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Celebrating 20 years at Chocolate Inspiration

April 19, 2016

This piece – written by Inspired Teaching’s Executive Director, Aleta Margolis – appeared in Inspired Teaching’s April 2016 newsletter. 

In just two days, Center for Inspired Teaching will bring back our signature gala, Chocolate Inspiration, which will take place on April 21 at the Embassy of Italy from 7-9 pm. Chocolate Inspiration is a fun and elegant evening that features the finest chefs, from across the DC area, who prepare and serve their most inspired chocolate creations. Like our teacher training programs and like the classrooms of Inspired Teachers, the event will be intellectually, emotionally, and physically engaging. It will be playful and creative, while working towards a serious, important purpose: building a better school experience for all children.

We hold this gala to celebrate the accomplishments of Inspired Teaching and the people whose support makes our work possible. On the occasion of our 20th anniversary, we’re all the more delighted to reflect on how far we’ve come, and how much more there is for us to do together, in order to ensure that every child has an Inspired Teacher. In that spirit, we are proud to honor author and activist Jonathan Kozol with the Inspired Teaching Changemaker Award.

For the past 50 years, Jonathan Kozol has worked tirelessly to address the challenge of providing equal opportunity to every child in our nation’s public schools. He has especially focused on the importance of teachers: of empowering teachers to find their voice, and, in turn, to help children find their own voices. In 2007, a young teacher wrote Mr. Kozol a letter about the challenges she faced in inner-city Boston Public Schools and invited him to come visit her classroom. Their conversations, visits, and letters led Mr. Kozol to write an award-winning book, Letters to a Young Teacher. That young teacher is now Inspired Teaching’s Director of Teaching and Learning, Jane Dimyan-Ehrenfeld. We look forward to bringing the two educators back together at our gala to celebrate the importance of empowering teachers to empower students, no matter their background.

Over 20 years, Inspired Teaching has empowered thousands of teachers to shift their mindsets and transform their classroom practice in order to ensure an exemplary education that values and cultivates the Intellect, Inquiry, Imagination, and Integrity of every child. We have trained teachers and administrators in nearly every public and public charter school across DC. We have founded the award-winning Inspired Teaching Demonstration School. We have shared our work with educators across the globe. We have won national and international accolades; we have developed exemplary standards-aligned lesson units; and we have spread inquiry-based, student-centered curriculum across the city through DCPS’ signature Cornerstones initiative. Our transformative teacher training programs have been featured in media outlets from the Washington Post and NPR to the Bridgespan Group and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. And the challenge of building a better school experience for all children still looms large. We have more work to do, here in the DC area and far beyond. We need your support to help us bring Inspired Teaching to even more teachers and students.

Help Inspired Teaching accomplish our goal of creating a better school experience for all children by attending Chocolate Inspiration. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit our Chocolate Inspiration page. Thank you to those who have already supported our goal including our wonderful host committee; our partner in supporting 20 years of Inspired Teaching, PNC; and those of you who have already purchased your tickets. I look forward to experiencing a fun, chocolate-filled, and Inspiring evening together.

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