Full Transcript for Empowering Science Literacy with Kesler Science COO Ali Stone

engaging, give them choices, get their hands on it. That's that's the fun, right there.  06:09 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) And that hits students across the board, no matter what their interests are or whether they're pursuing a STEM career or not. You're giving them opportunities to engage with science, to connect it to their own lives, like the artist or the musician. To connect it to their own lives like the artist or the musician, but also to realize and I think this gets back to science literacy by understanding it and by knowing where to go for information, you're giving them a chance to grow up in a world where they're better able to go. Okay, this makes sense to me. Let's go check the sources on that. And so you're raising a generation of science literate human beings as well.  06:46 - Ali Stone (Guest) Yes, when they can understand that good science publishes and peer reviews and then retracts as needed Right and that it's it's not a done. It's not a done deal, it's not a closed conversation, it's just a constant developing thing. And when they realize that then they just start to see everything as possibilities, as potential, and they're more curious about where this information comes from. What are the motivations for the people doing the study? You know when they can connect all the dots and realize some people are out there putting science out in the world because they have very different motivations than what you would expect. You know and and you can you can get them really hooked on that too, on kind of the politics and the you know the stuff behind the scenes. It's.  07:33 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) It's pretty interesting for the higher level kids, the other so much, but the high schoolers for sure they love that and as they say exactly, and you were in the classroom before you came to Kesler, so you're coming at this from a science teacher perspective and somebody who's got real world experience. So what were some of the strategies you used as a teacher to make science and STEAM more engaging and meaningful for your kids?  07:59 - Ali Stone (Guest) Yeah, so we definitely did hands-on. I would. I didn't have a huge budget, it was basically my own money. You know whatever? Uh, I would. I didn't have a huge budget, it was basically my own money you know, whatever I and I don't have the money either story of most teachers, exactly right.  08:12 So one thing I did is I did have a table in the back that was my maker space, and this was not a fancy maker space. This was basically me raiding recycling bins all over the school to get cardboard tubes, cardboard boxes. I'd bring in spare yarn when I'd finish a crocheting project. We had some Legos that people donated. You know just whatever we would try to put in there. And I did get a grant to get some of the snap circuits and things in there. So just whatever I could get, I mean little tiny grants, so whatever I could do back then to just let them explore. That was fun.  08:52 I, when we were learning about mussels, I had seashells. So I would bring in seashells and we would sort seashells and and and everyone just got to handle these little seashells and of course we made slime and we would dissect lilies and we'd look at things under. I managed to get a little um microscope, the magnifying thing that right my screen, and you know, then everybody just wanted to have a turn looking at stuff under that. So just anything we could do to get hands on the science or get creative with the science. I remember we had to learn about spiders, so we learned about all these different kinds of spiders and then I put it out to the students design your own spider, you know, take all these different parts and adapt a spider into something remarkable, and but you have to justify it. Why is this going to be better than any original spider that's out there? How's it going to fill its little niche in the ecosystem better? Ooh, I like that out there. How's it going to fill its little niche in the ecosystem better? And it was.  09:46 It was fun because the artists got super creative, the writers got super creative, you know, just just trying to find that fun and those different ways of approaching things. And I'm glad that you mentioned that I was a science teacher. I feel like an accidental CEO or COO. I didn't aim for this. This is where I ended up I aimed for. I just love science and want to do science with as many people as possible. So my heart is definitely on the let's. Let's make this fun side of science, not the let's, you know, run a company side of it.  10:18 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) Well, let's get to the. How did you get from teaching to running a company? Tell us about your adventures in learning. How did you get from teaching to running a company? Tell us about your adventures in learning. How did you get from there to there?  10:27 - Ali Stone (Guest) Well, you know, it's interesting to me because I have children and my youngest two are daughters and watching them interact with science. Now, and I think about the way I interacted with science when I was in school. You know, I don't know, you're my generation, so we did a lot of, you know, career testing really early. Everyone funneled into whatever and channels they were going to go into and I remember taking those tests and I came out with a very strong teaching leaning which made sense. You know, I was that kid that if I was going to give a research report in middle school and you were after me, you rejoiced because it was guaranteed you were going to have an extra day, because I was just so excited to share all the cool things I learned that I was going to go wildly over the time limit. You were going to definitely have spare time. So I really I knew that teaching was it. And I got into high school and I loved English. I love stories, I loved writing, I love grammar which is disgusting, but I did. I also loved science. I took all these science classes and I

