Our Mission

The Institute of Inquiry is a small nonprofit education program dedicated to providing responsive, creative and high-quality educational opportunities to youth, teachers, families and creative professionals in the Morongo Basin.

Our Approach

Our passion for teaching is grounded in our understanding of how children and youth learn. In the moments when we stop to observe the ways water moves through the desert, or why more insects gather around certain plants, questions rise up as powerful entry points for learning. When we encourage children and youth to follow their curiosities, we give them chances to experiment, to practice vulnerability, and gain a deeper understanding of our wild and wonderful desert environment and themselves.

Our work as educators is to cultivate spaces that center around questions, and to help raise children who are accustomed to being valued, listened to & supported. 

Our Community

Our classrooms are inclusive spaces; We value all families, cultures, gender expressions, ethnic backgrounds, abilities, religions and belief systems. Within our learning environments, we most often highlight the stories of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists, activists and people as these voices are so often not amplified to an equitable degree. We acknowledge that we all “breathe the same air” in our society. This means that prejudices, stereotypes and racism affect us all— affecting marginalized communities disproportionately and often fatally. As a program, we are actively committed to strengthening our support for all families, and undoing the perspectives and frameworks that do not serve the goal of equity.