The Importance of Inquiry in Learning, with Trevor MacKenzie

In this episode of Unpacking Education, we’re joined by author, educator, and inquiry consultant Trevor MacKenzie to explore the powerful role of curiosity in learning. Trevor shares how authentic inquiry can transform disengaged classrooms into thriving learning communities and how the simple act of sparking student curiosity leads to deeper thinking, better questions, and meaningful engagement. Whether you're new to inquiry-based learning or ready to deepen your practice, this conversation offers actionable strategies, like designing effective provocations, building question competence, and scaffolding student agency. Tune in to reimagine what it means to center curiosity in the classroom. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Trevor MacKenzie 0:00 Inquiry is curiosity. If our kids aren't curious, if they're not switched on, we're going to lose a lot of those amazing skills that we know are important for today's world, right? Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, all those things come as a byproduct of curiosity.

Winston Benjamin 0:22 The topic of today's podcast is the importance of inquiry in learning, with Trevor McKenzie.

Winston Benjamin 0:31 Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. If you're looking for fresh ideas, meaningful connections, and impactful strategies, check out AVID Summer Institute, a professional learning experience where good teachers become great teachers. Registration is now open. To learn more, please visit avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:53 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education.

Rena Clark 1:02 I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 1:04 I'm Paul Beckerman.

Winston Benjamin 1:05 And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and

Paul Beckermann 1:09 we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 1:14 Education is our passport to the future.

Winston Benjamin 1:18 Our quote for today is from a recent blog post from our guest, Trevor McKenzie. In it, he writes these five thought-provoking words, which he says, Curiosity is a powerful thing.

Winston Benjamin 1:34 What are y'all thinking about that, Rena, Paul?

Rena Clark 1:37 It is very powerful. And I think about how students, or just people in general, are genuinely curious about something, then they're more likely to engage in it, engage in it deeply, want to spark exploration. And then we talk about critical thinking. And I know, as someone always trying to promote STEM and science, especially in elementary, we're like, "Oh, but we need more reading. We need more reading," but we need to give them something to want to read about. So how do we get them curious?

And I was thinking about this with my older son. So we're big baseball fans, and watching baseball, thinking about spring training, we got really curious. He was like, "Mom, why aren't there any left-handed catchers, and why can left-handed players only play first base or pitcher"? And I was like, "I don't know". Well, because he was genuinely curious about that, and it's really easy because of all the access now, he started doing research. So he's like, "Okay," and then he got really interested. And then he was like, "Well, there's only been a few players. Few players in the history that are ever left-handed. But why is that"? And that's because the game the way it's set up. "Well, why is the game set up that way"? "What's the history of the game"? "Okay, why did the base runners run counter-clockwise instead of clockwise"? "Why did that happen"? And we just went on this whole tangent, learning about angles and throwing and why they are this.

Rena Clark 3:01 But he got really deep into it because he was genuinely curious and interested. So that's what I think about this whole power of inquiry. When we're genuinely curious, we seek out answers, we ask deeper questions, we engage more fully, and because we want to, and it's fun and interesting.

Paul Beckermann 3:23 I love that example of your of your sitting there, Rena. And why doesn't that happen more in school, right? I mean, that is the magic ticket to everything. It's motivation, it's learning, it's retention, it's engagement, it's all of those things. But for some reason, kids kind of get that schooled out of them too often. And I don't think there's any teacher out there that wants that to happen, but that's kind of what happens sometimes. So I'm really fired up about our conversation today, because I think inquiry and inquiry learning is kind of one of the keys to unlocking that again and getting kids really tuned into what they're learning in school and looking forward to the conversation.

Winston Benjamin 4:04 I mean, exactly, right. Curiosity didn't kill the cat in my world and made the cat stronger. So today, we're going to try to jump into a conversation with someone who really digs deeply and thinks about this idea of inquiry. And our guest for today is Trevor McKenzie. Trevor is an experienced teacher, an author, a keynote speaker, an inquiry consultant who has worked in schools throughout the world. You just want to welcome Trevor to our show. Welcome.

Trevor MacKenzie 4:32 Thanks, guys. Appreciate you all. Kind of you, appreciate it. Thank you.

Winston Benjamin 4:34 Before we move forward, one of the things that we enjoy doing is helping our audience really ground themselves in our in our guest. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, how did you get here, some of your just tips and tidbits about yourself?

Trevor MacKenzie 4:47 Yeah, happily, yeah. So, I'm in my 23rd year of teaching. I'm saying my Michael Jordan year, this year. Yeah. So I teach high school, high school English. Here in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. I've spent the majority of my career teaching high school. I've taught all grade levels, from kindergarten all the way up to high school, but my sweet spot is with the bigs, as I to say. And, when I started to teach quite early on, I was really struck by disengaged students.