just loved it. But when it came time to choose what I was doing, I look back and I realize every science teacher I had was male, every single one of them. I had female English teachers and male science teachers and I think that just influenced my learning. I also knew no actual scientist whatsoever. No one was doing science around me to even consider, well, you could go do something in science. Never, never, lost my mind, so went off to college, decided to become an English teacher.  12:10 I studied secondary English education but I was also an absolute geek. So I would hang out with people in the in the computer labs because we didn't even have. You know, yeah, I remember those computer labs because we didn't even have. You know, yeah, I remember those computer labs. So, yeah, I had been part of the middle school founding computer science club when I was in middle school. So I was in that computer lab. I was in my element. I was teaching myself HTML, you know, I had to write it on notepad and upload it to see how it turned out. And Mozilla it was just. It was so much fun and I got through everything but my student teaching and I went and did my student teaching and I ran smack into the bureaucracy side of teaching. I was doing everything that I wanted to do for lessons and then, as an English teacher, I had to, like every two weeks, assign a two to three page essay from these Maryland state requirements that I then had to grade and give feedback on in addition to whatever else I was doing. And just the grind of that and witnessing the behind the scenes of what it was like for these teachers who just wanted to do good things, and I got really, really disillusioned with what I was going to be able to accomplish right off the bat, especially in a very big district like that.  13:34 I was at the University of Maryland College Park, so we're in Prince George's County, this big school area so I actually went into technical writing when I got out of college. I spent years writing in the security industry and training people in the security industry and how to design and install their systems. And then I moved to Maine and discovered, oh, little tiny schools, guess what. It's a whole different world. Up here people actually can connect with their students. They don't have 180 students every day, and I was just so excited to discover this. This was my joy again. This was a delight to teach and and so I got back into that and ended up teaching at the elementary level. So I was teaching sixth grade, which was still elementary where I was. So I was teaching all the subjects and it was wonderful. I just loved it because I got to do my science, I got to do English it was fantastic.  14:33 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) I loved linking all of that. I get it yes exactly.  14:37 - Ali Stone (Guest) And then Chris Kesler. I was using some of his stuff in my science classes and he had a Facebook group 15,000 people strong at the time and he tossed out little notes saying that he was looking for someone to help him edit inquiry labs. And I thought there's no way that I will ever get through the process with 15,000 people. I'm sure 10,000 of them are going to drop a note in this Google form that he put out there. So I sent my response off and I got an email back and he's like hey, how'd you like to talk about this? And I panicked because I'm a I'm a meticulous person. I had not been meticulous about that application Snowballs chance. I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm going to have to be so ready for this interview. So I'm making lists and I'm planning it, and so I write back. I'd love to do that.  15:30 And in typical Chris fashion, as you've met him, he writes back great, are you busy today? I'm on spring break, sure, I'm available. He's like great, 15 minutes, diane. I was standing in my pajamas in my bedroom on spring break, not prepared for an interview. So I said, sure, call me. So he calls me and I'm ready. I've got all the things I forgot to put in the application the first time, which was literally three questions long.  15:59 Also in in chris fashion. He calls and he tells me all about the project, and I'm ready, I'm waiting, and he says, great, when can you start? Okay, today, I guess. And so I started editing for him, and as I was working for him, it was like oh, you don't have anyone to help you organize the company. He was a one man operation at that point all those years ago, and so I would just make suggestions about how we could organize things and he'd be like great, do that. And then after a while he was like stop asking, just go do it, just make it all better. And then I ended up coming out of the classroom and we just took off. It was just so much fun. He's in Texas, I'm in Maine, we get together once every couple of years and that's how it's happened. So, yeah, that's how I ended up where I am.  16:55 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) I'm fascinated by that and I know, having seen Kesler Science, that it's grown from a one person, two person operation to a much bigger thing. So talk about what you do at Kesler and, as you're doing that, also talk about what it's like to manage a team of people scattered all over the country who may never meet each other except through Zoom Right.  