Episode 93: Sparking Curiosity with Olivia Odileke of Kampus Insights
Olivia Odileke is the dynamic CEO of Kampus Insights and a passionate advocate for innovative education. As the author of "Beginner's Guide to Nearpod" and "Spark Curiosity: A Guide to Quick Inquiry Tasks," Olivia has established herself as a leading voice in educational technology and student engagement strategies. With a track record of training over 15,000 teachers, Olivia is on a mission to revolutionize the student learning experience.
Olivia and her team at Kampus Insights live by the mantra: "Sparking curiosity is the holy grail of teaching." In this episode she expands on her mantra, and we go on to discuss strategies for engaging students in the classroom, emphasizing the importance of personalized, teacher-centered approaches, and sparking curiosity in teachers and students.
Topics Discussed:
Going from being a teacher to providing inspiring professional development for teachers
Why Olivia believes sparking curiosity is the “holy grail of teaching”
Strategies for adapting curiosity-driven teaching methods
Resources mentioned:
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Read the transcript for this episode:
Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.
Olivia Odileke is the dynamic CEO of Kampus Insights and a passionate advocate for innovative education. As the author of "Beginner's Guide to Nearpod" and "Spark Curiosity: A Guide to Quick Inquiry Tasks," Olivia has established herself as a leading voice in educational technology and student engagement strategies. With a track record of training over 15,000 teachers, Olivia is on a mission to revolutionize the student learning experience. Her latest initiative, the Spark Student Curiosity Free Online Course, aims to reach 100,000 teachers in the next three years, equipping educators with powerful tools to ignite wonder in their students. Olivia and her team at Kampus Insights live by the mantra: "Sparking curiosity is the holy grail of teaching." This philosophy drives their work to empower educators and transform learning experiences. Welcome, Olivia.
Lily Jones
Welcome, Olivia. So nice to have you here.
Olivia Odileke:
Oh, so nice to be here, Lily. I really appreciate the opportunity
Lily Jones
To share. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I'm excited to hear more about your experience as an educator. If you can start by telling us in whatever shape or form you'd like to about your journey as an educator, that would be great.
Olivia Odileke
Well, I actually started out in industrial engineering and I worked in the field for about five years and I made a transition because my niece and nephew were having some challenges in middle school. So I actually kind of started off substitute teaching one day a week. And from that I developed this love for kids. I already had a love for learning. And so my next position was I went and went through the teacher preparation stages and I got a job as a middle school science teacher. And I was really passionate about hands-on learning because I had saw the end result of my learning and saw how high school really didn't prepare me for college personally. It did not prepare me for the critical thinking, the working and projects collaboration, all of the things that I did. And so I wanted to bring that real hand. So over time I became interested in teacher training and curriculum development, and this led me to create my own professional development sessions for teachers and eventually develop my own programs. And a lot of my teaching was focused on inquiry-based learning methods. So now I run my own workshops and I consult with schools of several states to help implement curiosity driven teaching approaches.
Lily Jones
Wonderful. And I'm curious about how you made that transition. We were talking a little bit before we started recording about there's no playbook. Nobody really tells you how to get from classroom teacher to doing your own business. And so I'm curious how that worked out for you.
Olivia Odileke
Well actually I started doing part-time consulting work with HMH as an instructional math coach. I felt like I was going to eventually be doing professional development training somewhere. I didn't think I was going to do it for myself. I thought I was going to be doing it for a company. And I also loved using the product Nearpod and I became a certified trainer with them and they actually allowed me to go out and train teachers with that product and with it and still working full time as a teacher. So the hustle was real because I said I needed to put my feet in the water to determine if this is really, really what you want to do? And the more I put my foot in the water Lily, the more I realized that even though these companies are well established, they still don't get teachers. It's still like a disconnect between what's practical versus what's theory.
And I find that a lot of the PDs that these big corporations offer are very disconnected from what's going on in the classroom and with the growth mindset of the teacher, if you don't understand your teachers and what they need, and this is not in the pedagogy when they create these guides. And so all of this was motivating. Teachers kept saying, “every time I leave your training, I want to do it. I'm inspired to do more.” And that was my green light to say, you don't need accolades, you go in and do the work.