You know, I worked with a lot of at-risk youth in my first seven, eight years of teaching, where the curriculum was not something that they were willing to explore, there was a lack of relevance in their schooling experiences. And gosh, I cut my teeth in those first seven years, really figuring out how to flip the script to a certain degree and how to have the curriculum come alive for students, how to build really strong relationship with kids in school that perhaps wanted to not be there first and foremost. And slowly, that led me on a path to my own professional learning, my own action research, my own understanding the school of thinking that is inquiry-based learning. It's nothing new. It's generations old, for that matter, and we are truly standing on the shoulders of giants. So I'd say my authorship, my consultancy, my research is contemporary in that regard.

And maybe a dozen years ago, after my first book was published, I started to visit schools globally and looking at what curiosity and the impact of curiosity, what it has on student learning and what it has on teacher practice, as well. We often talk about curiosity for kids, while teachers being curious is a big, big piece of the puzzle. So, and now, I said, I'm still teaching. I'm in the classroom, and I'm still visiting schools around the world, helping them adopt inquiry practices. So excited to share some of that work with you today, and just hear your thoughts on curiosity, agency, and engagement in and of itself, guys. Thank you.

Paul Beckermann 8:15 Appreciate you. First of all, shout out to a fellow English teacher. I love it, awesome. I was high school English as well for a long time, and you said that it's nothing new, but I think everybody sort of has their own little flavor of inquiry. It means something different to everybody.

Trevor MacKenzie 8:27 So do you want to talk about what inquiry is for you and maybe why it's such an important ingredient in our classroom?

Paul Beckermann 8:31 Yeah, you know, Paul, your question, its importance cannot be understated. I bet if I were to ask you each to stop and jot a definition of inquiry, we'd each have a different definition, and the research is the same. When we look at the body of research around inquiry, it's quite confusing. Some research says inquiry is the best thing for kids, and some research says it's not the best thing for kids. And, in fact, they're talking about two different things. They're not even talking about the same thing. So, as a school engaging in this work, it's really important that we define what we're talking about, and that way teachers and families and students can come to the table of learning with a common understanding. If I were to just boil it right down to one phrase for us, and in fact, we've already started to talk about it.

It's that inquiry is curiosity. If we're getting our kids curious about what they're learning about, we're already on we're already on the train, we're already doing a lot of the work. Then we can start talking about some fine structures. We could talk about a gradual release of responsibility over learning long-term. But, I mean, if our kids aren't curious, if they're not switched on, we're going to lose a lot of those amazing skills that we know are important for today's world, right? Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, all those things come as a byproduct of curiosity. So I think if we can just define it as such, and then we could start identifying structures, we can get on the same page, Paul.

Rena Clark 8:42 It's so helpful and important to be on the same page, speaking the same language, as we say. And you talked a little bit about your journey. You've been K-12, and you talked about a little bit about your first seven years. So we're curious. Our listeners are curious. How did this journey into inquiry really begin for you? What sparked your interest into inquiry and led you down this path of research and then sharing all of this knowledge?

Trevor MacKenzie 9:10 Yeah, yeah. Well, in fact, I think a colleague saw me grappling with some big ideas, saw me treading water, and saw me engage in some really meaningful reflection and learning with regards to best supporting the students that I was working with. And it was my teacher librarian at the time, and I remember quite clearly he handed me a book to read, and he said, "I think you might want to check this work out," right? "I see you struggling. Here's a perhaps a solution". And at that time, it was a book by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, Understanding by Design. And Jay's turned into a mentor and friend. So when I think back to origin stories and now co-presenting with someone, or having those conversations, it's really, the through line is there, right?

But early on, it was kind of finding that school of thinking, finding this richer body of work that has been around for decades and generations and slowly becoming more familiar with it, naming things that I was doing, "Oh, that's called this," or "That's what I'm doing there". There's some research behind this work, and slowly that turned into sharing my work more publicly, like, gosh, I think 15 years ago, blogging, tweeting, sharing work in a more open space, and slowly, that got some interest from other schools and other spaces around the world. I remember quite clearly being invited to speak at a conference and thinking, "Oh my god, I'm paying to go to a conference, and I'm paying my way to go speak to an audience". That feels really weird, but there was a publisher in that audience who listened to me share some stories from my classroom.

And she asked me to write a book at the time, and I thought, "I don't have a book in me". "I'm just a teacher," quote, unquote, right? And that book turned into, turned into four books and global partnerships and sharing this work more broadly, and engaging in some really rich research at higher ed, exploring what it means to teach from an inquiry stance. So, that's a loose through line of the career, but definitely it started, really, it started by a caring friend, a caring colleague, who said, "Hey, I think you want to read this book". And gosh, that has just launched me into a career of learning and unlearning and re-learning that I'm just so grateful for. And I just think about how we do that for students all the time, right? I love hearing that story for you, or even for colleagues of mine, and how we can support each other as well.

Well, I think that teacher librarian, I think what he saw was the just right book. He thought really clearly about what I needed, and he handed me the just right thing. And I think that's what we do as colleagues. We see it. We see a friend struggling or working through a challenge with students and we try our best to hand in the just right strategy or the just right technique. And sometimes it's the just right book. And I think that's what makes school so amazing, is when we care about each other, when we're engaged in rich learning, and we got each other's backs and, yeah, that's a little bit of the origin story of how that that formed for me, for sure.

