wonderstanding

Category: inquiry

  • Following the Third UAP Hearing: A reflective Guide for Teachers

    Following the Third UAP Hearing: A reflective Guide for Teachers

    Hello fellow educators!

    UFOs, now officially called UAP, are being discussed in our congressional halls. I promise your students will lean into this topic, they love nothing more than a true mystery. Even though other news dominates the media, what could be more exciting or important to explore?

    I have put together questions and prompts to guide you, but of course, you know your students best. As you guide them, honor your own curiosity and responses. Exploring the unknown can be thrilling, confusing, or even unsettling—your feelings are part of the process. Notice what surprises or challenges you. Model what it looks like to ask questions, wrestle with uncertainty, and remain open to discovery. Students respond immediately to authenticity; they are inspired when a teacher explores, wonders, and strives to understand alongside them.

    This guide provides age-appropriate discussion questions and activities to help students engage deeply with the hearing while also encouraging you to notice your own reactions and insights. Curiosity is contagious—the more you allow yourself to wonder, the more your students will too.

    If you are not ready to make this a full lesson, consider simply planting a seed when topics like aliens, space, or the unknown come up. Some easy ways to start the conversation:

    • “Did you know that UFOs are now called UAP? This stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. The term reflects that these craft are not only in the sky but also in our oceans. They are not just flying saucers—they can be triangles, orbs, or even Tic Tacs.”
    • “Did you know we just had our third congressional meeting on UAPs?”

    When students start asking questions, write them down exactly as they ask them. Do not paraphrase. Once one question is out in the open, more will bubble up, especially if you model curiosity and intellectual humility yourself. You don’t need to know all the answers, you need to inspire curiosity and critical thinking. Keep the questions visible in your classroom so they can breathe, evolve, and inspire further exploration.

    Exploring the UAP Congressional Hearing – Teacher & Student Guide

    For teachers and students of all ages

    Purpose: Use the recent congressional hearing on UAPs to inspire curiosity, ethical reflection, critical thinking, and creative exploration. Questions and activities are scaffolded by age group and tied to inquiry domains: wonder, ethics, science, religion, and societal impact.

    Teacher Note: Exploring unknown phenomena can be exciting, confusing, and even unsettling. Your own curiosity and questions are part of the classroom experience. Model inquiry, wonder, and reflection alongside your students. By embracing your own questions and uncertainties, you create a shared learning adventure.

    It is crucial that when discussing topics that can be challenging or provoke different perspectives, especially those that might make students rethink history or question their assumptions, you provide a tool to check in on where they are. The Courageous Conversations Compass is an excellent way to do this before, during, and after the discussion. It helps you understand how students are processing the information and reminds everyone that we all process things differently.

    Key Resources:

    For reference, here are the previous hearings:

    The first hearing with Ryan Graves and David Grusch – video transcript

    Second hearing: Exposing the Truth with written testimonies and video

    news coverage of the latest hearing- what do you notice? what does it make you wonder?

    ABC news

    NBC news

    Newsweek

    Any teacher in any subject can bring this topic into the classroom because it naturally crosses disciplines. From science to history, art, philosophy, and humanities, these questions open doors for students to explore, wonder, and think critically about the unknown. This is an opportunity to ignite curiosity and encourage big-picture thinking in ways that few topics can.

    Harvard’s Project Zero Thinking Routines are an excellent match for the UAP phenomenon.

    Developmentally appropriate questions for the classroom

    Grades 3 through 5

    Focus: Ethics, questioning, observation

    Discussion Questions:

    • What is a whistleblower? Why are they important? Why might someone speak up about things others don’t know?
    • How do we know what is real and what is speculation?
    • How would you feel if you saw something unexplained?

    Activities:

    • Create a “Question Map”: Write a question about the hearing in the center and draw branches for answers, ideas, or guesses.
    • Mini debate: If you discovered something unusual, who should know? Why?
    • Look up terms in the Schumer Amendment: “Non-Human Intelligence,” “Disclosure,” etc.