17:17 - Ali Stone (Guest) Yes, we are a 100% remote company and I love it. All of these folks who are saying that everyone has to go back to the office they're not doing a single bit of that. Based on science, all of the research says people are so productive when they work from home more productive than in the office. The reasons that people want folks back in the office have to do with things like trust, motivation, real estate. There's just so many other factors that go into it. I feel like the cat who ate the canary like, wow, we've got this lockdown. We know how to be productive. We know how to work from home. It is so much fun.  17:52 I am the chief worrier and chief planner. Those are my unofficial

titles. I just figure out where things are going to break and try to avoid it. That's really my job. I try to find the right people to fix problems. So you know, as I've brought you in before to help with different things we run into and your expertise. So that's my job.  18:14 But having teachers work for us we all we hire science teachers. It's just impossible to do a science education company if you don't just hire science teachers. So we hire science teachers to work for us and having them all over the country means I get tapped into what's going in on in classrooms everywhere, and I love it. I also get to learn really fun things Like. I did not know that Texas homecoming was a phenomenon of its own. I did not know about these bows, that they have, these enormous I mean you could a Viking would be proud of the depth of the armor that they put on and these flowers and ribbons and things. No idea I got such an education on that. So it's just, it's so much fun. You know we compare temperatures lately who's winning on the cold front, and it's fantastic, challenging sometimes when you've got people on the East Coast and the West Coast, but it generally just works out really well. We love it.  19:16 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) So what are some of the joys of what you do at Kesler and flipping that also what are some of the challenges?  19:33 - Ali Stone (Guest)  The joys are we get to make fun science experiences and just that's. I'm never going to get over that. None of us who work in this, in this business, are ever going to want to stop doing that. I know I'm supposed to be running a company but I'm still in there coming up with things to do and escape room ideas and we we're just having a blast with with doing that stuff. So that's the joy is just bringing things in and then seeing teachers love it. You know there's a Facebook group that that Chris started years ago that for teachers and seeing them just happy and and using our stuff, it's delightful. That's, that's fun stuff. It's delightful, that's fun. The challenges are right now.  20:08 Honestly, in the education world there are a lot of political forces going on. There's a lot of pushing all teachers to do the same thing all the time. That is so stifling. I don't know a single teacher who went into teaching saying you know what would be great if you could just hand me a script so I never have to actually think about what I'm doing with my students. Nobody wants that. That's not why we became teachers. We want to delight our students, we want to surprise our students. We want to engage our students, and so that's challenging. Just how do we negotiate that? How do we make sure that teachers are able to check all the boxes but still really enjoy what they're doing? So that's a challenge, for sure.  20:49 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) Well, let's go into that challenge just a little bit, because I think you're right. I know that, as a teacher, one of the things that I found most appealing was exactly what you said using my creativity and figuring out how to engage and delight my kids. And that's very individual, because the kids I have this year are not the same kids I had last year and they're not the kids I'm going to have next year. So even if I'm doing the exact same activity, you know and I know that it's going to hit different depending on the group of kids. So how do you help teachers maintain that spark and still hit?  21:30 that spark and still hit the things that they have to teach. 21:31 - Ali Stone (Guest) Yeah, what we try to do is just give many options. You know, we try to think what would we enjoy when we, when we had the opportunity to teach? So we come up with a station lab where students are moving around the room and they're engaging and doing different activities. But then we also write a writing prompt, we also write a reading comprehension passage, we also write an escape room. We try to give many options.  