Lily Jones
I love that. And I love how too, it's like you have to just do it sometimes to know if you want to do that same thing. I like that you've used some opportunities with other organizations to get your feet wet and try things out. And I think sometimes we can blow these big companies up in our heads of they know what's happening or they're putting out the best work. So I also like and had a similar experience in curriculum development. I like that you through that also realized like, wait a second, I do know a lot to about what teachers need and can connect with them. And so using these experiences as stepping stones to get to where you want to go and really get clarity through that. And I think one thing I've noticed is you can't get around that step. It would be nice to just be like, I want clarity about what I want to do right now, but I've found that it's really through doing the thing.
Olivia Odileke (
That's impossible. It's really impossible.
It really is. And it wasn't until about two years ago that I really got Laser Beam focused. I had already been doing a lot of inquiry-based trainings. Even as a teacher, I was attracted to that type of professional development. And the reason I was because I felt like my biggest question was how can I engage students in this content to make it real and relevant to them? And the curriculum textbooks do not address that. They just go right into the concept and it's like, where's the connection? Where's the person see me first and then teach me? And so we'll talk a little bit about it, but that's kind of how all this came about. It came about from engagement, making it real, making it relevant because I didn't come into this profession as a teacher. I came in as a practitioner, as someone looking at what would've made the biggest difference in my projectory. I probably could have been somewhat totally different had my teachers really used some of the strategies I'm teaching teachers how to use right now.
Lily Jones
And “see me first, then teach me” is so powerful for kids and also for teachers too. See the teachers first and then teach them too. And so I love that focus. And I'd love to hear more about your work. I know you started Campus Insights and you also have written Spark Curiosity, a Guide to Quick Inquiry Tasks. Can you tell us about that?
Olivia Odileke
Well, the first book actually that I wrote was “Beginner's Guide to Nearpod, a tool for Transforming Virtual Teaching.” Because I was a virtual teacher and this was way before covid and using that tool allowed me to capture real time data and to make the learning increase that student engagement. Because remember that was one of my big questions and one of the sections in my book, I lay out a lesson template on how to use Nearpod and here's a lesson template that will help you. The second component of the lesson template was to create a quick inquiry task. So I had initially inserted it there and provided one or two examples, started doing trainings just on how to do the quick inquiry. Saw that teachers wanted more examples. They were like, I need to see more examples. I was asking them to make a paradigm shift. I was saying, let's focus on a concept, not the details, not the pacing guide, not these big standards that no one can understand, but what's the concept behind this unit? Everybody eyes was looking at the sky.
It was really a challenge because again, we focused so much on the details and we make learning so complex sometimes that we step away from what is the essence. And really the essence is sparking curiosity in students is really the essence of what we're supposed to be teaching. And from that, the Spark Curiosity book came to kind of motivate teachers, make this paradigm shift. And as you make it, here are three easy steps that you can implement with any curriculum, any subject. I just wanted to make it very simple because I'm so tired of going to PDs Lily, and it's so complex. And you leave and you look at your partner and say, do they think we're really going to do that? I dunno if they need a little bug, they need to tap some of these rooms when the presenter leaves and get the real 4 1 1 of what's going on. It's not nice. It's really not. You just spent thousands of dollars to bring in these people and they still haven't connected. Made that connection. Yes. They haven't even sparked their curiosity.
Lily Jones
Yes. As a teacher, I mean, I think that hits on so many things that need to change about our education system of just that we've gotten so many steps away from what really matters always. When I teach our curriculum course, go back to the bigger why, like you're saying, why are we even teaching it? Why do we teach to two digit addition? Actually why?
