ChangED

Curiosity Unleashed

• Andrew Kuhn, Tony Mirabito, Patrice Semicek • Season 2 • Episode 8

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Ever wondered how curiosity can transform your approach to education and innovation?  Tune in as we we delve into how curiosity-driven learning can revolutionize education, making it more practical and engaging for students.   In this episode, we explore this very idea in a fun and energetic way. This podcast will have you rethinking traditional education standards and embracing a more curiosity-driven approach.

Finally, addressing the age-old student question about the real-life application of their studies, we suggest that curiosity is the key to answering it.  Don't miss out on the fun debate over our team name "WOA" and the promise of laughter, insights, and the transformative power of curiosity.

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

Exploring Different Styles of Curiosity

Speaker 1

This is the first of many of our Patrice-mandated once-a-month. We get together and talk to each other.

Speaker 2

I second this motion.

Speaker 3

I'm excited it's happening, happening. We're overthrowing your government.

Speaker 1

Let's do this team.

Speaker 3

Welcome back, we'll do it together.

Speaker 1

Welcome back to Change Ed Changed, changed.

Speaker 2

Season two.

Speaker 1

Your number one podcast for curiosity.

Speaker 3

Oh.

Speaker 1

That's the word of the day. It sure is. I am your host, andrew Kuhn, education consultant. Number one education consultant from Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, and here with me on the WOA Nation train is, is that?

Speaker 3

sticking, I guess. So I am Patrice Semichak, also out of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, and I do work.

Speaker 1

Occasionally sir.

Speaker 2

And Tony Marabito Carbon. Lehigh Intermediate Unit.

Speaker 3

He also does work.

Speaker 1

Occasionally.

Speaker 3

Wow.

Speaker 1

We have an awesome topic actually honestly one of my favorite things that I love to talk about and have found that I'm so weird one of my favorite things that I love to talk about, because I love it is being curious talking is talking where everyone looks at me because I am so great, aren't you curious what I'm going to say next?

Speaker 2

You're like a cat my friend's called Whiskers.

Speaker 3

Whiskers.

Speaker 1

I'm going to write that down for later. Let's stick it.

Speaker 3

Here with us is Whiskers. Okay, andrew, what do you love so much?

Speaker 1

that you like here with us is Whiskers. Okay, andrew, what do you love so much that you like to?

Speaker 2

do the Whiskers of Anchor Another wo-wa? No, that's from Will Ferrell. Skit SNL Best of.

Speaker 3

SNL, they call me.

Speaker 2

Whiskers. Yeah, I'm curious like a cat. My friends call me Whiskers.

Speaker 1

I've never, seen talking about Curiosity. Is it the beginning or the end of the month?

Speaker 3

No idea, we're going to spend October.

Speaker 1

We are going to spend some time for some podcast. Whenever you listen to this, it might be at the beginning, it might be at the end.

Speaker 3

Maybe they didn't listen to all the.

Speaker 1

Curiosity, stuff we will have talked about or will be talking about Curiosity.

Speaker 3

Tony's going to be like I'm never coming out again. These two idiots who put microphones in front of these two.

Speaker 2

The Infinite Frontier with Harry Carey is when he does it.

Speaker 3

Oh, I like how we're on four different levels.

Speaker 2

I was so curious about that.

Speaker 1

Thank you for answering my curiosity, I feel very much like talking about SNL.

Speaker 3

I feel very much like the. Is it Shari? No, who did it? Were they on like NPR? Oh yeah, I feel very much like that, so like you're over here talking about something and we're like mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm and Andrew's over here talking about something completely different.

Speaker 2

It's awesome.

Speaker 3

Andrew and I had the amazing pleasure of going to South by Southwest. For those of you who don't know what South by Southwest is, it is a like tech AI. Are you looking up? Like the actual title?

Speaker 2

No, okay, helpful.