Winston Benjamin 15:02 See, now I'm going to ask you to be on your Peter Parker, right? We just went through your origin story. Uncle Ben was like, with power comes great responsibilities. Now you are the wise vet, right? I'm going to try to ask you, describe this approach.

Let's talk about scaffolding to really create student-centered learning experiences by identifying their student inquiry, right? What they're interested in, what's their curiosity? For those who are trying to figure out a way to look at their classroom, think about centering their students' needs. What does this approach look like? What are some of the things that you want someone to think about as they're beginning just to start dipping their toes, but not but when they're in this moment of deep reflection on your student in your classroom before you got handed to the book? What could you describe as this approach to help scaffolding and to center students' learning?

Trevor MacKenzie 16:38 Yeah, yeah. Well, Rena, I love your story about your son getting really hooked into baseball and asking big questions about baseball, and that's what we would call free inquiry. That's very much a student-led topic, and student-led exploration.

And you're the guide on the side, the guide on the ride, supporting some of those decisions and kind of providing some buffers, some bumpers, if you will, to that exploration. But free inquiry can be incredibly fulfilling and rewarding. Teachers have a curriculum that we need to teach, and we have objectives that we need to teach, and I'd love to know my curriculum so deeply and so beautifully that when a child is interested in baseball, I could just bring my curriculum there. And so I think a lot of teachers do do that beautifully. They know their curriculum inside out, and they could see it's malleable, it's agile, to a certain degree. But for teachers who are new to this work, a first step we need to take is try to get our students curious about our curricular outcomes. Try to get our kids curious about our curricular objectives. In the inquiry teaching school of thinking, this is called provocation.

We want to design something that is going to ignite their wonderment, ignite their curiosities. It's not just an anticipatory set, it's not just a hook. It's accessing prior knowledge. And then an outcome of provocation should be student-generated questions, questions that they want to know about. And if we design provocation really beautifully, then that's the entry point into the curriculum. Then the questions they have are curricular in nature. There's going to be some academic jargon. There's going to be an academic through line to their questions. And so that's a critical first step. Is provocation design. It needs to be real-world. It needs to be approachable to your students. Just because Paul thinks it's cool doesn't mean his students will think it's engaging, right? So we really have to know our students and put ourselves in their shoes to design rich provocation as an entry point to the curriculum.

If we don't do that, then we may have 30 Rena sons in our class wanting to explore 30 different things, and it's going to be herding cats, which is, quite honestly, that's what the research says. Bad inquiry is, it's when you're trying to wrangle all these different topics and all these different ideas, and it turns into a hot mess express. So the key move is planning provocation to curriculum, first and foremost. That's something many teachers kind of tinker with, but bringing more mindfulness and intentionality as that is your academic entry point is a huge move.

Winston Benjamin 15:51 I love that, provoke. I love that, provoke.

Paul Beckermann 15:55 I'm wondering, you said you got K-12 experience. Can you give us an example of what a provocation experience might look like, maybe at an elementary level and then at a secondary? Maybe you have a favorite one you've run into along the way.

Trevor MacKenzie 16:08 Yeah. So one way I support schools, guys, is when I visit them, we do learning labs, where I will visit the school, and I'll have a small team of teachers, and we'll co-plan a lesson, and then I'll go co-teach that lesson with that small team of teachers. And so often it's the same lesson three times, and we're all watching it, we're refining it, and then at the end of the day, we reflect on said lesson. There's no better PD than watching teachers teach and talking shop about our craft, right? And so one of my partnerships is in Sacramento, Natomas, Unified School District. They do amazing work, centering student identity in all they do. Just three weeks ago, I was down there. I taught a grade one lesson, and then the very next day, I'm teaching high school. So Paul, these are really timely examples.

The grade one example we did was we showed them a 10-minute provocation in two-minute chunks. And the provocation was this beautiful video of a polar bear who wanders into this northern Canadian town called Churchill, Manitoba. And Churchill, world-famous for tourists wanting to go spot a polar bear and take photos of a polar bear, but the locals, they have to put up with the polar bear digging in the trash and ransacking the town. And so there's this, this tension between locals and tourists and the wildlife, quite literally, and sustainability is kind of a key theme in the provocation. Now keep in mind, these are grade ones, these are five-year-olds, six-year-olds. So we're watching this provocation. Every two minutes, we pause the provocation and I say to the children, "Turn and talk. What are some things that you're noticing right now that you're seeing"? So a turn and talk. Simple move, right? Let's do more turn and talks in class. These little children identify such beautiful language from the provocation that is very much academic in nature. Why?