Olivia Odileke
Nobody knows. It’s because it's on the checklist. And really my real big motivation, Lily, really behind the company is that I saw how students came alive when they were given the opportunity to express themselves, to hear multiple perspectives, to discover and to question. But I also observed that teachers, many of my colleagues, they struggled when trying to foster this kind of environment and often constrained by this rigid curriculum and this standardized testing pressure. So it's like you're asking me to explore and discover, but hey, when am I going to have time to do this? And that is really, I mean, I have cried in trainings because that has been like, oh, just keep hitting me in the head. Oh, I have to cover the curriculum, I have to do this, I have to do that.
Lily Jones
And then the things that really matter become afterthoughts or just like, oh, how could I fit that in rather than starting with what really matters and engage as people and leads to lifelong learners. And so I love your focus on sparking curiosity. I absolutely agree. That's the heart of it.
Olivia Odileke
And you don't have to take a lot of time to do it. I'm an engineer and my spirit is an engineer, even though I'm an educator. But my spirit was, we got a problem here. How can we come up with something that any teacher, no matter how much resistance they want to give, I could see that teacher with the greatest resistance in your school doing this one thing.
Lily Jones
Yes. And so thinking about… I know you have a course about sparking curiosity, and if you could tell us more about that and also just any tips or tricks for teachers who might be listening and thinking, yeah, I want to do this, but how do I actually make it happen?
Olivia Odileke
Okay, well this book came with the three steps, and then I'm like, that's not enough. Because again, teachers, we need scaffolds just like our students need scaffolds. And last time I checked, I've been looking at a lot of teacher preparation curriculums. I don't see anything on sparking curiosity on one of the courses. I don't see anything on student engagement and how to bring your kids and make it relevant. We got all this research-based practices, but at the same time, what is relevant, so in the course it's a free course and the whole purpose is free, is we really have this mission of inspiring fearless educators who transform learning experiences. And we don't just want to talk the talk. So it goes over the three steps. And the three steps are really simple. But again, remember, we're not used to simplicity in education. So the first step is concept analysis.
Olivia Odileke
We look at the standard and we say, “what I'm looking at?” Because usually most units have two or three standards. And you look at it and you say to yourself, what is the big aha? Or what is the big takeaway I want my students to take away from this? Once you get that concept, the second step is to think about what type of task could they do in groups of two to three people that will allow them to think about the content before I teach them. So you're going to give them a task for five to eight minutes that allows them to just think a little bit to see what their thoughts are about this topic beforehand. And then the third part is we're going to facilitate a meaningful discussion. We're going to create at least two to three guiding questions to help guide students to the concept.
I'm not talking about vocabulary, I'm not talking about the details, I'm just talking about the concept. I want to give you an example. I just came up with this one yesterday. I was reading a article, the NBA player, he makes like 62 million a year on paper, but his net income is 25 million a year. So I was saying to myself, I could come up with three different inquiry tasks off this real world concept. One deals with net, what's the difference between net and gross income? This is a big concept. Even you have adults who still don't understand this concept, right? But I'm not going to say net and gross income because what? The students don't have the vocabulary. So why I'm going to do that? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give students an orange and I say, okay, you have this orange, imagine you want to get juice out of this orange.
I want you to come up different ways that you can get the most juice out of this orange. And then we'll talk about what's the leftovers and what does the juice might represent with a person's salary. So I mean, it's like really? But think about it. It's something to think about. But we'll get the concept that, hey, the particles left from the orange are gross. It's what you start off with. But what you end up with is never what you started off with. I could do this in so many cases, I could be teaching a manufacturing class and talk about how we start off with raw products and how does it, I mean, there's so many different things, but what is the concept? And that is what I feel is what's missing in learning. Children are going and they're learning things and they don't have anything to anchor it in. So teachers who take this free spark student curiosity course will get the foundation of how to create their own inquiry task. And the reason we want the teacher to create it is so that they think about and learn about the backgrounds of their students. It's not something you just want to put in a curriculum and just like, oh, here it is. It makes it the reason why we need teachers in the first place.