Speaker 3

It's this very cool conglomerate. It's in Austin, texas, and we had the ability to go because we're going to something in San Antonio later that week and it was an experience I don't think I'll ever have again. It was so cool to see the intersection between music and art and film and all of these things, and they have a which we didn't go to. Hopefully we're going to go to this year. They have an EDU strand for all of these things that are music, film, all of these things in education and how can you that stands for SXSW conference.

Speaker 1

Yes it is. That's pretty awesome. That stands for education. Edu is education, yeah.

Speaker 3

So, south by Southwest, edu is happening the first, I'm just still talking. It's happening the first week of March, so if you want to go, you should come with us.

Speaker 2

In Austin, texas. Never been, would love to.

Speaker 3

It is a fantastic town if you've never been. It is a lot of fun, lots of music, lots of really great food Not that Andrew would know I'm interested in the crossover. He eats plain chicken everywhere he goes. That's weird, it's weird.

Speaker 2

It doesn't surprise me, though. He prefers boiled. Probably brings it in a little bit of foil Mashed potatoes If it's white.

Speaker 3

He eats it. It's good. Lots of starches.

Speaker 2

I'm interested in the crossover to education. Tell me more.

Speaker 3

I haven't been, so I went to the normal one, the larger one. We didn't go to the EDU one. We're very excited about it, but we put in a proposal and one of the strands is podcasting. Anywho, we sat in on this panel of this group called Now what, and this group, now what, has created a curiosity profile, so you take a test and you can figure out whether or not you're an inner child, a rebel, a tinkerer or a voyager. And the interesting thing about this is it asks you a few questions and then it comes up with this composite score. And one of the things that I found extremely intriguing is it feels similar to like learning styles, but different, because we're talking about how, how do you show up in a curious space? And it's honoring the fact that, like are you an inner child? And when you think about what an inner child is, according to them it's you're approaching curiosity like it's a playground. You're embracing the magic of, like the super exciting stuff that's happening, like you're just approaching it with like wide eyed curiosity.

Speaker 1

So what was really interesting about it and actually I'll say validating was that in science, we talk so much about curiosity how do we ignite curiosity in our students? And so then to go to a session and hear them talk about curiosity in our everyday lives was like wow. I found myself to be a very naturally curious person, like someone will tell you something I'm like. Well, now I have six more questions right Like.

Speaker 1

I want to know more about what you're telling me. Like how did you get to that spot? How did that? Like? What happened before? What happened? You know? Like I'm just very again, very naturally curious.

Speaker 1

But then to attend this session and be like there's a whole company that's like this is what we do. We talk about curiosity. I'm like, yes, this is awesome. Also, we're empowering our students, not just for science, not just for any part of Steeles, we're empowering them for life. We should just go through life being curious, not that we know the answers, but we want to learn more. And by learning more we have more questions and we want to continue to learn more.

Speaker 1

So being able to take this test also was a provide a lot of like insight. But also like, if I changed an answer to one thing, it might've changed my score a little bit. But then also to see within these four categories, there's a relationship that's going on there and it looks different for each person, so I score higher in one area and lower in another. That means that my curiosity works a certain way and yours might work differently. You might have the same order but a different percentage for each, and so it just operates a little bit differently for you. So now curiosity doesn't have to just look one way. There's a lot of different ways for it to look, which is empowering in the classroom too, to say there are a lot of different ways for you to get students involved or actually get them curious. It doesn't have to be one way you can. Now there's like this framework we can look at that says, well, there's actually a couple of different ways you can get engaged in curiosity or different types of curiosity that you have out there.

Speaker 3

And you can appeal to students in different ways. But when we say like we want people to be curious, curiosity shows up differently for different people, which is why I liked the idea of having these four different styles, because, as a teacher, if I know I have a lot of inner child in my classroom. I know that they're all like approaching it, like through wide eyed wonder. But if I know I have some kids that are, say, for example, voyagers. Whichony and I are voyagers, so like we're looking at it, like we have a treasure map and we're very excited to be following some things and thinking about it differently. And andrew no surprise to anyone is a rebel, right?

