From Duck Organs to Genius Hour: What Inquiry-Based Education Actually Looks Like

I was seven years old when I got my first pair.

Just kidding, but Ben, hit me up if you ever read this.

I was seven years old when my science teacher brought duck organs into our second-grade classroom. Actual hearts, lungs, and other mysterious bits laid out on a table at the front of the room. He wasn't lecturing about body systems. Instead, he asked these massive questions: "What does the heart do? What do the lungs do? Do they work together?"

I remember being absolutely captivated. It didn't feel like he was teaching us anything, but looking back on it now, I was really trying to think through the connections of these organs and accessing my prior knowledge of what he had talked about in class and what I had read. I was really learning. Not memorizing facts for a test, but actually developing an understanding of how bodies work by looking at the real thing and figuring it out.

That was my first encounter (I think) with inquiry-based education, though I wouldn't know to call it that for years. It would take becoming a teacher myself to understand what made that moment so powerful, and why most education misses the mark entirely.

Two ducks in mid-flight - Wix Stock Photo

The Accidental Discovery

Years later, I found myself standing in front of my own sixth-grade classroom, having heard about this thing called "Genius Hour." Based on Google's famous 20% time where employees could work on whatever interested them, I figured I'd give it a shot in my English Language Arts class.

The concept was simple: students would come up with a big research question, decide how they wanted to share their findings, then work backwards from there. No predetermined format, no rigid requirements. Just genuine curiosity and the freedom to pursue it.

In six years of running Genius Hour, I only remember one student ever writing a traditional essay or research paper. Instead, they created experiences. One eleven-year-old dove deep into the neuroscience of hypnosis, then demonstrated three different hypnosis techniques on his classmates while explaining what was happening in their brains. He connected it to sales methodologies and conflict resolution. Brilliant doesn't even begin to cover it.

Another student built a human model out of 2x4s and pop bottles to demonstrate cryogenic preservation. Three kids completely disassembled my old smartphone, created videos explaining each component, then reassembled it into working condition.

Throughout this experience, I noticed that these students were asking for more time to work on their projects. They were going to the public library on weekends. They were recruiting family members to help. If I could bring something into school that made students want to engage with learning outside of school hours, I felt like I had found something pretty close to the peak of engagement.

The Reality No One Talks About

But here's what nobody tells you about inquiry-based education. It's terrifying for teachers. There's this assumption that it's the easy way out, or that it's a lazy method of teaching. That's not the case. You're spending just as much time as you would lecturing, but on different things.

I expected to guide more and lecture less. What I didn't expect was how much of a backseat I'd actually take. My role shifted from information distributor to something more like a project manager. I was finding resources, coordinating field trips, making budget decisions, and basically ensuring there was a responsible adult in the room while students pursued their own learning.

You're not just stepping aside, you're relinquishing control of most of the learning process. For teachers who are used to being the center of attention, disseminating information, it can feel like a professional identity crisis.

Early on, I spent a lot of my time frantically trying to relate what students were doing to curriculum outcomes. I was really worried about making curricular connections. Later, because I became more familiar with the process, I found that students became more comfortable too and I very much became kind of a supervisor. If they wanted to spend money on anything, I had the budget. If they wanted to go anywhere, we'd work out the details.

The students needed an adult in the room for supervision, but they were very engaged, very responsible, and very involved in the process. I began recognizing that my role as a “teacher” can look very different from what I was taught in University.

When Inquiry Goes Spectacularly Wrong

Not everything worked. For example, my first attempt to bring inquiry into math was a pretty spectacular failure. I tried to create an inquiry-based math project around long division, and it was rough. I remember having to sit down with my class afterwards and say, "Hey, I tried something and it didn't work. I'm sorry. We're going to have to do this again."

To their credit, I had a very mature group, and they said, "Yeah, we figured as much. You're probably going to have to go over this stuff again."

The problem wasn't inquiry itself. I think I could do long division with inquiry now, but it definitely didn't work at the time because I had made it a lot more rigid. I was still trying to control the outcome instead of letting genuine inquiry happen.