Lily Jones
Absolutely, yes. I mean, I think even the best curriculum, you need teachers to be able to take it and adapt to their students and have those skills. And I think what I really appreciate about what you just shared about inquiry tasks is that it's fun, it's joy and genuinely interesting. And I think that is a huge sad hurdle that we have to overcome often in schools is like things aren't interesting. And so leading with curiosity, leading with inquiry, all these things that all humans ideally bring to the table, I think is a great entry point into engagement. And also for teachers to have that curiosity and creative chance to think about, Hey, I could bring in an orange or like, Hey, I could do this thing. All these different ways that I could present this concept and hook students into it and really get out of that box that we're so often put into.
Olivia Odileke
Yes, my friend, we really are in a box. And that leads to so many different things. Actually, another reason I know this work so well is because I worked as a training specialist for a nationwide virtual school, and part of my job was to observe a hundred classrooms a month for 10 to 15 minutes, and they don't see us. We can actually just see recordings. And it was scary. It was very scary. I'm like, I'm falling asleep on, I'm like, we have to note, how long did the teacher talk, the teacher talk a hundred percent of the time? Did the students talk to each other? Zero. Did they use any interactive thing? No, there was no interactive thing. And then my work now is I go into classrooms and we observe 10, 15 minutes and I go into about 40 classrooms a month now. And same thing. It's scary. It's very scary. And this is not just in one state. It is a universal problem. It's really the student engagement is a really universal problem. We're talking too much and we're not giving them an opportunity to work. Oh, I can't get 'em to work in groups. They're going to mess up or they're not going to follow. It's all about training. It's like that's why you're teaching, you're training them and you're modeling to them how to think, how to ask questions. But no matter what people's backgrounds are, no matter what students' backgrounds, when you give them open-ended tasks like this, students respond. They respond. We just got to give 'em the opportunity.
Lily Jones
Absolutely. And I think again, it goes back to the bigger why. What do we want to cultivate in students? So what do we want to cultivate in teachers? And also giving teachers the open-ended tasks, being able to create these for students too, I think can solve a lot of teacher engagement. I think a lot of teachers go through the process and it's like they've been having so many demands and things that they have to do that get in the way of even the way that they believe is the best way to teach. They just don't have the freedom or the bandwidth or the energy to do that or the support. And so I know you talked a little bit about different roadblocks or things that are hard for teachers or challenges they might come across as they've try to spark some curiosity. Can you talk a little bit more about that, how to get over those roadblocks?
Olivia Odileke
Okay. Because one thing I hear a lot from teachers again is the balance. How do I balance curiosity-driven learning with standardized curriculum requirements? Those two things. And I worked for a company that offered a curriculum and I was going to many different states and this curriculum was offered in all 50 states. All they do is they look at the standards for the state and then they just draw little lines and say, Hey, this fits here and this fits here. And so I understand that challenge, but again, at the same time, it's what trainings have teachers gone to figure out how to do the balance? I haven't been to a training to show me how to balance curiosity. All they tell me, listen, I've been doing a lot of research on this, Lily, and all I keep seeing is ask questions. That's it. That's all I got to do to bring duriosity to the class.
I just ask some questions, make your classroom a place of exploration and discovery. Great, we got the internet. Just go discover something. So many teachers are struggling with trying to find time to offer open-ended exploration while also covering mandatory content and overcoming this often requires just creative integration of, again, a quick inquiry task. And these tasks I tell teachers, do it just to open a unit. Don't do it for every lesson. We don't have the time, but think about it, if you had nine to 12 units for a year and you just got to develop nine or 12, but that could be like an anchor and it could also be a way to activate prior knowledge. It could be a way to review you put that task up. Remember we did this task, we're going to spend five minutes and we're going to go around the room like a carousel, and we're going to talk with our partners to talk about what do we learn in that unit? And it's the way to anchor the learning and much of the learning we're doing is not anchored. So this is my way of balancing curiosity and also I'm covering the standard without feeling overwhelmed because teachers are already feeling overwhelmed as it is.
Lily Jones
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think that making it manageable, making it doable, kind of going back even to those three steps that you shared, let's make it something that's actually teachers can and run with and then hopefully grow from there. And I'm curious what you think what would change if more teachers adopted curiosity driven teaching?