    Teacher Journal:

    • Take a moment to reflect: what question would you ask if you were in their shoes? What are you wondering right now?
    • As students ask questions about whistleblowers or unexplained phenomena, pay attention to your own questions and uncertainties. What would you like to know more about?

    Middle School

    Focus: Science, evidence, critical thinking, ethics

    Discussion Questions:

    • What evidence was presented? What is missing?
    • What ethical questions arise if this information becomes public?
    • Are there parallels to historical events where whistleblowers revealed important truths?
    • How do science and religion interpret unknown phenomena differently?

    Activities:

    • Analyze a clip or transcript excerpt and classify statements as fact, opinion, or speculation.
    • Research a historical whistleblower and compare their impact to today’s UAP witnesses.
    • Create questions for Congress or scientists based on the hearing.

    Teacher Journal:

    • Quick self-check: which assumptions are being challenged for you? How might your perspective be shifting alongside the students?
    • When analyzing evidence or debating ethical implications, check in with yourself: What assumptions do you hold, and how might your perspective be shifting?

    High School

    Focus: Cross-disciplinary inquiry, societal implications, imagination

    Discussion Questions:

    • How might confirmation of UAPs challenge our assumptions about science, history, or religion?
    • Why is questioning important for society and individuals?
    • What parallels can you find between UAPs and myths, religion, or historical unexplained phenomena?

    Activities:

    Teacher Journal:

    • Reflect silently: where do you feel uncertainty or curiosity? How can you show students that exploring the unknown is valuable?
    • Encourage yourself to sit with discomfort or uncertainty alongside your students. How does your curiosity evolve when confronted with new possibilities?

    College / University

    Focus: Advanced interdisciplinary inquiry, research, theory

    Discussion Questions:

    • How does UAP disclosure challenge epistemology—how we know what we know?
    • What are the ethical responsibilities of governments, scientists, and citizens?
    • What historical or religious parallels help us understand contemporary encounters?
    • How do whistleblowers shape public understanding of unknown phenomena?

    Activities:

    • Comparative analysis: Examine Congressional hearings, historical disclosures, and mythological narratives.
    • Research proposal: Identify gaps in evidence or knowledge, propose ways to investigate responsibly.
    • Facilitate a seminar connecting ethics, science, religion, and imagination in UAP study.

    Teacher Journal:

    • Pause to journal briefly: what ethical, scientific, or societal implications stand out to you personally? How does this inform the questions you guide students to ask?
    • Notice how your own ontological shock or ethical reflections deepen your teaching. How can you model inquiry and critical thinking while remaining open to the unknown?

    Cross-Age Themes & Extensions

    • Schumer Amendment: Use definitions and language as research prompts.
    • Whistleblower Studies: Discuss types, roles, and societal impact.
    • Ethics & Society: Reflect on how discovery of unknown phenomena affects communities and decision-making.
    • The Importance of Questions: Emphasize inquiry, curiosity, and critical thinking as central skills.

    Parallels & Connections: Compare UAP phenomena to myths, religious stories, and historical “unknowns.”

  • An invitation

    An invitation

    Hey y’all

    The future is here. As teachers, we feel it every day. I don’t need to tell you how surreal it is. The world our students are growing up in is shifting fast. Artificial intelligence is changing how we think, work, and learn. Climate change and political instability are reshaping what it means to live on this planet. And what was once the stuff of science fiction, like UFOs, is now being discussed in Congress and covered by mainstream news.

    These days, the term UAP, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, is used instead of UFO. “Anomalous” reflects how strange and hard to classify these sightings are. They’re not always in the sky. Some have been reported in oceans or space. Others seem to defy known physics entirely. The term helps make space for the unknown, without assuming too much.

    In recent years, credible sources have begun to acknowledge the existence of phenomena we don’t yet understand.

    And yet, for a long time, topics like these, along with consciousness, non-human intelligence, and alternative knowledge systems, have been silenced by stigma. We’ve been taught not to ask questions that challenge the norm. To keep things simple. Safe. Predictable. But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

    If you’ve ever wondered what’s real, what’s true, or what it all means, you’re not alone.

