A founder-led New Zealand education venture built to combine structure, curiosity, and meaningful learning.

Tala's Story

Tala Vos brings a rare combination of classroom experience, structured literacy expertise, founder energy, and lived understanding of alternative pathways in education.  

She was homeschooled until age 14 and grew up in a remote environment that demanded independence, resourcefulness, and self-reliance.  Those early experiences shaped her understanding that learning does not need to happen in one rigid format to be real, rigorous, or successful.

Over the past 10 years, Tala has worked in education while also building original tools and programmes designed specifically for New Zealand learners.  Shi is the Creator of ABC Shinanigans, a structured literacy programme for Year 1-2 learners, and YouPlanIt, an online platform supporting student-centred and teacher-centred learning.

During the COVID period, she also tested a live delivery model that generated $30,000 over two terms, showing that her ideas had practical commercial traction. 

Why Curious Minds was Created

Curious Minds was created in response to a simple but important concern: too much learning has become fragmented, shallow, compliance-driven, or disconnected from what young people actually need.

We believe education should help learners build knowledge, confidence, curiosity, strong communication, and the ability to think deeply about the world around them. 

Curious Minds exists to create learning systems that are rigorous, flexible, and genuinely human. 

Our Philosophy

Our approach to learning

We believe powerful learning brings together:

• explicit teaching where needed
• inquiry and exploration
• rich dialogue
• student ownership
• meaningful curriculum integration
• real-world thinking
• strong relationships

We do not see structure and curiosity as opposites.  We believe they work best together.