Olivia Odileke
A lot would change. Students would likely be more engaged. It would be likely be less behavior problems. They would develop stronger critical thinking skills. This approach could actually spark a love for lifelong learning. It could even spark something different in teachers because they would see their students respond differently because you did something differently and it would help our students take more ownership. Because one of the things I didn't tell this last part in the third step with the meaningful discussion, the last part really is that you develop a summary of the concept, but as a community, so the teacher is up there facilitating and in two to three sentences, they're going to write down exactly what was the concept, but the teacher doesn't have it written somewhere on a PowerPoint. It's very important that the students do it to take that ownership.
Lily Jones
I agree. I mean, having been around so much curriculum and so many teachers, I also agree that there has been a really huge trend of super teacher centered teaching. And so switching that and making it student centered I think is key in all the ways for teacher engagement, for student engagement, for all the results that we want, all the things we have to put it on students, they have to play a role in their classrooms and to have that chance to explore the things that are interesting to them.
Olivia Odileke
I like what you just said about put it on the students. Let me ask you a question. I know you were in the classroom too. How often do we ask the students? Are they engaged?
Lily Jones :
Yeah, I mean, not often. I taught little kids, so they tell you they're doing something else. They're not engaged. But yeah, I mean, not often, right? And it's not shown that it's a priority to students. I didn't feel like that as a student. I have a middle school daughter and an elementary school age son, and luckily they've had amazing teachers, but I know that they've had experiences where it doesn't feel like their engagement or their peers engagement is the most important thing that it feels like this rat race that it's turned into of being like, we have to cover this content. We have to get through it, and it almost doesn't matter who makes it through or whatever it might be. It matters that we're made it to the end of the unit. Did that post assessment, here we go, rather than the true learning or engagement.
Olivia Odileke
Yeah. That's actually one of the first parts of the course is that we require them to give their students a student engagement, survey it, and to score it and to really reflect on what did your students say about their level of curiosity, their level of engagement, and what do you want to do about it? And then they take another pre-assessment to kind of look at what do you already know about inquiry base and what do you feel you are already doing? And then compare the two. So this is what your students said about you. This is what you said about yourself. So let's look at reality. Let's put 'em together and see where's the truth. Because they said to know the truth, you need his story. Your story. Then you're going to find the truth in the middle.
Lily Jones
Yes, absolutely. I love that. And so switching gears a little bit to your experience starting your own business. I'm curious what you've learned through the process.
Olivia Odileke (24:30):
I've discovered Lily, I'm more resilient and adaptable than I realized. Running a business has pushed me out of my comfort zone, and it taught me to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth. It also helped me to find my real passion. And I promise you, when you find your passion, there's no stopping you. You're not going to give up. You're not going to say, I'm not doing this tomorrow because you'll really realize that this is something you love to do all day long. And I would do what I'm doing without getting paid. If I didn't have to pay no bills, I'm like, this is fun for me. It is so fun for me to help a teacher look at a standard and help create a concept. Sometimes they're struggling. What's the concept? Bam. And then we get to be creative too. And I just don't think we have enough creativity going on both ends of the spectrum. If the teachers are not allowed to create activities, we're stuck in the regiment of a curriculum that energy flows to our students. But okay, I'm saying, Hey, keep your curriculum and let's still spice it up with the 20 minute activity to kickstarted. I think any teacher in America in the world can do this.
Lily Jones
Absolutely. I totally agree. I mean on all those fronts, especially the idea of just the creativity we model for students, what we want them to take away, and if teachers are feeling creative and valued as the creative brilliant professionals that they are, then that really shows it to students. And students pick up that energy. They have great models of people living a creative brilliant life and not being in a box. So I think it matters so much that both students have this experience and teachers get to have this experience too. And then going back to just what you've learned, I love that focus on the passion. The passion is what will drive you through all the things that are hard. And I also, I always tell the story of how I taught kindergarten and I'd be like, oh, have a growth mindset. Mistakes are how you learn kind of flippantly, just like, oh, blah, blah.
