you can about what's going on and then let's go in and let's figure some things out. I think there's a lot of potential and I'm really enjoying the connection to what you're saying, Brian, and what I've known about what Ken Robinson has said.

Andrew Kuhn 21:20

I'm really feeling like I'm excited about the potential of all this and also an interesting byproduct of making this shift. As we shift to focus more on curiosity, it might impact other students in unintentional ways, right? If they feel uncomfortable in that space because they're used to being able to know quickly or have the information. That could also impact them, and that's something that we need to be aware of and to plan for so that they're not lost in this transition or in the shuffle.

Patrice Semicek 21:49

Yeah, I totally agree.

Brain Housand 21:52

Yeah, and I think that when we open up those opportunities, then it gives our students the possibility to demonstrate this level of curiosity. I think that when we present those novel, puzzling, unique, ambiguous types of situations and then just open it up to the mystery of wondering, then you're going to get a wide range of students that are not necessarily, you know, your identified gifted students within your classroom. They're going to look at something from a completely different perspective or come in at you know from a completely different angle, and that's exciting to see. But if we never present these really rich opportunities to a wide range of students and not just your identified smart kids, but as many students as possible, and we never know what it is that they're going to be capable of, for never giving them the like super nutritious, yummy, delicious learning opportunities, then how are we ever going to expect them to to really do anything with that?

Andrew Kuhn 22:55

then how are we ever going to expect them to really do anything with that? Yeah, you know I'm curious and I'm almost positive. It's not a thing. But my curiosity about curiosity is I'm wondering if there's like a hierarchy of curiosity itself, like a tier one would be something you could easily Google and you could easily find right. Like I'm interested in that, oh, I found the answer and I kind of move away Like if, if there was something, then like kind of the next level is to like.

Patrice Semicek 23:20

Attach it to D. Okay, like depth of knowledge type.

Andrew Kuhn 23:23

Maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe. That's a good example.

Brain Housand 23:27

Yeah, no, man, I think that that's, you know, pretty intriguing. I think that there's probably potentially, you know, some different factors that play a role into that of. You know, am I feeling psychologically safe in this particular environment? As a part of that, Is it something that is of a prior interest to me? Am valuing, I think is probably a potentially another, another piece of like gosh, you know I need, I need this piece of information in order to solve some other problem that that I'm having. So I'm very curious about that particular piece, or, oh, I really am interested in similar things. Now I want to know more about that. Yeah, no-transcript, an external curiosity. Some people might have this intellectual curiosity of like, oh, I just want to pour all of the information into my head because I've got these questions, and then others might feel much more comfortable kind of going out into the world to ask people about that. So I think it's might be kind of like an, you know, introvert, extrovert type of factor that might play into that as well.

Patrice Semicek 24:42

Or a level of of, but I really like the leveling of that it's. It's copyrighted, just so you can both of our names be on there whenever you do whatever you're doing change it.

Brain Housand 24:54

What is at all that? Yeah, that'll be as at all I could.

Patrice Semicek 25:00

I could, like I can see it in my head. I think it's a really interesting, an interesting idea to attach it to DOK and also like the hierarchy of needs, like I feel like they're all interconnected and it would be interesting to see what that crosswalk or that, that graphic.

Andrew Kuhn 25:16

I guess the other thing I can see is how a lot of what you were saying, Brian, led me to this is that the other piece would be you know, even if it is something you go out and you go for you again, your quick, easy search on the internet to find this, I think factors like your, your own body of knowledge and your experience are going to impact you know, am I satisfied with the answer that I've just received.

Andrew Kuhn 25:40

Does that, does that work? Can I work through that? And it works. Or maybe even in that initial what could have been a tier one curiosity, I bumped it up to tier two because now I, you know, I'm willing to take it to the next step and kind of start to dig in further on my own and again, just kind of, even from life experiences, you know, you see things and and, uh, you know, in the science world we're like, wow, that's fascinating phenomenon, what is this?

Andrew Kuhn 26:05

And and sometimes it's easy to find the solution because somebody else has really dived in. And other times you're like, well, this is my turn to actually be the one to dive in. I'm going to, we're going to try to go the distance with this and figure it out. So what I was hearing and I appreciate is I think there are so many factors which are always true in all aspects of education, since we're all our own unique individuals coming into this that there are so many different things that impact that learning opportunity for each person in that safe space and we can all have a different experience while seeing the same thing unfold.

Igniting Curiosity Through Creative Teaching

Patrice Semicek 26:41

So, while you're saying, that makes me wonder, like in terms of what I can do in the classroom, like I've learned a lot about genius hour and project-based learning and those kinds of things and I'm thinking that that is a little bit more open-ended and therefore it allows for more curiosity to kind of take place, like oh, I just hit the desk. Project-based learning is probably more directed. It's like in my head, it's like a. In my head it's like a scaffold of gradual release, really, like you're going to do a problem and you can get to a project-based thing and then you get to get to genius hour where, like, you can just dive in and explore whatever you want to explore. Have you seen, in all the work that you're doing, or in the connections that you're making, any of those strategies or anything else as being more impactful? Or are you thinking or have you found that like they're kind of all about the same and as long as you're even starting to kick off with something, you're going to make a little bit of a difference?