Because we designed the provocation to be such. So I'm busily creating anchor charts of the vocabulary they're pulling out of the provocation, if you will. We watched the provocation for six minutes. We didn't even watch the full thing. I've got two anchor charts of rich vocabulary. Now I ask them to ask questions about what they're wondering about, what they're curious about. With the littles, we give them some question stems, question stems that lead to close-ended questions, and question stems that lead to more open-ended questions. Things what and when those tend to lead to close, whereas why and how those tend to lead to open. And now the students have all these universal supports in front of them, visibly in front of them, that they can use to write meaningful questions that, guess what, are curricular in nature. So that would be an example of a provocation with the littles.

We're not even talking about question routines yet, and what to do with their questions, right? We'll get to that later on in the episode, I'm sure. The very next day, I'm teaching high school. I'm teaching high school English with a colleague who's teaching a fantastic graphic novel series, series called Maus. Have you guys read or seen Maus before? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. Set in the Holocaust and the mice and the cats. And it's amazing, rich in symbolism, such a beautiful series. So the provocation we had with those students was we photocopied a few pages from the graphic novel. We put them up around the room vertically on an anchor chart, and we rotated them through the graphic novel pages, asking them to identify things that we know they're going to have to identify on the summative assessment: symbolism, conflict, imagery, figurative language, all those rich things we know they need. But it's done in a collaborative nature.

It's done it from a stance of they're really curious about it, because it's a totally transformative experience. They're not working individually on a worksheet in their desks and then, and then we see the evidence of their learning, Paul, right? Because it's vertical, we can actually rotate through the room from the center and look at all their evidence of thinking. We could hear the.

Trevor MacKenzie 19:59 evidence of thinking and discourse. So that would be an example of an easy provocation to do in an English setting, is to make the learning visible, make it vertical, and then have students work through it together. So I'm curious, do both those examples make sense to you guys? Yeah, awesome. Lot of nodding heads. Lot of nodding heads.

Paul Beckermann 20:19 For sure. Rena is always writing notes.

Rena Clark 20:23 I am writing notes. I'm writing notes because that's, that's what I do. Sometimes I get lost.

Paul Beckermann 20:30 Are you writing questions, Rena?

Rena Clark 20:31 I, well, we can talk more about questions. I do want to point out so you've talked a little bit about your books. I want to give a little plug. It says your newest book is titled, Inquiry Mindset, Questions Edition: Cultivating Curiosity and Creating Question Competence. So maybe this is the point where we can get into a little bit more talking about questioning. I know I've done a lot of inquiry-based science and the transition with I know I focusing on Next Gen Science Standards, but I go. I'm curious. The emphasis on questioning you've talked about a little bit, but maybe you could get into more of questioning routines, telling us a little bit about that, and especially, I'm sure that you're supporting teachers, you said, at different grade levels, but also cross subject, this can be used across content areas. It's not just for ELA.

Trevor MacKenzie 21:21 No, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So, the book really was born out of challenges I was seeing in classrooms. Teachers doing provocation really, really well, and getting kids really curious about the curriculum. And then teachers would say, "I've got all these questions from kids, now what do I do with them"? "What do I answer them all"? "Do I assign them"? "What do we do with all these questions"? And so that's a really good problem to have. When you have kids curious about the curriculum and you have student-generated questions. I was also hearing from some teachers, "My kids have questions, but they're just not curricular". "They're just not they're kind of surface area". "They don't they don't have the depth that I would hope". "They don't have the shelf life that I would hope". So for me, I did what I always do, is I shared what I was doing with my students in my own classroom. What do I do to build question competence with my students? And I started to workshop those strategies with the schools that I support around the globe. So that's where the body of work around question routines really came from my own classroom, sharing those with schools. Question routines. There are 10 high-impact question routines in the book. Some are really great for the primary levels. Some are really amazing for all levels, and then some are really amazing. We see them really most beautifully in the high school level. So we don't identify them as such. I would never say, this one has to be done with the primary kiddos. I really want teachers to give them a go and see where they land most beautifully, because I'm always surprised. I'm always surprised by how a teacher uses a question routine.

So an example of a question routine is, I'll give you one, and I hope that without a visible visual for the audience, we can imagine what this might look like in the class. Imagine I go up to my whiteboard, and I draw a long line, maybe eight feet long, across my whiteboard, and on the left side of that line, I write the word closed, and on the right side I write the word open. And then I ask my students, "Turn and talk. What comes to mind when I say the phrase closed-ended questions"? "What kind of questions am I talking about, kids, and what we're going to do right now"? Can you guys play along? What comes to mind for each of you? What's an indicator, or what's a type of question? What would what would you respond to if a teacher asks you that?

Rena Clark 23:34 A yes/no question.

Trevor MacKenzie 23:36 Beautiful.

Paul Beckermann 23:37 Very specific.

Trevor MacKenzie 23:39 Winston, what are you thinking?

Winston Benjamin 23:40 Something about yourself.

Trevor MacKenzie 23:43 Okay, so as students are talking, as you're talking, I'm writing a list. I'm creating a list of indicators on the closed side. I'm hoping I write maybe 10 indicators. And students are going to use these descriptors to kind of reflect on their questions once they're asked to come and place them along that line, along that continuum. And then I asked them the same question for open. I'm going to say, "What is an open-ended question"? "What comes to mind"? "What comes to mind for you guys"?

