Cultivating Curiosity

Resource Download

Enjoy this free download of Inquiry through the Creative Process.

Ramsey

Thank you for having me.

Susan

Of course. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey, both as a science educator and you know any of the history behind who you are?

Ramsey

Yeah, sure. I have been a science teacher for the last 20, 21 years. I started teaching in San Francisco in 2001 at a large school, co-ed school there, and I taught chemistry and biology. And now I teach at a school for the past seven years in Sonoma County, and I teach physics and chemistry and biology and engineering and all kinds of stuff here. I started my journey to start as a teacher, came out of the medical school track, so medical school didn’t work out. And then I had a science, a canon of science, understanding and preparing for that path that I then transferred over into teaching and went on to get my master’s and PhD at University of San Francisco while teaching there. So that’s sort of a general history of my past and current state as a teacher.

Susan

Yeah, of your journey as a teacher. So by the way, the subjects that you teach, I am fascinated by. My daughter is currently in physics and she is, it’s the roller coaster of love and life and hate and life when it comes to physics for her. So thank you so much for what you do. So some people may not know that you have a TED Talk, which is fantastic, but in that TED Talk, you share the true role of an educator is to cultivate curiosity. So I’m curious what you mean by that and how we could do that when we’re faced with so many obstacles right now in education.

Ramsey

Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realize that the classroom is one of the only spaces where we kind of sometimes forget the natural tendencies that we have as people to be drawn towards things. So if you think about any story, any book, any show, anything we do or we look at or we’re engaged, the information that explains the phenomena comes after the presentation of the phenomena. So whether it’s, you know, like I said, a book or a good movie, a great conversation, a great riddle, there’s always some sort of mystery box where the information exists and you don’t really necessarily know what’s inside it. And it isn’t until later that the contents are revealed, but it is not until the person wants those contents to be revealed.

But in the classroom sometimes we forget this because of time constraints and because of this pseudo idea that it’s going to take more time if we don’t tell students information right away. So you see this a lot in science education where there’ll be a lecture and there’ll be some information given, there’ll be practice problems, whatever it may be, and then the lab occurs.

and then the lab is supposed to facilitate a deeper understanding of what the lecture was on. But the problem with that is it doesn’t ask the question, do they want to do the lab? And it also rips the mystery of what’s going to happen in the lab from the students. And we kind of forget that nothing else in the world works that way. There literally isn’t a single thing that was driven by engagement that I can think of where the information is presented first and then the exploration happens second. So in terms of timing, it really isn’t, there is no difference in timing. All it is is switching when things happen. So it’s saying the lab is now going to be about building questions or the exploration or the activity is all about cultivating curiosity or building questions naturally first and then the mentor or the teacher will come in to resolve and quench that curiosity. So it’s absolutely no difference in timing. But it’s a harder way to teach. And it puts students in a position where they have questions. And those questions guide the lecture. So there’s a little bit less control. So I think when people say they don’t have enough time, that’s all kind of a cop out for I don’t want to change the way I do things, because I have more control when I do it this way.

Susan

Yeah, so I’m curious when you do the lab first and then you have, that facilitates the conversation, right? To kind of dig into the nitty gritty about why things happened in the lab. Do you ever do the lab again as a way of closure so that students could then look at it through a different lens now that, you know, they’ve had the mystery, they’ve had it, they’ve gone through that experience, kind of a way to wrap it up or reflect it differently?

Ramsey

Yeah, absolutely. So if you go to my website, soccoswithlearning.com, you’ll see a book that I wrote that’s based on the TED Talk, and then lots of blog posts. And most of the writing I do is on that exact thing. It’s taking kind of the hero’s journey sort of metaphor and layering it on top of the inquiry lesson design. So if you think of your standard hero’s journey, the hero is called to adventure, right? So in education, we would say we’re going to spark their curiosity first, right? That’s the call to adventure. The hero then is approached with some sort of threshold challenge. And in education, we would say we’re going to ask them to explore content. That’s the first lab, right? The purpose of the threshold challenge is to drive them towards some sort of mentor that’s going to give them more information to color that in so that they can then move forward.