And then when I started my own business, I was like, okay, I really need to have a growth mindset and be able to embrace the struggle of things not working out the way I wanted to or me making a mistake and learning from it. And I realized in that moment for me of pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, that all those things I told to my students were true, and that it was so valuable for me to have that experience of getting out of my comfort zone, taking a risk on something that I really believed in, and really learning through the process too.
Olivia Odileke
It's all about resilience. It's all about being able to bounce back and starting with your values though, what do you value? And I encourage every teacher to just really sit back and think about what do you really value? What's your purpose? And if you can't come up with your purpose and why you're teaching, you may need to take one of those career assessment tests and see if another field might be better for you. You might need to be doing something else because you got babies in front of you who are looking to you for purpose. They're looking to you for directions. They're looking to you for inspiration. And if you don't know your purpose, it's really hard to inspire others to have purpose too.
Lily Jones
I love that focus on purpose. And I think that also you could think about are you in a situation where you can teach in a way that aligns with your values? And if not, what can you do to change that whether inside or outside of the classroom? Because I think so much like we've talked about, we might have certain values about teaching and then be asked to teach in a way that's really just not aligned with that. And it doesn't mean that that's the right way. And it doesn't mean that if you're a teacher who feels like that's so frustrating, it doesn't mean you have to just leave education. You can do, you're doing go out and try and change something that doesn't work for kids, doesn't work for teachers. And so really leaning into your expertise as well.
Olivia Odileke
I'm going to say amen to that one. Amen. Amen. You got to be within your values and certain things because education is so institutionalized, it's very hard to break away from that tradition because really a lot of educators, even though they're administrators, they're looking to others for direction. They're not really leaders yet. They are trying to be something that they're not quite yet. Because if you were a leader, you would be an innovator. You would be pioneering things. You would be analyzing that data every day saying, this is not working. We need something new. We need to change this and this is what we're going to do. We're going to seek out innovative folks who are practicing innovative strategies. We're going to look for untraditional things because I promise you so many of the curriculums that are coming out are research based, but are they giving you the results?
Olivia Odileke
No, because the disconnect is the teacher. The teacher is not inspired. The teacher doesn't have the purpose to connect the curriculum. You need both of them. The heart has to be in it. So at the end of the day, you have to got to breathe life into these words. It's just like reading a novel. It's that teacher that can breathe life and connect emotionally to their students where it comes alive. And now your students are forever inspired. Your students are forever curious because now it relates to them. And that's really what that I really want. Learning to relate to students. I'm tired of them just taking a test and passing. I was a straight A student. I took a lot of tests, but I personally feel like I was not given the education I deserved because no one sparked my curiosity until I got to college. And I said, that's too late. That's why we're losing so many babies to dropouts and things of that nature because they don't see the purpose, they don't see how it relates, and they don't see how it's relevant. And we got to start right in middle school when they start dropping it like it's hot.
Lily Jones
Yes. And even connecting to those things that you shared that you learned too, like helping kids be resilient, helping them tap into their values and live in a way that aligns to what they believe that they want to create, giving them a chance to live a life of their own design. And so I think all of those things need to be infused to back in education or put in, I don't know if they ever were fully, but put in…
Olivia Odileke
Hey, that's why you gotta start with sparks. That's why you gotta start with a spark. You can't come in there with a fire. They are not ready for the fire. You got to come in there with a little lighter and a candle and just say, kumbaya. Kumbaya.
Lily Jones
Yes, exactly. I mean, let's start there. For sure. And so thinking about teachers who might be like, yeah, I want to do that, right? I want to start my own business. I want to change something in education. I want to move beyond the classroom. I want to stay in the classroom and make a change, whatever it might be. What advice do you have for teachers who might be thinking about doing something new?