Speaker 3

so he's just awesome rebel time folks so like, according to this, is that he approaches curiosity like a blank canvas and rule breaking at heart, challenges the status quo. Shocking to no one that Andrew is a rebel, but if I have kids in my classroom that identify, as a rebel.

Speaker 3

I can one then understand where they're coming from, and their questions aren't an insubordination or a frustration for me. That's just how they are curious about things, and so I, as the educator, can then take that information and move forward with it. I can also group my kids If I want to put. I really don't want to put a whole bunch of rebels together, but I might want to put a rebel with an inner child and see what happens there and come out there. I think there's a lot to be said about the possibilities in education for this.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think a really cool way to do this. Also, my elementary mind comes back and I would love like a choice menu and making almost one project per each category. So one rebel, one inner child, one tinker, one voyager project with whatever content that I'm teaching, and just kind of letting them loose on whatever they deem.

Speaker 3

But it's speaking to their strengths, right, and so many things that we're doing. We're not speaking to their strengths. We're trying to figure out their areas of need and how do we fill in those gaps? But if we know that they're going to thrive in this manner, how can we then leverage that to get them to learn the content that we want them to learn?

Speaker 2

This is spot on for me too. The second question underneath Voyager says where's my next rabbit hole? And that's my life. I can just get lost on my next rabbit hole. So that's pretty cool.

Speaker 3

But what's interesting is, tony, you and I are both Voyagers, right, but my score for Voyager is 62.

Speaker 2

And what's yours? Mine is a 58.

Speaker 3

So they're relatively high. But your next, closest one is Tinkerer. Which is at 46. Okay, so I'm Tinkerer at 36. Wow, this is cool, andrew. Andrew's 100 rebel one, everything else is zero.

Speaker 1

No, I thought he's like 89 rebel and the rest of its inner child. Focus on the moving on, one of the things that I was thinking about with this is that high school, I remember taking a career aptitude test where you might be interested in these things or something you know and so kind of like place me and like these might be things you're interested in.

Speaker 1

But I actually feel like something like this would be a great first step, like what am I actually curious in, or what is my style of curiosity, and then do something like that.

Speaker 1

Right, I might answer it differently, understanding more about myself and how I interact with the world and honestly myself now would answer things differently than myself. Then I didn't really, 18-year-old me, didn't have the same appreciation that 19-year-old me does now 19 plus 30. But knowing this information and this test is very helpful because they also provide some explanations that say what does that mean?

Speaker 1

But then it's part of your own journey to figure out how do all of these work together. Because, honestly, tinkerer for me was the lowest that I received, but I don't know that it's necessarily true. I think it's just the way I answered things. But I do love to get into things and kind of tinker them. But then I can see the rebel part of it, like well, why didn't we do this? Or how about this no-transcript, you know, like a handle of some kind, like push the kid from farther away.

Speaker 3

I'm like, but that's my brain's always thinking about what could we do From farther away, because being close to little children is too much for you.

Speaker 1

Well, no, because, as you've kindly pointed out, I am like a pop-pop, so otherwise you can lean over the car. You're hunched over pushing it. So I need, I need something to keep my body up. It's almost like a walker that tracks.

Speaker 3

That tracks.

Speaker 2

Because a 19-year-old back is hard shot.

Leveraging Curiosity in Education

Speaker 1

Yeah, you have no idea, man, you just wait At 17,. You're like I got it all. That's where you're at right now. Once 19 hits, it's all downhill yeah yeah, no one's listening to this podcast Not a single person. No one is curious about what we're talking about.

Speaker 3

They're curious about how we're still running. That's what they're curious about.

Speaker 2

Looking at the website for this conference, their expo page looks like an adult makerspace and the companies in the exhibitor hall are really, really cool Anywhere from like the US Army to like Penguin to Clearinghouse the conference looks pretty cool.