21:58 We team up with Steve Spangler, whom we both know, and we try to write things that incorporate his videos, because the students love his videos. So we just try to find variety, because novelty is the antidote to feeling like you're stuck in a rut all the time. So we try to do that and just try to give room for creativity. You know, try to inspire the teachers that this is just, this is just to get you started. There are so many options here. You know, when we give them student choice projects, we've got 14 different activities that students could pick from in there that teachers can assign. Just try to give them options so that they feel like we're supporting them but we're not strangling their intelligence and creativity at the same time, you know.  22:44 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) Right, and I know from having used and looked at the Kesler projects that one of the things that is inherent is you've got sort of this template, but it's not stand and deliver. That you give teachers the option of I could do X, y, z, I can adapt it. You even provide it where they're able to go in and make some edits themselves when they're planning and using it. So once they've got it, they've got the option to customize it for their own classes, which I think is really valuable.  23:13 - Ali Stone (Guest) Yeah, we provide everything in an editable format because you and I, we would not have been happy just handing out the same worksheet year after year. It's we, we were, we're going to want to tweak that, we're going to want to make it work for our students, and all of us on the team are the same way. We're just like yeah, of course you've got to be able to edit this. So we figured out really early on that just giving people PowerPoints. You know, every teacher knows how to edit a PowerPoint or a Google Slides or whatever. So we don't use fancy publishing software, we don't use anything that a teacher couldn't just bring up and use. So that's how we solve that problem.  23:57 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor

(Host) Yeah, so what are you most proud of?  24:01 - Ali Stone (Guest) Okay, so this is probably. It seems like such a small thing, but on the other hand, it meant so much to me when I was doing the editing the inquiry labs. That's what I came in to start editing. There were like three of them that didn't get written for various reasons they had fallen through the cracks or someone had started and not finished. So I got to go in and write three of the inquiry labs and two of them got to incorporate.  24:26 Two of my favorite things ever and that's one of the fun things about writing this stuff is you get to bring in the stuff that you really like. So I got to write an inquiry lab that was based around building out an aquarium and it was about you know, organization, populations and organisms, and the idea was you had this whole catalog of fish and plants and what were you going to be able to fit into that tank, and then just brought in the whole conversation. Well, I love aquariums, I love fish tanks. We have many in the house. So that was fun to be able to bring that in, because that's what I would have loved to do when I was a student just dream about building this fish tank. So that was fun. And then the other one was for abiotic and biotic factors.  25:11 And I really like games and like board games video games also, but also board games and so the lab is actually inspired by the settlers of Catan. You know the little hexagonal tiles. So you end up cutting out these tiles, making a set for the student group, and when they assemble them it makes kind of a landscape with all these little letters on it. And then they're doing a line transect across that. They put a ruler down or a string and they look at all the letters that are across there and each letter means like rock, grass, animal, and they have this code that they crack. You know what are they finding there?  25:49 And then they do these population studies. Because you know I'm in Maine, going outside is not always an option. Like it's great if you can take your students out and throw down a rope and count everything across there, but for a major portion of our school year it's snow on the ground. You're not doing that sort of work outside. So I was really proud that I got to bring in one of my favorite games and make something that you could use any time of year.  26:10 So that was my two proudest moments in Kesler so far.  26:15 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) So Kesler Science has just sort of finished revamping and putting out station labs to meet both the Texas standards and the NGSS. What's next? Can you tease a little bit about where you all are going?  