That would be the lecture after the lab, right? And then the hero goes on and is transformed. So that would be the second lab you’re talking about where now they have more information to do another variation of the lab or some new thing that’s gonna require them to use the algorithms or whatever happened from the mentorship. And then the hero returns home to be judged and that’s sort of the evaluation piece. So yeah, the way I always do it is there’s the inquiry lab at the beginning.

There is a lecture, there’s practice, and then there’s an extension lab. And a lot of times in your traditional classroom, you have that lecture, then you have the practice, and then you have the lab. And then you’re also dealing with lack of motivation, and you’re dealing with sort of this inauthentic piece that actually ends up taking more time than moving in this flow. So a lot of times that extension lab ends up being part of the assessment. So.

Susan

Gotcha. Yeah, so do you feel like people don’t necessarily, this isn’t as commonplace because it requires educators to one, be really strong in their content area, and right now that’s challenging with the state of education where we’re in, right? Or two, that perhaps people are afraid of the questions that they may not know the answers themselves, and then what do you do next?

Ramsey

Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s not that commonplace. I think these structures are in place. So if you look at the next-gen science standards, which are standards, the pedagogy that’s often promoted along with the standards, and I think it’s important to tease the standards versus the pedagogy out, is the 5E learning cycle, which is explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. So that explore and extend are those labs one and two and they explain as a lecture. So I think that this has made it into the narrative of science education in terms of kind of baby steps towards inquiry. So I think people are aware that if you’re going to teach science according to the standards, that any professional development that you’re going to get is going to be leveraging some sort of 5E variation.

In terms of why it might not be happening, places where it’s not happening, I think there are larger issues. So, larger, more infrastructure type things. I think it’s easy to wanna say, like, it’s broken and this stuff’s not happening. But I think really it is. But we’re, as a culture, kind of trying to figure out, like, what place do APs have in this stuff? How do we prepare students for college, especially with AI now, there’s so much things that we’re offloading to our machines that the concept of inquiry is even more important.

Susan

Right, right, and I actually wanna touch on that just a minute because I think one of the things that we’re noticing a lot about AI, particularly as it’s been evolving over the last several months, is the quality of question determines quite a bit of the result that you’re gonna get through the AI, right? So how do you feel like AI is gonna start to change education and how do we start to ask better questions? Because clearly that’s what’s gonna lead to perhaps some better answers.

Ramsey

Yeah, I don’t have an answer to that question yet, because I’m still just tinkering and figuring it out. I think the question is more meta, which is, how can we, from an instructional design perspective, ask better questions? So I think what I mean is, I think the wrong question is, how can we build AI to check for plagiarism and AI and all that kind of stuff? I think those are the wrong, tired, boring questions.

I think the right questions are how is this challenging the way that I approach the way that I design my classroom? And how is this challenging the way that I think about my lesson design and the way that I teach and how can I leverage it and all that kind of stuff in a very, very tailored way? I think one thing that’s kind of counterintuitive is I’m moving away from a lot of technology. in some senses to promote writing when I need it and then bringing it in for the things I need it for. So I think that the victim mentality is alive and well in this sort of last couple of months in education in certain circles. And those might be the same circles where you’ll see people say, we don’t have enough time to do inquiry because we have to push through a curriculum and all that kind of stuff. So…

You know, there are so many ridiculously creative, we could talk for hours about the really amazing creative things that are happening right now with it.

Susan

Well, can you give an example of at least one? Just because I know people are gonna wanna know that’s gonna be their follow-up question, right?

