Last fall, as a newly-minted founder, I began attending education startup conferences. In time, I began to realize that although there were plenty of education startups, few seemed to have taken into account the true end users — teachers and students.

It was at one of these conferences that I met the LEANLAB team. While LEANLAB focuses on traditional accelerator metrics like market traction and financials, their model also prioritizes the acceleration of products that truly build the capacity of educators to impact students. This priority is most apparent in their focus on equity and human-centered design in Kansas City and beyond.

Like LEANLAB, inquirED was founded on the inextricably-linked values of Equity and Human-Centered Design. We believe that all students, regardless of geography or circumstance, should have the opportunity to engage in inquiry-based learning that prepares them for the 21st century. Currently, however, inquiry-based learning tends to be concentrated in a small number of schools, often with greater access to tools and resources. To shift that paradigm, we cannot design in absence of the teachers and students that we serve; instead, it is through teacher and student-centered design that we reach that vision of equity.

Through LEANLAB’s school partnership model, inquirED has intentionally iterated on our product in collaboration with Pitcher Elementary, an under-resourced Kansas City public school. Pitcher’s teachers have given us invaluable feedback, shaping how we’ve updated our instructional tools and planned for future iterations. Most of all, Pitcher’s teachers and students have kept us grounded in the day to day needs of the classroom, so we can design tools that respond not to a theoretical vision of inquiry — but to the reality of how inquiry comes to life in its own unique way at Pitcher and in schools across the country.

About Shanti Elangovan
After obtaining an M.Ed from Columbia University, Shanti Elangovan served as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, and curriculum director, before directing programs at the National Center for Teacher Residencies. In 2017 Shanti founded inquirED to scale the use and impact of inquiry-based learning, a powerful teaching pedagogy that prepares students for the 21st century.

About inquirED
inquirED supports schools and districts in implementing inquiry-based learning through customizable inquiry curriculum with embedded professional learning.