Award-Winning Educators Reflect on the Power of Curiosity in Teaching

During an age of schooling in which the number of screens in the classrooms can outnumber students, this article makes a case for old fashioned, screen-free curiosity. Hear from award-winning teachers on the ways they leverage the power of curiosity to enhance teaching and support learning.

The Lure, and Distraction, of Screens

I started teaching in September of 2006 exactly one day before the 2^nd book in the Twilight series and two days before the movie Borat were released. It was a big week.

Technologically speaking, 2006 was also the year that Facebook was opened to everyone (before that you needed a university email to sign up), the year that Twitter launched (fun fact! X used to be called Twitter! Weird, right?), and the year that Microsoft released its first/last portable music player, the Zune (fun fact! There are no fun facts related to the Microsoft Zune!).

In my first few years as a teacher, my school (like most at the time) had a computer lab shared between all classes. Teachers had to sign up ahead of time to use the computers. Students had to stand up and walk to use a computer. I was teaching when the computer lab gave way to laptop carts, and then during COVID when we rushed to get a device into the hands of every student. Now that so many school hours involve eyeballs on LCDs, I worry that we may miss some of the most important lessons, the most important skills we could be sharing in our classrooms.

When students depend too much on screens, they can easily miss the deeper thinking skills they need to live, work, and thrive in a tech-rich world.

Defining Curiosity

While researching for 50 Strategies for Learning without Screens, I was taken by the consistency with which professors, industry leaders, and researchers were clear that today’s young people would need skills like curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration far more than any specific kind of programing, operating, or technological skills.

When reading about the power of curiosity, I came across the work of George Loewenstein, a professor of Economics and Psychology, who defined curiosity as “the anticipation of rewarding information” in his 1994 paper, The Psychology of Curiosity.

I love this, and I can’t think of a single better way to express how I wish students felt every time they walked into school, or opened a book, or met a new person. Curiosity is maybe the most powerful gift we can give to young people. Actually, we can’t give it to them, because they already have it, we just need to give them space and tools and encouragement and inspiration to use it.

Real Teaching Moments that Showcase the Power of Curiosity

I asked a few award-winning educators their favorite “power of curiosity” moments, and was taken by the joy of learning, the depth of learning, the relevancy of the learning in the replies that I received from Pre-K to high school classrooms. I’m sharing their reflections on the power of curiosity to inspire teaching and learning in your own classroom.

"A moment that always makes me smile is actually from my first or second year of teaching. I asked my Algebra 2 students if they thought mathematics was invented or discovered. They debated this topic for days (in between doing problems). I remember thinking this was the most alive I’d ever seen many of my students. Their curiosity was sparked. It was a pivot point for me: I started to make space for more nuance (which actually shows up more than one might suspect in math) and started a very slow but intentional journey of de-centering myself and centering my students and their ideas instead."

– Rebecka Peterson, 2023 National Teacher of the Year

"Students are so rarely excited about being given answers, or at least not as much as they are about questions. At the start of one of my favorite lessons, one where I felt the information was really important for them to have, instead of giving them all this information, I would ask a series of questions that would get them thinking: What do you know about the Black Panther Party? How do you know this about them? Who does this narrative benefit? Who does this narrative ignore?"

– Jemelleh Coes, Georgia State Teacher of the Year, Director of Teacher Leadership at Mount Holyoke College

"Last week in US Government, we were talking about voting rights, and I posed a question that I thought would be kind of a philosophical question, that would generate some conversation, and the room took off for like twenty minutes.

The question I posed is: If citizenship truly matters, which is more deleterious to democracy? Allowing people who are not eligible to vote to engage in the electoral process, or denying people who are eligible the right to engage in order to prevent the corruption of elections?

One of the things I realized about curiosity is, you have to give it room to breathe. I think often teachers go into conversations and we’re like, “oh, I’m going to ask this question and expect deeper engagement, and I want it to happen in like one to three minutes. And sometimes, you’ve gotta just let kids cook."

– Nate Bowling, Washington State Teacher of the Year, National Teacher of the Year Finalist, host of The Nerd Farmer Podcast

"In early childhood, children are so naturally curious that the lesson plan is rarely what's leading our learning. One spring afternoon as we splashed in puddles, my preschool students began to notice the worms stranded on the sidewalk after the morning rain. This led to conversations about why that was happening, how we could help, and some deep learning about invertebrates. I scrapped our afternoon plans and pulled out all of our books and resources about worms. I was reminded that their natural curiosity is the highest motivator for learning, and educators must create a space where questions and exploration can be nurtured long after early childhood."

– Tabatha Rosproy, 2020 National Teacher of the Year

"Nate Bowling (who has famously described his role as a teacher as a “Nerd Farmer,” which is both hilarious and aspirational) said, 'The best way to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom is to improve the discourse, and the best way to improve the discourse is to improve the question.' What questions will you ask of your students to harness the power of curiosity this year?"

The power of curiosity, my friends, the joy of and the potential of a brand-new question, may just be the mightiest tool and most important goal to prepare our students for the world they will build. Apply these words of wisdom in your classroom to inspire creativity and lesson the lure of screens as tools for learning.