Paul Beckermann 24:11 Limitless.

Rena Clark 24:12 No one right answer. Lots of different possibilities.

Trevor MacKenzie 24:17 Kids say the most beautiful stuff.

Winston Benjamin 24:19 How?

Trevor MacKenzie 24:19 How? Right? They give us questions, things that. Winston, how? Why? More thorough research on Google, able? Some kids say ungoable, right? And so once we have those indicators flanking the continuum, now imagine we engage in some questioning from a provocation, and I ask students on their sticky-noted questions to come and sort them along that continuum, right? And gosh, ask them to justify their placement along that continuum using the language that we just co-designed. So now I've got this really visible evidence. I've got this audible evidence of their thinking, of their learning. I've got all these beautiful skills, collaboration, critical things. Communication. And then a move we might make is, "Kids, can you identify maybe three close-ended questions that belong to one of the open-ended questions"? "In order to explore the open, we've got to know the answer to these three closed". And kids, literally, they zoom out, they back away from the continuum, and they start interrogating how the questions are connected. And so I think of anything we're researching. I think of any hypothesis, and what are the close-ended questions we need to explore to deepen our understanding of that hypothesis in a science class, right? I think of any historical event. We want that historical event to be understood on a conceptual level, but there's some close-ended stuff we need to know in that social studies curriculum to deepen our understanding of that conceptual understanding. So the question routines allow students to see the intention of how they write their questions matters. It has a big impact on how the questions are connected. Now the next move I would make is I would plan my next lesson according to some of the richer questions. And when I say richer, I'm thinking, what are the questions that are most curricular in nature? Of all those questions in the continuum, can I cherry-pick a few that are going to guide my next series of lessons? So that's the question continuum. Just visually. That long spectrum of questions with the co-designed indicators, students sorting and justifying their ideas and then looking for connections across questions. Guys, does that one make sense?

Rena Clark 26:28 You're giving me all kinds of ideas for a PD I have coming up. So thank you.

Trevor MacKenzie 26:33 Well, this is the best type of learning, where just from a conversation, you can get inspired to go do something. Or teachers can say, "Oh, I can see how I can do that". "I just heard this guy speak about this for six minutes. I could go put this in the practice". So that's really applicable PD, isn't it? So the 10 high-impact question routines all have a very visible, visual element to them. The book has about 120, 130 photographs in it of these routines in action, and you can find them all on my website, my Instagram, my LinkedIn. Very active there for teachers to go have a look at what the continuum, but these other routines look.

Paul Beckermann 27:10 So I'm curious. You kind of alluded to this earlier. You said, teachers wonder, "Well, what am I going to do"? "I've got all these questions". So I'm thinking there's, there's two paths here, right? You can have students individually pursue inquiry, or you can have a class as a community pursue inquiry. Where do you see it usually going? Or what advice would you give teachers as they're considering those two pathways?

Trevor MacKenzie 27:36 Yeah, it depends, Paul. I totally agree. You could you could have it be very individualized and very agentic. Students are choosing their own pathway from that overarching experience. Or you can have it be a group experience, what we call a class inquiry. It depends on, primarily, it depends on how competent are your students and the skills that they need to have that level of independence over their learning. So now we're talking about competencies. We're talking about those transferable skills. Dare I say, 21st century skills. It's 2025 and we're still talking about 21st century skills. Why? Because they're pretty darn important, and teachers still, broadly speaking, might not be teaching them. So it depends on where your students are at with regards to those competencies, those skills. In my experience, I to start with a with a class inquiry. If you were to visit me at my high school at the start of the year, September, we would be all in the same area, the same depth of the pool, if you will. We'll be in the shallow end, a teacher directive inquiry together and slowly, as students become more aware of these competencies, more competent and proficient in them, then I'm going to engage in some gradual release of responsibility over learning. So at the end of the year, maybe they do a really deep dive, kind of what Rena was describing with her son, right? But in my classroom, that free inquiry has to be curricular in nature. So for every step of independence and agency in the classroom, we need to provide structures and routines, or students feel competent and they can be successful. So the routines help us map out that structure for independence, Paul. So if you were to visit me, you'd see a class inquiry at the start of the year, and definitely a gradual release across the months, where, at the end of the year, it's a showcase of independent learning and free inquiry, if you will.

Paul Beckermann 29:25 I love that progression of setting students up for success, because that's what we want, right? We want our students to be successful in this, because if they are, they're more likely to continue that down the road. Yeah, yeah.