    We don’t need to have all the answers. What we do need is to model intellectual curiosity, humility, and critical thinking—and to make the search for understanding feel like an adventure. As educators, our role is to create space for better questions.

    Questions that stretch our imagination. That cross disciplines. That invite mystery. That make us pause and say, Wait… what? What if?

    We can model what it looks like to live inside the questions. To sit with uncertainty. To wonder openly and stay grounded anyway. That’s what students need—not polished certainty, but the courage to think out loud.

    We don’t need to be experts. We just need to be real.

    Kids love big questions. They want to talk about what truly matters. When we make room for wonder, they lean in. And honestly, we need that wonder too. It’s what keeps us alive in the work.

    Wonder is the antidote to burnout. To disconnection. To apathy. It reminds us why any of this matters.

    Whether you’re skeptical (welcome), curious (you belong here), or already exploring these questions (hello, friend), I welcome you.

    This is a space to challenge what we’ve been told, question assumptions, and open to what else might be true.

    Conversations around UAPs, non-human intelligence, and consciousness are becoming harder to ignore. We’re being invited to rethink science, history, and what it means to be human.

    And maybe, just maybe, religion was more literal than we thought. Maybe ancient stories weren’t just metaphor or myth. They were people’s best attempts to describe real experiences. Mythology, too, may hold truths that were never given the respect they deserved. What have we dismissed too easily because it didn’t fit our frameworks?

    Who decides what counts as knowledge? What stories have been left out? What questions have been dismissed too soon?

    Science was never meant to be a set of fixed answers. It’s a process. History should be a living inquiry, not a closed narrative.

    Educational narratives have long been shaped by colonial systems that marginalized Indigenous epistemologies and excluded knowledge systems that diverged from Western paradigms.

    What if we made room for those, too?

    What if wonder mattered just as much as knowledge?

    What if we prepared students not by handing them facts, but by giving them permission to explore the unknown?

    Right now, conversations about human consciousness are accelerating. Podcasts like The Telepathy Tapes explore our untapped potential. The psychedelic renaissance is bringing together ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience. And across disciplines, more people are asking what it means to truly know, to feel, to connect.

    This work isn’t just for teachers. It’s for school leaders, chaplains, counselors, parents—anyone who cares about how young people make sense of the world.

    I’m not here to convince you of anything. I’m not selling certainty. I’m offering an invitation: to be curious, to wonder, and to ask the questions that don’t yet have answers.

    How do we best serve our kids in this moment?

  • fostering intellectual humility: addressing stigma in education

    fostering intellectual humility: addressing stigma in education

    Deeper Questions for Self-Reflection

    Fostering Intellectual Humility and Navigating Stigma in Education
    Reflective Questions for Educators

    This set of questions invites educators to reflect deeply on their teaching practice, embracing complexity and uncertainty while considering how the role of the teacher may be evolving. Encouraging a balance between openness and critical inquiry, these questions invite you to explore how stigma and fear may limit what is explored in the classroom. Perhaps most importantly, they ask how intellectual humility can be modeled without compromising rigor.

    What questions or topics have you hesitated to explore, either for yourself or with your students? How might concerns about stigma or acceptability influence those boundaries?

    In moments of uncertainty or when faced with unknowns, how do you demonstrate intellectual humility? How can you admit what you don’t know while still guiding and supporting your students confidently?

    What might it look like to bring awe, ambiguity, and curiosity about anomalies into your teaching practice? How could embracing these elements shift not only school culture but also broader societal attitudes toward knowledge and learning?

    How do you foster a safe environment for students to share unusual or deeply personal experiences and perspectives without fear of judgment or dismissal?

    In a rapidly changing world, what kind of educator do you aspire to be? Are you preparing students primarily to recall facts, or to engage with uncertainty and complexity using courage, discernment, and empathy?