26:31 - Ali Stone (Guest) So the next thing that we are releasing very soon is we've made inquiry labs. We've gone back to the inquiry labs and for NGSS we wanted to make something that teachers who don't have access to a lot of materials we all are in this boat, right? Or we actually started this way back during the pandemic teachers who were in lockdown, teachers who had sick, absent kids, whatever how do you bring science to those rooms, to those students? So we took the inquiry labs and for a vast majority of them we set up experiments and we recorded the experiments and we made videos of the whole thing from start to finish, with all the procedures, but we didn't explain them. The student gets to look at the video instead of doing it hands-on.  27:26 And then there's always something hands-on too. There's an interactive or some sort of digital thing that they get to do, because we just don't believe in not doing hands-on, but it just gives students a chance to see science in action and engage with that. When their student, when their teachers don't have a hood in their classroom where they can do a chemical experiment, where they don't have sinks in their classroom, you know, so many of us are just out there doing these science experiments with very little resources, so that's the most exciting thing we're coming up with. We've got four of them are games that we're putting on the website, so students go out and play the game and then they interact with that and that's going to be fun. So I'm really excited to see how teachers react to that, if that's helpful to them.  28:12 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) Well, and I know one of the other things, just thinking about what you were saying earlier about your adventures in learning and when you were in school not having the science teachers as role models, not seeing science done around you or being exposed to scientists. Having looked at the Kesler Science Projects and been a part of sort of seeing all that, I know that one of the things that you're committed to is helping kids be able to see themselves in science and to be able to see what real scientists look like in sort of all aspects, because not all scientists wear lab coats, and so I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little bit more about some of the ways that you guys have done that.  28:53 - Ali Stone (Guest) Yeah, so we are always looking for ways to make students think like scientists. So when we wrote, for example, the weekly visual data so this is a project we said students need to interact with graphs and charts. They don't know how to read them, they don't understand how to make them, they're missing out. So we thought how do you come to care about graphs and charts? Well, for one, you have to care about what's in the graph or the chart. Nobody ever cared about a graph and chart if it showed nothing you had any interest in. So we started off. We said, okay, part one, here's an interesting phenomenon. What could a scientist study or gather data about in this situation? And any kind of scientist? So there'll be things like well, an astronomer could study this, or a biologist could study this, and they just try to look at it from all these different ways where they are trying to think like the scientist of what could I study here if I was one of

these people? And then the next day they get a graph and the question is how do you relate that graph to the phenomenon you looked at yesterday? And so they have to look at that graph and try to figure out what it's explaining and how it's connecting to that phenomenon. Then the next day they're asking questions about the graph, they're labeling the graph, things like that, so they're really getting into it. The following day they are revising, they're taking the graph, like how else could you show this information? Give me something different, give me an infographic, give me a different kind of chart or something. And then the last day we give them data and say now you make something out of. This Relates to the phenomenon. And they get in there.  30:45 So we try to do things like that in all of our Spangler phenomenon lessons. They're always at the end it's like are you going to write like a scientist, design like an engineer? You know what are you going to do? So we try to put them in there. And of course, we try to feature a diverse population of examples. You know and everything we do. There's just lots of different examples of people from all walks of life just encountering science, doing science. Even people who don't look like scientists are doing science. So we try to bring that in everywhere. But we also just try to get the students to see themselves doing science work. Best comment ever. A teacher wrote back in and said that when they use those graphs. One of their students said I feel so smart when I finish these and it's like that's exactly how you should feel. That's awesome, just feel so smart, like look at you, what you can do. So we love that.  31:39 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) Well, and it's really connected to Adam Grant and sort of the art of rethinking things as well, like there's a lot of connection to current psychology and science and the way the products are presented.  31:52 We try, we try. So, Ali, I've been fortunate enough to get to hang out with you in real life in Colorado for Steve Spangler conferences, and I've had the chance to travel and explore with you, so I know firsthand that you have a natural playfulness and a sense of curiosity, and you bring that to all that you do. So how do you foster and nurture your own sense of learning through play? And then how do you bring that to your life, into that of your work at Kesler?  32:24 - Ali Stone (Guest) First of all, I have to say I think you bring that out in people. I think you are so playful and curious that it just naturally resonates with people. So I think that that's that's a big part of it is is just finding, finding your people, you know, that are going to to bring that out to you In in my own life. I just I think about the ways that I did things with my own children. You know, we just always tried to look at the world with that sense of wonder and we always were ready to just deep dive into something. You know, I remember one summer we decided to. We