Trevor MacKenzie 29:36 And, sadly, we don't talk enough about a digression of engagement or a digression of learning. We often talk about a progression and moves we make to lead to that level of independence. And I really encourage teachers and in a safe way, get critical about the practices that lead to disengagement and that those are the practices that, if we continually do them, they lead to a digression. They lead to disengagement and disenchantment in the classroom. And so if we were to name strategies as a group here, what are the strategies that lead to kids checking out a school? And let's just cautiously use them. There are some that we have to do every so often, but God, if that's our only tool in the toolkit, we're going to lose a lot of our students, and they're not going to develop all those amazing skills and competencies that we need them. So yes, a progression. And also, let's be aware of the digression and the moves that we make, sadly, that lead to disengagement, if you will.

Winston Benjamin 30:32 That's that leads it to me, where my question, where my mind was going. I love the idea of some people being, "I know my curriculum inside out". "I'm the sage on the stage". "I'm really good at providing that information to students," so the questions that they ask really do not support either open-end or curiosity. So my question to you is, how can someone check themselves if they, as the teacher, are asking questions that does not create a sense of curiosity in their classroom, right? What are some ways that a teacher can get a check on what am I doing that is getting to your point of excluding interest from the classroom, right? What are those strategies? Because you're talking about bringing in students' questioning to the to the front, but I'm talking about what the teacher, your last bit, is what the teacher is pushing out that disengages students. So what are some of those strategies to catch that teacher, to help them be more clear?

Trevor MacKenzie 31:40 Yeah, well, I'll suggest a few. And the first one, it really comes down to, if we want certain dispositions and competency for the children and students we support, we need to be mindful of those in our own teaching stance. We're talking about curiosity for kids. A curious educator, just you said, check themselves. If you're curious, you're going to go in and really be reflective. "How are my students doing today"? "What's the temperature for learning today"? "What do I have planned"? "Do I need to adjust"? "Do I need to pivot"? We're not coming in with a script thinking, "Okay, I'm going to go through this script, and all kids are going to get in". And the ones who aren't are the ones that fail the course. The curiosity as a disposition for teachers is a massive stance in which a lot of those things that are problematic that you were describing, where we're going to be more self-aware of. We're going to be asking questions of our practice, and we're going to be tinkering with our practice. We may look at the benefit of slowing down and pausing at the start of a lesson, rather than just diving into the curriculum, thinking that we've got it all figured out. So there's a lot of research, and this isn't new research. This is decades old that talks about dispositions of teachers. And I was going to throw it back to you right away. I was going to say, "Think of a colleague who you really, deeply admire, who is really self-aware". What are the dispositions they have? I bet you those dispositions would mirror the exact dispositions we want for the children that we support and the youth that we support. So that's number one.

Number two, really clear structures for getting to know your students. There's nothing more important than knowing the students you support. There are so many districts I work with who have adopted something a Know Me Before You Teach Me philosophy where the first number of days, dare I say weeks, are focused on teachers getting to know kids and bringing the curriculum and assessments to the identities in the room of which they're supporting. So there's not this, "I've got the curriculum I need to cover, and the curriculum is the wheel that's going to turn this machine". It's the most important aspect of my planning are the students before me, and I need to get to know them. So there are specific routines and structures for that one as well, where it allows us to slow down and begin to differentiate in our planning, not even differentiation in our teaching and differentiating in our lesson. So those would be two ones that really ring true to me, dispositions for teachers and pausing and really knowing the community of learners that you're nurturing and that you're supporting.

Winston Benjamin 34:07 Thank you so much for that.

Rena Clark 34:09 Yeah, it's a lot to think about, and I know even in my it's relationships first, but sometimes we I'm just going to say where we are, budgets, time. We keep saying that a lot of teachers don't really know how to do that. What does that even mean or look like, or how do we apply it? And then let's just, I'm real curious with inquiry, kind of throw this one in here. And I currently support high school, and shockingly, AI has come up a ton. And then we talk about, "Hey, maybe I am a newer teacher, and I not the best of my content, but now maybe AI, I'm trying to use that to support and help me". So I'm curious your thoughts around what kind of impact Artificial intelligence has on this whole inquiry in the classroom.

Trevor MacKenzie 34:58 Yeah, well, I'm cautiously optimistic. I to say I'm an early adopter. I never dive in headfirst, but I'm cautiously optimistic. And I suppose one thing I really value, and you've heard it come up several times in our chat, are the competencies, the skills. And I really wonder about any role of technology in developing said skills has to be explored for the good and the bad. What are the pros and the cons? And so I really caution teachers from having AI do the good work of planning lesson planning. The beautiful work that we do is sitting in thinking about our students and trying to plan learning that's relevant and meaningful. And I don't think AI has that pulse, that temperature check of your classroom.