Brain Housand 27:32

I think that there's kind of a lot of. It depends, you know, from kind of my perspective. You know, again coming from the university of connecticut, studying at the renzuli center with joanne zooli and sally reese, then I'm definitely like a school, one enrichment model enrichment triad like through and through.

Brain Housand 27:51

So for me, then, looking at those, those type threes according to rinzuli and reese, would really be sort of the ultimate that what you're looking for is those individuals or small groups to come together to identify this real world problem and to produce something that is, that is an authentic product or performance that's going to solve or work towards that solution to that problem yeah that they're contributing to that field of knowledge in exactly the same way that a practicing professional would, within whatever their discipline or field of study is.

Brain Housand 28:24

I think that something like project opportunity to so many more students and creates that opportunity of time and space in order to develop or investigate those areas of interest. When I think about all those things and I think about that from kind of a classroom teacher perspective, and I sort of hear all those classroom teacher voices in my head of like well, we don't have time for this. All of those things take time, a lot of time, and it's worthy of that investment. When I think about what a classroom teacher can do to spark that curiosity is to think about the lessons and the content that they're teaching Instead of, you know, starting with, we're just going to state the objective right up front.

Patrice Semicek 29:26

Tell them everything up front, yeah.

Brain Housand 29:28

We're going to, we're going to, we're going to just cut to the.

Patrice Semicek 29:30

We're going to cut to the final, so until we get there, here's the last page and they lived happily ever after.

Brain Housand 29:36

No, I'm like you have all of the spoilers right there in that. Yeah, right there in that, yeah, yeah. Like let's again build that moment of just not knowing like how like where's your entry point? How can you really heighten that anticipation in a really positive way, so that they're like oh gosh, I don't, I don't know, I, I'm intrigued by this. Yeah, I really want to know more. Yeah, and please, let's just like, like, let's dig into this and that's. That's where the magic is one of my friends started.

Patrice Semicek 30:07

She used to work here. Brooke found this and I don't know. I don't know where she found it and I'll have to figure it out. It's called fire starters and so we've done this to like start off our pd sometimes, where they get a paper bag and I've I've done this in classrooms with kids and it's gone over really well. They get a paper bag with five items in it and it's like the most five random things. It's like play-doh, a straw, pipe cleaners and paper clips and like pom-poms, right, like none of those don't seem random at all.

Brain Housand 30:36

That just sounds like a lot of fun right, so any.

Patrice Semicek 30:39

So you give them, like this bag and you're like okay, you have five minutes here's. Ok, you have five minutes, here's a question, you have five minutes. I want you to create a representation of what you think the answer to this is and they have five minutes and they have, that's it.

Patrice Semicek 30:50

All they can use is those materials, and I have seen some of the coolest stuff come out of adults and kids and I think that's like a super simple way of a teacher introducing a lesson Like here's just random stuff I have in my classroom. Now you've got post-it notes and markers, go do whatever. So I think there's like like you were saying small little things that can flip it, so you're not just spoon feeding them up front, like let's talk about what you know, and then I've done it, where they come back to what they created in their fire starter and they revise what they've made based off of their new learning, or they get another bag with the same stuff and create something new. Like it's a really interesting opportunity for teachers to just flip the script a little bit.

Brain Housand 31:30

Yeah, I think that there's, you know some pretty classic ways that we can go about doing that you know kind of points to ponder provocative questions, those types of things. Let's show you some sort of you know intriguing image or artifact or you know just a very curious YouTube clip. I mean, those are, I think, all relatively easy things that we can do just to, you know, start off in a slightly different way. I was just reminded of an activity that one of my good friends and, I think, just an all-around great teacher, justin Mitchell, who's from Kentucky. He teaches, he's a middle school social studies teacher and at the beginning of every school year he brings out these artifact jars, and so in each of these kind of mason jars there's sort of the sands of time, but there's also these icons and like small objects then that represent each of the units of study that the students will be exploring over the course of this academic year. Oh, cool.

Brain Housand 32:32

And so they're kind of looking through and they're you know they can't open up the jars, but they can just kind of move them around and, you know, shift the sands in them so that you're seeing these different objects or representations of what might be happening. And they really use that as kind of this prediction tool to think about, well, where is this going? And as they come up to that unit of study through the year, then let's bring that jar down to get a closer look at it and what this might now represent.

Patrice Semicek 33:02

I love that so much. That's very cool.