Speaker 3

It's probably one of the coolest conferences I've been to.

Speaker 3

You can't help but walk in there and be like, wow, like there's an energy, but it's like the latest and greatest and everyone's super excited and it's very, it's very creative in its own nature just the topics that they're talking about. And they're talking about how can AI integrate with music and art. There's a lot of conversations around art and AI and music and AI and who owns it. I totally agree that needs to be a conversation, but it felt very free to be in this space to talk creatively how all of them can interconnect, as opposed to being against each other. So it felt, it just felt very, I don't know. I loved, I loved it, I loved being there.

Speaker 1

Each IU in Pennsylvania, I think, has a space where this space that they can connect with thinks outside the box and that, you know, it feels like a fluid space and ideas flow and you can. You know, and in Montgomery County that's the flex space is one of those spaces for us where people walk into it like man.

Speaker 1

if every school building could be like this, it would just feel so different. That's the feeling you get when you go to this conference. I mean, austin, texas, is a beautiful, artistic city and so you've already got that vibe just landing there and walking into that space, and then that's just how the whole thing goes. We're like let's think outside the box. So for those of us who are rapidly inclined, you feel like you're home, right, like the other like-minded people who are thinking outside the box. But I think you can actually easily find is a space of curious people who want to learn more, who have questions, who want to lead by example but also can admit that they don't know everything.

Speaker 3

And so you find.

Speaker 1

All types of curious people are in that space.

Speaker 3

Yes, and you're also in this space with like tech giants, like there are people from Apple and there are people from Spotify, and there are people from all tech giants sharing their learning with you in a way that was so open, Like everything is behind a paywall, Everything's behind a paywall. But when you go there, they're like yeah, we did this and we did this and this is how you learn from this and it was just. It was a very good experience.

Speaker 2

I think it'd be refreshing for teachers to go to a conference where I'm sure they didn't talk about standards or testing and just to focus on curiosity and new tech and just cool stuff. That kind of will re-energize you but still kind of keep you in that EDU kind of umbrella.

Speaker 3

Yes, I'm curious to see how the EDU one is different than the traditional one.

Speaker 2

I think that'll be really interesting.

Speaker 3

It was a phenomenal experience. I would love to see something. I feel like Pete kind of gives me a little bit of that feel, without the like arts and music and things like that. But I feel like-.

Speaker 2

At her. She's a little bit different then.

Speaker 3

A little different yeah.

Speaker 1

But definitely a similar vibe If you were to take Pete and make it a national affair. It's very much like yeah here's some cool stuff I want you to try this.

Speaker 3

I think it's really cool, like no pay, like I don't know Cool.

Speaker 1

So the encouraging part is like you, you can find that here in Pennsylvania, you can find that locally.

Speaker 3

You don't have to go to this type of event and if you're not able to your favorite podcast will pipe you in and give you that information. I encourage you to be creative.

Speaker 1

Well, is there anything from what are you, Voyagerland, that you'd like to say as a closing thought?

Speaker 3

I think that there's huge potential in this and I would like to see the three of us or whoever else who wants to join in how can this interlace with what we're doing in steals and how can we leverage curiosity styles with teaching like? What could the impact be? I think there's huge potential here, so if anyone wants to join in my quest, hit me up, hit me up.

Speaker 2

yeah, that's the first thing I googled, because I kind of like where patrice was going with that, and there's already articles on how curiosity driven learning can make educational both practical and powerful, and I think if we could take this and apply it to schools and take something like steals, or take something that's maybe not as exciting, like long division or something like that and put it in a more curious, practical way that could be more relatable for students and put it into like real life examples and get students interested and curious about it, we'd probably see better results.

Fostering Curiosity in Education

Speaker 3

I totally agree. I think I know when I'm curious about something I'm definitely. Maybe that's the tinkerer in us, tony.