Some amazing things I'm seeing schools do is in the assessment realm of learning, with regards to AI, using AI to provide feedback that we triangulate with a teacher in a one-on-one conference, or with a with a peer and a peer-to-peer conference. I'm seeing some amazing things with teachers really getting their hands dirty. And asking AI, giving it certain prompts, giving it certain questions, to generate amazing feedback for kids. And what that allows teachers to do is not be the sole feedback provider, but actually frees them up to sit with children and ask them if they understand the feedback or triangulate the feedback. Does the teacher agree with the feedback? And so you're actually seeing teachers have more time to sit with kids because they're incorporating some AI into the feedback cycle. So I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm frequently I have Zoom calls with ed tech enthusiasts who have some kind of platform they want to pitch, and they want my feedback on. And I'm cautious in that anytime students are getting answers from technology, I want them to triangulate that evidence. That's just really good research. And so I'd to see a platform where that's baked in, where, yes, we're engaging in AI, but then there's some kind of mechanism that forces students to triangulate and reflect and revise and share new understanding based on that triangulation. I think that's a lot of what teachers are doing. Teachers who are doing this work really, really beautifully, are taking that responsibility on in their own, right? But gosh, if AI isn't doing that job or nudging that job, I think it's a shortcoming, to be quite honest. So as I said, cautiously optimistic. I'm tinkering with things with my own students. I think, as most teachers are, and feedback has really been something I'm quite excited about in the realm of AI.

Paul Beckermann 37:32 I want to just follow up on Rena's question to tie it a little more specific to inquiry. So in the inquiry process, do you see AI impacting that the actual inquiry process?

Trevor MacKenzie 37:46 Yeah, I do. Well, right now, a key piece that some of my schools are working with, and I'm doing with my own students, is the notion of organization and researching, but organizing and sorting research into trends and concepts and kind of subcategories, kind of having it, kind of, yeah, find, find the clusters of information, if you will. And I really appreciate that, because, gosh, teenagers with executive functioning, wow, that's that's a skill they need to flex. And so I see it as being a nice scaffold. I see it as being a really nice way for students to help have something help them sort and organize. And then once we have that sort, sorted and organized, where's the human element, the teacher coming in to confer with children and students and talk about what it is that they're noticing, what it is that they're seeing and what they might do differently? So I think in terms of the organization of research, that that's a neat aspect. I certainly don't see AI making inquiry useless. I certainly don't see AI making education useless or watered down. In fact, I see it as really showing the importance of the human element in the classroom, relationships, and that triangulation piece is really, really important.

Paul Beckermann 38:57 Yeah, because when you think about it, chatbots are all about inquiry. If you don't ask the right question, you get nothing. I mean,

Trevor MacKenzie 38:57 Absolutely, that's, and I think I think students see that. I think when students are engaged in that good work, the better they're questioning, the better the outcome, right?

Paul Beckermann 39:15 For sure. All right, it is time for us to jump into our toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 39:21 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 39:33 All right, what's in your toolkit today? Rena, why don't you go first?

Rena Clark 39:38 Trevor alluded to some of these. So, read his book, find out. I was thinking of some of the things I use a lot, a lot of I notice, I wonder structures with students. See, Think, Wonder. And then even got into some of his question, formation techniques, and I know I've used QFT techniques with students. The whole idea and having it be focused on content standards and outcomes for students, but having them generate the questions. So I would encourage, it sounds, visit his website, look into some of that, and then even lots of AVID strategies out there around questioning. There's lots of different ways to do that, but you need to have some guidance. I feel guide rails, because otherwise we are back to that, just free, open everyone that that does not give you results either.

Winston Benjamin 40:33 That fits into mine, Rena. I think it's more the content-driven exploration. As a teacher, I may not know everything about my content, but I can ask myself, what can students question within this curriculum that doesn't break it, right? Giving them an opportunity to add, why is this a thing? Why did this guy design this spaceship? Why? Right? Asking those questions about why? Because, again, some of the things that we learned is, why do I need it? So having that question allows for students to really ask, so that they can dig in and try to break the curriculum. I think might help them be interested.

Paul Beckermann 41:14 I love that you were asking, why there? It reminds me what my wife always says. It's the five levels of why. You ask, why, five times, right? You keep asking, "Why"? "Well, why"? "Well, why is that"? And eventually you get far enough down the rabbit hole, you kind of get to the root of the whole issue.

Rena Clark 41:28 It sounds toddler questioning to me, Paul.

Paul Beckermann 41:32 True, see how wise those kids are?

Winston Benjamin 41:34 Yeah, exactly.

Rena Clark 41:35 Why?

Winston Benjamin 41:36 Exactly.

Paul Beckermann 41:37 Why are they wise? It is the whys that makes them wise. Dad joke, I know I couldn't help it. Well, I was going to say the whole provocation thing is so key. That leading to questions, to me, that is just at the heart of everything. I used to teach speech classes and things. And I didn't want to just get up there and start telling kids the roles they should have in groups and things. No, put them in a group, give them a really intriguing kind of a problem, let them wrestle with it, and then let's break that experience apart. "What just happened here," give them something real that they were invested in, that then they can, they could respond to and connect all that curricular stuff to later. It just is kind of a glue that holds things together. If you do that right at the beginning.