That flexibility, from both instructor and students, might be the most crucial factor. You have to be willing to read the room and occasionally trash the whole thing if it's not working. I think at the heart of inquiry-based education is the fact that you're dealing with humans, and there has to be a relationship aspect to it. As long as everyone can be flexible, then inquiry-based education can be successful.

The Breakthrough That Changed Everything

One of my biggest breakthrough moments was with an early middle-years class. I had two students who wanted to go to the library downtown because they had found a resource, a reference book that couldn't be checked out. I had told them it's pretty difficult for us to justify booking a bus and paying for it to go downtown for half a day or a full day just for the sake of two students.

These students then not only solved the budget part, they found a program that I had never heard of before. They learned that in our city, as long as you book two weeks in advance, classrooms can take the city bus for free. Then they canvassed the rest of the class to see if anybody else could benefit from a trip downtown for their inquiry project.

That was a huge breakthrough for me, not only presenting students with problems because they're so intelligent, but I never underestimated the maturity of students again. From that point on, I always made sure to assume that students were more mature than I thought. For the rest of my career, it became a very safe assumption to assume that they were capable of more than they showed. I carry that through to today as well. No matter what sort of student or learner I'm dealing with, I always assume that they are more capable than what they initially appear to be. That is more often the case.

The Assessment Challenge

This might be still my biggest difficulty with inquiry-based learning. Assessment is a big part of what you learn when becoming a teacher. Authentic assessment, formative assessment, summative assessment are all really important pieces. If we don't have assessment, we don't know whether students learned what we intended for them to learn.

With some things, it's very easy to assess. Math is the example I use all the time. If you're assessing their ability to add two-digit numbers together, that's easy. You can give them two-digit numbers, and you can see whether they can add them together or not. However, can they apply that in a different situation? If they go out into the real world and are shopping, do they understand that if they take two bags of chips and look at the price tags, they then have to add those two numbers together?

When assessment comes into play, and especially where I am now with essential skills, those are even more difficult to assess. How can you assess someone's patience? How can you assess someone's growth mindset?

For curricular outcomes (those specific government-mandated objectives), I would have a question ready for them when they presented. I had one student who did some solar system stuff, so I asked a question about mass. I asked “Why would you weigh something different on a different planet? What does that even mean?” They were able to answer it, so I said, okay, that student understands how gravity works.

Where I ended up, both in teaching elementary school and now, is using self-reflection as a means of assessment. I usually begin lessons with conversations with students where I ask some probing questions about whatever skill we’re working on and have them jot down a quick response. Then we do that same exercise at the end, but with a twist. Instead of just reflecting, one thing I love doing now is asking the students to analyze the difference (or non-difference) in their reflections. If they had a certain understanding of communication before the class, and a different understanding after class, what changed? If nothing changed after an hour or so of training, why?

Is it perfect assessment? No. Are we working towards more authentic assessments? Yes. Especially in today's day and age, marks mean less than they used to. Even as a facilitator right now, I would rather work with students that are trying their best as opposed to students who came out of high school with the highest marks. If they happen to be the same, awesome. But I would rather work with somebody who is willing to learn and willing to put the effort in.

The Six Degrees Connection

What I discovered through all those inquiry projects was something like the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" principle. Eventually, I can connect what students are doing to what the goal is with targeted questions and prompts. I'm definitely not perfect, but I'm a lot better than I used to be. I think it's because I did so much of it when I was teaching elementary school.

This ability has been invaluable in my current work with game-based learning. I always throw out really big open-ended questions like "What makes good communication?" in the hopes that students will eventually come to the conclusion that, well, it depends. It depends what the intention is, who's communicating, who they're communicating with. There are a bunch of different aspects to what makes good communication.

Then we start a conversation about, okay, in today's lesson, we're only focusing on communication. Our goal is this. This is who's going to be communicating. This is who they're communicating to. So in this situation, what makes good communication? Starting it off with that inquiry angle so that students have to think through the process a little bit and address their own assumptions about the skills that they're practicing before actually getting into it.