had the whole summer ahead of us.  33:01 So we just we thought what are some of our favorite things? Fish, barns, farm, like whatever it was. We just took a week and we would just label it on the calendar this was fish week, this was stars week, this was whatever week. And that week we just went all out. We would, if it was fish, we'd go to the pet store. We didn't have a ton of resources, so we'd go to the pet store and look at all the fish and we'd read books about fish and we'd sing songs about fish and we'd make paper fish, and people would get all excited if they found that they had a t-shirt with a fish on it.  33:31 We would just just dive in as hard as we could to that topic and just explore the heck out of that. And that was fun, that was such a good time and, uh, in in in Kesler, I have such a dynamic group of people. They're people like you who are just excited, so they come up with the most exciting ideas and fun things like oh, this would make a great escape room, we should do this and and so it's. You know, we're all just big kids and and in a lot, lot of ways, right, and, and Chris, probably chief among all of us, the middle school sense of humor, right, it runs strong in that one.  34:10 And so, yeah, that's that's just. You find your people and and if you're in a classroom and you don't have those people, you don't have people around you who just share that enthusiasm. That's why Chris created that Facebook group, and it's that's what you need to do, is you need to get out there and find the people who are going to say, yeah, that's so cool. When you, when you, when your students have a caterpillar that they bring in, you know, I, I remember getting so excited. I had a great big Cricopia caterpillar that my students brought in. No one around me cared no, not me. No, the history teachers didn't care. The fifth grade teacher didn't care. They're like, oh, what are you going to do with that? I remember getting online to my people and I'd be like, yes, that is so awesome, you know.  35:01 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) So you've got to find your people and exactly, and the people who bring out that sense of playfulness and joy. And we're here you know, we're all out there and we're looking for each other, and I think, more than ever, that sense of connection is is so important. And then, last question for today, because it's the one I'd love to finish with what brings you hope?  35:19 - Ali Stone (Guest) Yeah, that's such a good question. Some people don't understand this part about me, but I am a very you know, a rigorous science person. I'm very skeptical and evidence-based. I'm also a person of faith, so that is a huge source of hope for me. And when I look at how humanity is built and how humans are built we are built for resilience, we are built to adapt, we are built to get better.  35:51 I think about you know, my daughter broke her arm years ago and the doctor said well, it's bad, she might need surgery, but if I can just get the bones to touch, it'll be okay. What on earth are you talking about? So he went in with this x-ray and he's like I was able to get them to touch. They're crooked, but she was young, it'll be okay. What are you talking about? He's like no, no, little kids their bones remodel. She'll have a bump for about six months where this will heal up and it'll be crooked and over time you're not going to be able to tell she ever broke her arm. It's just going to straighten itself right out. And it did. It was amazing Her arm just. It went from being slightly bent and lumpy to just beautiful and straight again.  36:37 So you know, and then and then you look at what humanity has been through and the ways that we have survived, adapted, overcome, and we are genetically built with so much ability to adapt right. There are so many things built into us, into nature, into everything that genetic diversity, ability to adapt, ability to evolve and just grow and move forward, and I'm just excited that's what gives me hope is that you know there are the. We haven't reached the end of science. We haven't reached the end of adapting and growing, and history is a long arc you know it's a very long arc and I love looking at that about where we have been and where we are now. There are a lot of things that might look kind of sideways right now, but overall I'd rather be living right now than say, you know, back in the eras, eras of of no solid science, knowledge, no antibiotics, no sense of what caused anything. This is a good time to be alive and I think it's going to continue to be a good time to be alive well, allie.  37:49 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host) Thank you so much. It has been a delight to have you on the adventures and learning podcast and I will make sure to drop all of the contact information in the show notes so that people can reach out to you thank you, diane.  37:59 - Ali Stone (Guest) It is always so much fun to get together with you.