Andrew Kuhn 33:04

You know one of the things that you mentioned earlier as you were describing it, you know very much. You were describing, kind of like, how a story unfolds and that we don't just, you know, give you the end at the beginning. It, you know, it needs to build, and so I'm very much hearing a storyline through here. But what it made me think of was that the goal of a movie trailer isn't to tell you the entire story. It's to get you curious and intrigued and want to go see the movie and want to learn the storyline and see what's going to happen. Right, like, you've got me hooked, so it's getting you hooked. Curiosity is really a hook, that, but a genuine hook that you want to lean in more, you want to figure this out and it, you know it pushes you to go further.

Brain Housand 33:47

So yeah, that's. I mean, that's exactly it. I mean I think that the movie trailer piece is, I mean, just the perfect representation of, of of what you want to do as as the start of a new unit, sort of a new lesson. You want it to be engaging so that the that your students are just they're wanting to know more. They're like, oh gosh, when is this going to end? It's like, oh no, now we need to see like the rest of the movie, we need to really dig deep into this.

Andrew Kuhn 34:14

I can't tell you how good it felt for you to say that I came up with. I know I was going to say something snarky, but I kept it in.

Patrice Semicek 34:21

It hurt, it hurt. Did you see the pain on my face? It hurt.

Andrew Kuhn 34:25

It's a good thing we haven't gone visual with our podcast, because people would have.

Patrice Semicek 34:29

Oh, they would have seen it. It would have hurt Anyway.

Andrew Kuhn 34:33

Brian, as you know from recording with us not once but twice, we have a time honored tradition here Long standing tradition. At ChangeEd, where we like to give our VIP guests the second to last final word, and you, sir, are a VIP guest, so we'd like to send that to you now. Do you have a second to last final word?

Brain Housand 34:58

It seems to be a tremendous honor and with a lot of responsibility. It seems to be a tremendous honor and with a lot of responsibility.

Patrice Semicek 35:06

Don't listen to any other of our broadcasts.

Brain Housand 35:13

Yeah, no, I am happy to be a VIP. As I'm thinking about this, second to the last final words of wisdom, I am reminded of this concept of the flaneur. This comes from sort of 19th century France, particularly in Paris, and the flaneur were these well-to-do individuals, let's just say well-to-do men, who at that point in time really had the opportunity to be connoisseurs of the street. They would sort of walk around the growing cityscape as these urban wanderers, being highly observant and just simply taking in everything that they saw, as they sought out experiences that were really going to fuel their creative minds. And I think that what we perhaps should be really striving towards is to provide that Flaneur experience to everyone that we possibly can, and we're encouraging ourselves, modeling that for our students and presenting them with opportunities to allow them to be these highly observant wanderers that they're gathering in all of this information and really looking for ways that they can use that as the fuel that's going to spark new ideas and new innovation I want that job, yeah but even it.

Andrew Kuhn 36:35

It's actually really encouraging to know that there was this group that was even leaning into curiosity so long ago that it was. It was valued, even if it's not, you know, valued the way that you had mentioned before, with that curiosity and effort can rival IQ. You know, even if we're still getting to that point, that there still was that, that strong value back then.

Patrice Semicek 36:56

That's awesome. All right, andrew, bring it home.

Andrew Kuhn 36:59

Oh the final word Wow.

Patrice Semicek 37:01

Guys.

Brain Housand 37:01

I'm so unprepared, this never happens Well.

Andrew Kuhn 37:05

thank you for this honor. Thank you for coming on, brian.

Patrice Semicek 37:08

We really appreciate you giving us the time.

Andrew Kuhn 37:11

We're very fortunate you came on Sharing your knowledge, your education, your experience with us. It means a lot and we look forward to furthering the conversation of curiosity, not only in the entire nation because, honestly, change ed is everywhere but just continuing it in education itself. So again, thank you. Thank you to all the listeners for tuning in and listening. Things that really stuck out to me very strongly were what we just shared that curiosity and effort can rival IQ. That really hit home with me. I loved how you share that about having a hungry mind. That really was like oh, that was a good visual for me. And I loved how you share that curiosity is a spark of everything.

Brain Housand 37:55

It really is.

Hierarchy of Curiosity in Education

Andrew Kuhn 37:56

We've had a podcast where we talked about igniting the spark. Right, when the spark hits, what do we do to actually add to it so it becomes a flame, versus, you know, patting it out and pointing it out, and that really resonated with me. Also, I loved my analogy about the movie trailers. It was so strong, it really stuck with me. And then, you know, the last thing I want to say is just go on the record.

Patrice Semicek 38:19

This is the longest last word ever.

Andrew Kuhn 38:20

Yeah, it's less words, it's like 18 paragraphs the Hierarchy of Curiosity is copyrighted by Andrew Kuhn an education consultant.

Patrice Semicek 38:31

Yeah, that's how you're ending it.

Andrew Kuhn 38:32

At all.

Patrice Semicek 38:33

At all. Thank you, Brian.

Andrew Kuhn 38:38

We'll maybe be included in the footnote, maybe. Thank you so much. We look forward to having you on the show again, brian.