There's very rarely a direct correlation between the skill and the game that I'm using. I am able to make up for it in the facilitation and the way the experience is designed around the game.

Where This Is All Heading

I don't think inquiry-based education is necessarily going anywhere. I feel like it's becoming more prevalent. There is an influx of project-based education, play-based education, outdoor education. These kinds of unique programs seem to be popping up all over the place where they're more targeted at careers or work experience, and I think a lot of those incorporate some inquiry-based philosophies.

I don't think there are going to be inquiry-only situations or courses. I do think it's beginning to percolate through education in general.

When it comes to AI, remote learning, and all the changes in education that have happened since I was in the classroom, I think it makes inquiry-based education so much more accessible. Both from the facilitator standpoint and the student standpoint. Being able to use a tool like AI to find those cross-curricular integrations that was just logistically difficult before, to look at huge curricula and try to find the minute details that might connect between subjects. I think AI could be used to really lighten that load, as well as things like designing experiments, parent communication, research.

Remote learning has made it easier to access human resources that are farther away. It seemed more difficult to set up a Zoom meeting with someone before COVID, and it's far easier and far less of a novelty to set up a Zoom meeting or a remote lesson after COVID because that forced the world to embrace that option.

I think that the development of technology has made it more accessible and more viable because with inquiry, it's a lot more difficult for students to cheat. With certain research questions, they could put it into an artificial intelligence engine and get a legitimate response with sources and authors. However, with a well-structured inquiry-based project, no matter how often they're using AI or the Internet or any other tools, they are still being forced to develop a foundational knowledge of whatever they're researching.

The Heart of It All

I think the foundation of inquiry-based education is in two parts: humility and curiosity.

It connects to my personal values because I never want to be in a place in my life where I think I know everything. I've said this for years: if I ever won the lottery and never had to work again, I would go back to school. Not because I enjoy being a student, but because I enjoy learning. There's so much out there to know and to discover. I also understand that even in my small little sphere of expertise, I still don't know everything. I don't ever want to be in a position where I feel like I know everything.

The other side to that is curiosity and the willingness to seek more understanding. I don't necessarily always remember the information that I read or write or hear about, and I kind of let that go. Instead of seeking information, whether that's dates, figures, or concepts, I want to understand things better. I think that those two pieces, humility and curiosity, are the foundation of inquiry-based education.

If you don't have those things, it's not going to work.

What This Means for You

If you're considering inquiry-based approaches, start small. Read Trevor MacKenzie's "Dive Into Inquiry." It was published in 2016, but it had this really great structure of, if you've always been that teacher at the front of the room and you want to start experimenting with this, here's a slow release into the process with really great gradual shifts. The first time you try this, maybe don't go to a full inquiry lesson. The second time you try this, give the students a little bit more control and a little bit more ownership. That's how I learned what my new role was going to be in the classroom.

That book helped me a lot. Even just to read it and see if inquiry-based learning is something that interests you. It's a very short book. It didn't stop me from making mistakes, but it’s a quick enough read that I would recommend this as a first step.

Expect to feel uncomfortable. For the facilitator, you have to be willing to relinquish control. For some people that can be a little bit intimidating, or scary. But if you're not willing to not be the center of attention that's disseminating the information, then it won't be as successful.

Most importantly, assume that your learners are more capable than they initially appear. Give them real problems to solve, meaningful questions to explore, and the flexibility to pursue understanding in their own way. The willingness to pursue an answer is necessary from the learner perspective. You can help make sure that’s a reality by giving them the right kind of challenge.

Those duck organs from my second-grade classroom weren't just a clever teaching trick. They represented a fundamental shift in how learning happens. Instead of being told about body systems, we discovered them. Instead of memorizing facts, we built understanding. Instead of consuming information, we became active investigators of the world around us.

That's what inquiry-based education offers: the chance to transform learners from passive recipients into active explorers. In a world that's changing faster than any curriculum can keep up with, that might be the most valuable skill we can develop.

Curious how inquiry-based principles can transform your team's learning experiences? Whether through strategic questioning or game-based discovery, let's design an approach that builds genuine understanding rather than surface-level knowledge.