Olivia Odileke
First of all, start small. Focus on solving a specific problem you've observed with your eyes. Don't just go out there and just like, what's trending out in education? Let me jump on this bandwagon, because a lot of educational consultants will come out and just try to jump, and they try to be all things to all people. It doesn't work. It doesn't fall in line with self. So think about it. And then also as you think about that problem you've observed, think about what's the thing you love teaching or what's the thing you love learning about? Because I have been swimming in curiosity, I have been swimming in research around this topic because it's something I love and it piques my interest all the time. The more if I hear something new that's trending or a workshop that's focused on it, and really, I haven't really found any conferences that focus just on curiosity, we got these ed tech conferences, we got reading conferences, we got math conferences. And one of our initiatives, I'm just going to throw it out there to you, Lily, is we're hosting our first Spark Curiosity, EDU conference.
Lily Jones
Amazing.
Olivia Odileke
In June. June 19th and 20th, we just signed the contracts for the location and the hotel, but it's all going to be about, we're bringing in speakers to focus and make engagement and model. This is how a curious classroom could look because we need more models. So listening closely to your target audience needs, if you are a principal and you find that principals need something, they need some type of software, you notice that teachers need digitized lesson. I mean, all of this comes to observing a problem, thinking about your passion and finding the link in between. But don't go out there and do 20 things and don't be afraid to pivot based on feedback too. And I pivoted twice actually, because I thought I was going the ed tech way. I was just going to go and focus because I'm real good with technology and integrating, but at the end of the day, I'm like, I love student engagement and I love peaking the interests and curiosity of folks. So remember, your teaching experience is a valuable asset. Leverage it. They really, really need to leverage it.
Lily Jones
Wonderful advice. And again, you wouldn't have known the pivots until you tried it, so I think until you tried it, taking those small steps, I love it. It doesn't have to be huge. It could just be a little something to investigate and get more clarity and keep on going as you figure out your way.
Olivia Odileke
And again, it could be like doing some part-time consulting with a company that's already existing. Because one of the companies I was working with, they were doing inquiry based learning, but it was very rigid and it was too hard for teachers. And I observed the struggle, and as I was observing the struggle, I'm like, well, I would do it like this, or I would do it like this. And again, this is how the Spark curiosity concept and my Quick Inquiry task came about.
Lily Jones
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Olivia, for sharing about your experience and what you're working on. Can you tell people how they can connect with you?
Olivia Odileke
Oh, wow. You can connect with me right on LinkedIn. You can just Google Campus Insights with a K. We post events and we always put in little nuggets to help people learn more about how to have a curiosity inspired classroom. Also, I'm on TikTok. I give little tidbits on student engagement. They can find me at the Fearless Educator, at Fearless Educator, and also on Twitter, do little tweets, love connecting with people on a nice level there. And that's at Campus Coach with a K at Campus Coach. So those three main mediums for connecting.
Lily Jones
Perfect. Well, we'll put all the links…
Olivia Odileke
Oh, and I forgot I got to tell them they got to go where the free course is. You can go to our website, campus Insights, again, that's campus with the k.com, and you'll see it right at the top free course. They'll be able to basically sign up for an account, and once you sign in, you'll join the Fearless Educator community and there's the learning tab. And on the learning tab, you'll have access to the course.
Lily Jones
That's wonderful. That easy?
Olivia Odileke
Yes.
Lily Jones
Awesome. Well, thanks again, Olivia.
Olivia Odileke
Thank you, Lily. And thank you for uplifting teachers and giving them the opportunity to realize and the platform, because I know you offer these great workshops to help people go into curriculum development or to go into consulting. I just tell anyone who's listening, Hey, take one of those workshops. It's going to help you give you the insight and determine, is this really for me? Because a lot of times we just need to hear certain things, and if everything resonates and you go, Hmm, that's Aha, aha, that's making sense, then that means that's the direction you should be going into. So keep up your work too. Educate forever.
Lily Jones
Well, thank you. It is truly my pleasure, and I love more than anything seeing teachers use their brilliance in all the different ways and impact our schools and kids in the ways that we know need to happen. So thanks again, Olivia.
Olivia Odileke
You're welcome.