    How do you balance openness to new ideas with healthy skepticism and critical thinking? What role does intellectual humility play in maintaining this balance?

  • Start Where You Are: Personal Reflections for Teaching on the Edge of Mystery

    Start Where You Are: Personal Reflections for Teaching on the Edge of Mystery

    Personal Reflections: Start Where You Are

    These prompts invite you to reflect inwardly. Use them as journaling tools, warm-ups, or group conversation starters. Begin from wherever you are. There are no wrong answers, only your honest perspective.

    Think globally, locally, internally. What’s changing for you?

    Have you ever experienced something that didn’t quite fit with what you’ve learned from science? How did it make you feel? Did you try to explain it, or just sit with it?

    How do you respond to words like non-human intelligence, unidentified anomalous phenomena, or consciousness? Which word feels the most curious or strange to you? Why?

    What happens inside you when you allow something entirely new into your understanding of reality? Is it unsettling? Exciting? Confusing? Beautiful?

    How do you react when certainty begins to slip away? Do you try to hold on tighter, or let go and see where it takes you?

    What signs do you notice that something big might be shifting in the world?

  • For Educators Willing to Sit with Mystery

    For Educators Willing to Sit with Mystery

    These prompts explore the intersection of mystery, teaching, and transformation. They are for those willing to rethink what it means to teach in a time of cultural and cosmic change.

    Existence, Reality, and the Universe

    These questions invite us to step outside what we think we know and wonder about the bigger picture.

    What do you believe is true about reality? What counts as “real” to you? How has that informed your approach to teaching?

    What are the limits of our perception? How might other forms of life experience reality in ways we can’t yet imagine?

    Experience, Mystery, and Anomalies

    Many people have moments that don’t fit inside the usual scientific boxes. What do we do with those experiences? Do we hide them, or get curious?

    Have you ever seen, heard, or felt something you couldn’t explain using present-day science?

    What stories or beliefs have shaped your sense of what’s possible or impossible? Where did those stories come from?

    Emotion, Language, and Stigma

    How do terms like non-human intelligence, unidentified anomalous phenomena, consciousness, or ontological shock make you feel?

    How has stigma shaped the boundaries of what we allow ourselves, or our students, to explore?

    Teaching in Uncertainty

    Being an educator doesn’t mean having all the answers. Sometimes it means showing students how to live with the questions.

    How can we model curiosity, humility, and care in moments of uncertainty?

    How can you hold space for students’ questions without needing to have answers?

    A Pedagogy of Wonder

    What if the job isn’t to be the authority, but to stay awake to awe and mystery? What if that’s where real learning begins?

    What would it look and feel like to teach from a place of wonder rather than control?

    What if teaching wasn’t about delivering content, but about holding space for the biggest questions we can ask about reality itself?

  • rethinking education: what does It mean to be human?

    rethinking education: what does It mean to be human?

    What Does It Mean to Be Human?

    This is the question I’ve spent my life exploring, with children, educators, and communities. It’s the thread that runs through everything I do: teaching, curriculum design, the humanities, justice work, mindfulness, and now helping others navigate the unfolding reality of UAPs and Non-Human Intelligence (NHI).

    For centuries, we’ve explored this question through history, science, religion, literature, and philosophy. We’ve defined ourselves by our intellect, creativity, compassion, and desire to make meaning. Some of the stories we’ve told about ourselves have been expansive and beautiful. Others have been limiting or exclusionary.

    But today, something is shifting. If we are not alone in the universe, if there are other forms of life, intelligence, or consciousness, what does that mean for how we understand ourselves?

    How do we define what it means to be human if we are not the only ones asking the question?

    Expanding Our Definition

    For too long, education has centered on delivering the “right” answers. But now, more than ever, we need the courage to ask better questions.

    In my teaching, I invite children to wonder freely. Together, we explore:

    • Do you consider humans animals?
    • What makes us similar to other animals? What makes us different?
    • What might explain those differences?
    • How do we treat other species in science and industry? What does that reveal about our values?
    • What if another species treated us the way we treat animals?
    • What if humans are not the pinnacle of creation?
    • What else on this planet might be sentient?
    • How might other animals or beings experience reality in ways we cannot imagine?