Trevor MacKenzie 42:38 You know what? I reference this. This isn't new work, and my work is contemporary. And so I think just referencing some of those voices that have shaped the understanding. I think of as I referenced, Jay McTighe, Grant Wiggins, colleague, Cath Murdock out of Australia. She's written 18 books in the field of inquiry. Her first book was published in the early 80s. She hates it when I say that, because it dates her, but she's a mentor of mine. I think of Ron Richard and Mark Church and making thinking visible and the powerful work of thinking routines. Current colleague in the math setting, Peter Liljedahl does amazing work with regards to building thinking classrooms. So anyone that's a numeracy listener, a math listener, Peter's work is transformational. Yeah, and Guy Claxton is another one. He's out of the UK, guys. 70 years old. He's written 30 books. And I'm not, I'm not suggesting everyone go read these books, but when that teacher librarian handed me that life preserver of one book at the right time? It's nice to know that if you're interested in this conversation, what are some names that you can go and Google and go find? And these authors have free offerings all the time, whether it's a live stream on YouTube or something on Instagram, that they're doing stuff for free all the time. So just wanted to share some of those names with everyone and a breadcrumb trail to more of the conversation.

Rena Clark 44:00 Well, that takes us into our last section here, and I feel I've many things, but we're going to talk about our one thing. It's time for that one thing.

Paul Beckermann 44:18 It's our one thing.

Rena Clark 44:20 So what is that one thing we're still thinking about, that one big takeaway? What is the one thing we might leave our listeners with? So go ahead. Paul, Winston.

Paul Beckermann 44:30 I heard a T-shirt moment in the show, and it was, Know Me Before You Teach Me. That is kind of at the heart of it, too. In addition to the provocation stuff and the curiosity that that I mentioned in my toolkit, that's that really sticks with me. It's always coming back to that personal connection that we have. And the examples that Trevor was sharing, they're very interactive. They're very collaborative. There's a lot of communication happening. It's not a student sitting over in a corner by him or herself. I think that's key. It's the humanity.

Winston Benjamin 45:04 Oh, man, I'm in so much spaces right now. My mind is thinking about a song by Richie Havens. It's called "Follow," and it deals with, there's a line in it that has reminded me of this conversation about this idea of provoke. And he's talked, it's the way the song comes off. It's a teacher speaking to their classroom as children in a garden, right? And he says, in the song, he says, "This song may disturb or may quell you". And I really love the idea of provocation as an opportunity to disturb students or quell them meaning, help them bring down their fears of not being able and know that by asking a question, just by being curious, that they are able to see all the things that are in front of them, right? So that's really just where my mind is going in this idea of how do we use where our students are to provoke or quell that fear of inadequacy that makes them not believe in themselves? So that's really where my mind is digging into this, this questioning and increase conversation. So I appreciate that.

Rena Clark 46:21 I don't feel I can respond now, Winston. That was so weird. I just love the way you see. I just love learning from y'all and the way your mind works. It's beautiful. I am still stuck at the very beginning, when we were calibrating around what inquiry is, and just this idea of inquiry is curiosity. So how do we get curious? And I know, with my own work, especially with educators, and unfortunately, a loss, how do we also keep educators curious? You talk about hand them the book. How do I keep educators curious so they're not just standing in front of the classroom? Or so I'm thinking of it from that lens myself.

Paul Beckermann 47:08 We need to rewrite that Olivia Newton-John song. Now, "Let's Get Curious".

Rena Clark 47:18 And I bet you there's some really, a really good outfit with leg warmers to go. Anyway, I won't be wearing those. Okay? I have a whole different vision today.

Paul Beckermann 47:32 Where you get to play along.

Trevor MacKenzie 47:34 Yeah, the one thing I'm thinking about, and I think it's bugging everyone's sharing, is just how to make the work, the work, relevant and meaningful for the students that we support. I often ask myself the question, "What am I doing for my students that they should be doing for themselves"? Gosh, I ask myself that question, sometimes a dozen times in a single day, and I find the more times I ask that question, the more I find more space to empower kids and have them do more of the heavy lifting and meaningful work in the classroom. So, I think anyone listening that has a question or wants to see a resource or wants to see what that looks like, beyond going to the website, just send me a message. I'm an open book. Quite literally. I have a 360 virtual tour of my classroom that I'm happy to provide so teachers can go and have a tour and look at videos and click links so they can see what some of these strategies look like and sound like and feel. So if there's an interest, a curiosity by anyone listening, jump into that curiosity and ask us a question. Okay.

Winston Benjamin 48:40 That's a great way to end, because we hope that we've caused some of y'all to be more curious in this, in this topic, and go dig into it. Find the piece that really makes you, I really want to think more about those questionings. I really want to think about opportunities to flip the classroom, to get the students. So really check out this work. We appreciate you coming in and Trevor and having a good conversation with us, and I hope that some of our listeners are provoked into action. Thank you.

Trevor MacKenzie 49:12 Appreciate you guys. Thank you.

Rena Clark 49:14 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 49:18 We invite you to visit us at AVID Open Access.org where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 49:30 We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 49:35 And remember, go forth and.

Winston Benjamin 49:38 Be awesome. Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 49:41 You make a difference.