Ramsey

Absolutely. Well, you can go on my blog and see, I blogged about it quite a bit. I just wrote a blog last week on like top 10 ways that you can use AI in the classroom. So cyclesoflearning.com, you’ll see it as the first blog right there. But I’ll pull from it some things that I’ve been using. Sure. For example, right now in my biochemistry class, students are in the process of hypothetically developing proteins that fold in specific ways to sort of simulate the process of synthetic medicine. So I gave students a challenge of building a protein out of like 40, 50 amino acids that would fold into a certain shape to sort of simulate a insulin receptor for a treatment for type two diabetes, kind of as a thought experiment. So they developed the amino acid sequence, but we all know that now with mRNA medications, what they would actually do is need to get the mRNA sequence for that protein and that would then be the medication. Our body would then create the protein, fold it and use it for whatever we want in our body. So they needed to backtrack and get the mRNA sequence, but anyone who’s familiar with biology would know that it’s 150 RNA bases for 50 amino acid proteins. So there aren’t a lot of good tools online.

I mean, they could do it by hand. They could just go into their codon sheet and take each amino acid and turn it into its associated three-letter base. But I first said, hey, why don’t you go to ChadGBT and ask ChadGBT if it will take your 50 amino acid protein that you designed and tell you what the RNA sequence would be so that you can have that medication. And it wouldn’t do it. It didn’t do it correctly.

It wasn’t doing correctly. So then we said, okay, but we know that it has the information to do it because we know that the most applicable use of the open AI database right now is DeepMind’s work with protein folding. So we’re like, it’s got to be there. So instead of just asking ChatGPT to write the answer, we asked ChatGPT to write a piece of JavaScript that if a protein sequence in one letter codes was added, you will give us the mRNA sequence. So then it did that way better. It wrote the code for a system, and then we took that code and put it in p5.js, which just reads JavaScript, and then that did it perfectly. So that’s an example of it. Like, it’s not, the ability for it to answer questions is limited, but the ability for it to write code to answer questions is much more robust. So doing that, and then students had to go into the code and figure out ways in which they could alter it. So for example, what it did right away is it, for simplicity, if there’s 50 amino acids, each of those amino acids might have multiple codons because of gene mutation evolution tendencies. And the program went through and just picked one codon for each to make the code simpler. So the students went in and created a randomization where it would then pull from other codons without even knowing coding, because it did the archaic piece of it, and then they had to go and investigate it. So that’s one example. In physics class, we were doing things like asking ChatGPT to create a code to simulate a ball falling on Jupiter side by side, a ball falling on earth with no air resistance, and then did the same thing, put that into P5.js, and it created simulations. And then all the kids did that, and kids had to circulate and watch these simulations and try and guess what they asked it. So kids would ask ChatGPT to write a simulation about something related to Newton’s laws.

And then the kids would circulate and look at all one another’s and then try and guess what was the question that was asked? What was the code that was asked? You know?

Susan

Yes, yes, I like that. Yeah being able to reframe and have a different trying to guess that question which then that’s I’m still going to circle back to this because I think it’s part of your book in that that you have on your site which I think is really great is the idea around asking good questions. How do you ask better questions and get that process going? How do you facilitate that with students? Because I think so many times students start with a question, at least this has been my experience, students will start with a question, but they may not know where to go next or how to adjust their question to get what they’re looking for.

Ramsey

Yeah, I don’t know, you know, I don’t do a lot of that. I do a lot of, you know, I do a lot of trying to manipulate the students into asking the question I want them to ask and then putting them in a position where they have to figure it out. And I think that that is the art of having a structured curriculum and also teaching this way, which is like, I want them to be able to do it.

I want them to be like, well, wait, why is the bottom of the slinky not moving when the top has been released? I want them to ask that question. I don’t want them to ask any other question. I want them to ask that. And then I want to say, oh, but by the way, the whole lesson plan today is designed around you answering that question. So I think that that allows it. I think we can get kind of in the weeds with teaching. I mean, there’s all, there’s the right question institute. There’s all kinds of stuff.

But we can get in the weeds with that, rather than just saying, asking questions is an iterative process, and we are just gonna model for them that. So in me showing them how to ask those questions, you know, it models the concept of, oh, it didn’t answer it correctly, so I’m gonna make an adjustment. But there’s so many different ways to do that, that.