    These are no longer just imaginative or philosophical questions. They now live at the edge of science, history, and spirituality. And they are becoming more timely and real.

    Rethinking Education

    As new information emerges and challenges our assumptions, we have an opportunity to rethink the very purpose of education.

    Education should not be a conveyor belt of facts. It should be a space where we learn to hold questions. A space for imagination, empathy, and critical thinking. A place where we unlearn what no longer serves us and begin to see the world, and ourselves, with new eyes.

    This is not about replacing one worldview with another. It’s about learning to live with complexity. To remain curious and open in the face of mystery.

    If the unknown includes forms of intelligence beyond humanity, or beyond Earth, then the classroom becomes more than a site of knowledge. It becomes a space for deep, transformative inquiry.

    Practicing Inquiry Together

    These questions are not abstract. They can be brought into real classrooms with real students, right now, as journaling prompts, circle discussions, art explorations, or collaborative projects.

    Here are a few that can guide inquiry:

    • What makes us human?
    • What assumptions do we hold about our uniqueness or superiority?
    • Are we alone in the universe? What do you believe, and why?
    • How might other forms of life experience reality?
    • What counts as sentience, and who gets to decide?
    • What stories or cultural traditions suggest we’ve been connected to other intelligences?
    • How has knowledge about other beings or deeper human potential been dismissed, hidden, or controlled?
    • Who decides what is real or valid knowledge?

    When we explore these questions together, we practice exactly the kind of thinking and courage this moment asks of us.

    A New Chapter

    As we step into the next chapter of human history, we will need more than just new technologies. We will need new ways of knowing and being. We’ll need empathy, imagination, and a willingness to stretch our understanding beyond old boundaries.

    This is the spirit of education I believe in.

    Not one that prepares students only for college or tests, but for the mystery of existence itself. One that honors our place in a vast, complex universe. One that teaches us how to ask honest questions, and how to live with them.

    So I’ll ask again:

    What do you think it means to be human?

  • Why Epistemology Matters More Than Ever

    Why Epistemology Matters More Than Ever

    Epistemology is about knowledge. It asks how we know what we know, why we believe it, and what counts as truth. It challenges us to look at what we’ve accepted without question and to wonder what might still be missing.

    In schools, what we teach—and just as importantly, what we leave out—shapes how students see the world and their place in it. Science is often taught as a fixed set of answers instead of a way to ask better questions. History is treated like a closed book, not an evolving record shaped by power, perspective, and silence. The humanities get pushed aside, labeled soft or extra, instead of being treated as vital tools for understanding what it means to be human.

    But the world is changing. The questions are getting bigger. And we need thinkers who are ready.

    We need ethicists, mystics, dreamers, artists, and scientists who can hold complexity, sit with the unknown, and imagine new paths forward. Technical skill is important, but it’s not enough. We also need wisdom, discernment, curiosity, and heart.

    That’s why epistemology belongs in our classrooms. It invites students to ask:

    What is real?
    Who decides?
    What happens when our old answers no longer fit the questions?

    Because reality is shifting. New stories are rising. Paradigms are cracking. If we aren’t teaching students how to question, how to stay curious, how to sit with uncertainty and still stay grounded, we aren’t preparing them for the world that’s coming.

    Here are the kinds of questions that matter now:

    • What happens when epistemology becomes part of the curriculum?
    • How do you define what is real? What do you define as not real?
    • Is reality objective, subjective, or something else entirely?
    • How do perception and bias shape what we see and understand?
    • How has knowledge—about other intelligences or even our own human potential—been dismissed, hidden, or tightly controlled?
    • Who gets to decide what counts as science or history?
    • What stories are we handing down, and what truths are we leaving out?
    • Are we teaching students to think critically or just to fit in?

    Let’s raise a generation that questions, imagines, and stays awake. Let’s teach them how to build something new from the ground up.