Speaker 2

I couldn't wait to just take the test because I was curious. The rabbit hole.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so like we'll go down the rabbit hole. Andrew doesn't really care so much because he's a rebel. He just wants to buck the system at all points.

Speaker 2

Which is why we love him.

Speaker 1

I really appreciate those very nice things that you both had to say that were so informative. Tone matters.

Speaker 3

We don't want robot Andrew, we want real Andrew.

Speaker 1

For myself, and this is probably my rebel side. I love the possibility of this and what it could mean not knowing where it's going to end up. One of the things I thought of was as a teacher probably any teacher that works with a fifth grader and up I could be off, it could go down lower. Number one question they get is when will I ever use this in my life?

Speaker 3

Yeah, my fourth grader has it all the time.

Speaker 1

Okay, so there we go. Now we're down to fourth grade. This is one of those weird curiosities everywhere, right, like it's not just in the science classroom, it's not just here, not just there, it's everywhere. So we're going with this bigger umbrella. So, as Patrice is saying, there's so much potential for this, but you don't know where it's going to go. So you know, somewhere down the road, all the dots are going to align. That's a paraphrase from Steve Jobs. But you know they're going to align, but you don't know where they're going to align. The great rebel, jedi master, steve Jobs.

Speaker 3

That's an assumption. Have you seen his scores?

Speaker 1

They're below mine Anyway.

Speaker 3

They're below yours, that's not a contest.

Speaker 1

I'm starting my own company. Are you 72? Called Rebel? Is that what you were?

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, 98.

Speaker 1

Starting my own company called Mango.

Speaker 2

I'll reach out to you if you're 73.

Speaker 1

Mango, yeah, what Apple, banana Fruit? I don't know.

Speaker 3

Oh, I need an explanation of why that joke was funny. Coco, go on.

Speaker 2

Thank you. It's usually better when you have to explain them.

Speaker 1

Don't forget to subscribe and like our videos.

Speaker 3

This trade wreck is over.

Speaker 1

So there's a ton of potential and this, to me, is really good ammunition to go back with when you get that question, no matter what you're teaching in SEALs. This is just about being curious, like asking questions. Asking questions is a good thing and actually, in a lot of ways, this is a transformative opportunity for us in education because, as we've talked about where we've come from in education, it was all about knowing Well, if you know you're not really curious, you're ready to fire off the answer. So that's what we see in Jeopardy I know the answer, I know the answer. I know the answer versus some of those other game shows where.

Speaker 1

Mythbusters. Let's just try it. Let's ask some questions. Who knows where this is going to go? I don't know. I have a hunch but I don't know. And so we want to foster curiosity in any way and highlight what's already in our students, not take out from them what's there. We want to make sure we keep it in and encourage it.

Speaker 2

I was going to say something and you did a perfect wrap-up, so I'm not going to say it now.

Speaker 1

No, that's why I'm the host. Big bucks over here.

Whiskers of Andrew

Speaker 2

I was going to say, sometimes science topics were very boring to me. And then ESPN came out with sports science and as soon as they applied, velocity trajectory, all that kind of stuff to like a football player and or pitching locked in. So even as soon as science becomes relatable to a student's life, don't forget to like and subscribe to your favorite podcast with your favorite host the woa team it's w-o-a, it's wo, it's whoa.

Speaker 1

Without Andrew or Whiskers of Andrew, which we talked about earlier.

Speaker 3

Whiskers of Andrew.

Speaker 1

Not cool bro. I'd stick with without. That feels better. Whiskers of Andrew Well that was earlier in the podcast. We talked about the whiskers. That's your applause for your juice, thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Thank you, merry Christmas whisker that's your applause, thank you. Thank you like something straight out of like assassin's creed or something.

Speaker 2

It's a video game it's actually pretty sweet video game yeah, the add in this room.

Speaker 1

It's tough, I know it's unbelievable. All right, start over how, like we been recording, patricia, you're usually yelling.