You know, I don’t know that teaching kids how to ask good questions is not really part of what I do. Tricking them into asking the ones I want them to ask is, and it’s sort of a different way of looking at it.

Susan

Well, and I also think it’s really important what you just said because earlier in our conversation, you were talking about how you’re flipping the model and it can be a little disconcerting to people who have not done it before because it opens up for the students to be asking the questions and then having that facilitation go on. But what you’re really doing is crafting and providing the boundaries based around the questions that you’re having them explore. So there’s, I think what’s amazing about that is that you’re providing a framework so that it’s not so scary, it’s not the Wild Wild West, right? You have a purpose. And I think that’s important to understand too.

Ramsey

Absolutely. Well, I love what I quoted in the book, but John Stewart has a great quote where he was talking about like the Daily Show back in the day and like why it was so successful and why it was, they were able to be so creative. And he was like, it’s through structure that I find the safety to be creative. So I like that concept of the students feel like it’s chaotic, but they know that there’s a structure to what’s happening.

And it’s captured in the aesthetics of the handbook that they have and when the assignments are due and everything that could possibly be structured mechanically is, which opens up the space for what happens within that container for them to feel captured. And I think that’s where project-based learning and stuff like that, when it’s not done correctly, can just fail.

So I think that that’s another conversation, but I think that there’s so much that can be lost when you subscribe to something like that without thinking about the inquiry cycle as well.

Susan

For sure, for sure. And I think, you know, that’s, we know that as creative individuals that when you place boundaries, it actually enhances the creativity rather than diminishing it. So to kind of parallel to this, how do you find curiosity and creativity intertwining itself within the STEM fields? Because, you know, there’s all this big debate between STEM and STEAM and honestly, I don’t necessarily think there needs to be, but I’m curious as to your take on how creativity and curiosity connect through these fields.

Ramsey

I think that CAD is a big place for that. So you know, in physics, for example, Tinkercad just released a SimLab in it, where you can create 3D models of things and you can give them physics. So I can create a model of a box with another box on top of it, right, using CAD. And then I can give the top box, give it physics and I can make the bottom box static. And then I can throw objects at it and I can watch the way that the top one responds to it. And then I can change its mass and its density and blah, blah, blah. And then I can print those and then do that in real life and see how much the simulation matches what we did there. So you have a technology component, you have an engineering component, you have an art component because they’re making it and so you have all those things, but in reality, that suits it because that piece of technology just happens to be simulating what we’re talking about in class around dynamics and Newton’s laws. And it requires that ability to kind of unite those tasks. 

And so I think CAD is one place where that shows up a lot. I think that AI’s ability to write code gives us the creative freedom to kind of think about the code differently and analyze it differently through a different lens. Rather than I need to understand the difference between classes and objects and Boolean statements, I now understand how to investigate the code and look for where I think this action might exist and how to manipulate that and that kind of stuff, which is a different creative way of looking at the technology.

Susan

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanna honor your time today. So, but there’s a question that I usually ask all of our guests. I’m gonna adjust it slightly. If there’s one thing that you would like to people to know about curiosity and the inquiry process and teaching, what would it be?

Ramsey

I would like it to be that there’s, you know, go home after a long day teaching and watch an episode of your favorite show and watch it in the first five minutes. Imagine that they tell you every single thing that happens in the episode really fast and then you watch the show and then reflect on how engaged you will be and you probably won’t be that engaged. And then know that when we don’t delay the direct instruction, that that’s essentially what we’re doing in the classroom to our students. And just remember that, you know, just because it’s in a school doesn’t mean that it’s not following the same tenets of everything else that exists and already is engaging.

Susan

Wonderful. Well, where can people find you and stay in touch?

Ramsey

This is my website is cyclesoflearning.com and all my contact information is there.

Susan

All right, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. All right.

Ramsey

You’re welcome.

Ramsey’s website – Cycles of Learning