Celebrating 30 Years of Curiosity
Founded as “Center for Artistry in Teaching” by Aleta Margolis in 1995, Center for Inspired Teaching transforms the school experience for students by investing in teachers. Through our innovative, improvisation-based professional development, teachers shift their role in their classroom from deliverer of information to Instigator of Thought. Our teachers fuel students’ curiosity and teach them how to think, not what to think.
As a middle school teacher, Aleta challenged herself to make learning meaningful and engaging in every subject. That experience is at the core of Inspired Teaching’s mission: Create radical change in the school experience, away from compliance and toward authentic engagement.
Explore Inspired Teaching’s history—and our plans for the next 30 years—through milestones aligned with the 4 Is: Intellect, Inquiry, Imagination, and Integrity. The 4 I’s guide Inspired Teachers in teaching all students in all subject areas.
Intellect
Building on the teachings of Howard Gardner and the decades of brain research sparked by his work, Inspired Teaching’s definition of Intellect extends to the entire person, recognizing that intellect lives in the mind, but is not confined to the head. The way we move our bodies, the ways we speak, interact, listen, respond, absorb, synthesize, and act on information are all part of our Intellect.
100% Engaging Professional Development
At the first-ever Inspired Teaching Institute in the summer of 1996, 12 teachers from Washington, DC participated in professional development designed to be 100% engaging—physically, intellectually, and emotionally. The Washington Post featured the Institute in “The Revolution in the Classroom“—the first of many articles written about Inspired Teaching’s innovative, joyful approach to teacher professional development.
Sharing What Works
Photo: In 2011 we founded the Inspired Teaching Demonstration School, a Washington, DC public charter school. In 2014, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama visited the school and helped build a new playground in partnership with Kaboom.
The Inspired Teaching Demonstration School serves as a space for visitors to observe and learn from the Inspired Teaching Approach in action. The school’s standards-based curriculum and student goals are centered on the 4 I’s. ITDS was voted “Best Elementary School” in DC City Paper‘s 2014 poll and “Best Middle School” in 2015.
In 1997, Inspired Teaching began the first of many school- and district-wide partnerships focused on building capacity, creating a reading program that trained 30 teachers in a Washington, DC elementary school. In the decades since, Inspired Teaching has been tapped to support individual school turn-around efforts and DC and Baltimore public school systems in implementing engaging social studies, science, and mathematics curriculum. In addition, we have worked closely with arts and culture educators, collaborating with Folger Shakespeare Library in the late 1990’s and Ford’s Theater and DC Collaborative more recently. Then as now, Inspired Teaching has always strived to meet all educators where they are, whether that’s one-on-one, in their schools, or on a stage.
Inspired Teaching’s SCALE program ran for several years in partnership with Washington, DC Public Schools. Inspired Teaching trained dozens of teachers to lead literacy-based science professional development for their colleagues, reaching all teachers within the district. This multiplier effect is a regular feature of Inspired Teaching’s work.
Hooray For Monday regularly features interviews with education experts, thought leaders, and classroom teachers, including advocates like Jonathan Kozol, Trabian Shorters, and Esther Wojcicki.
Amid the ongoing upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, Inspired Teaching created a new platform for communication, community, and collaboration in 2020: Hooray For Monday. An award-winning weekly professional learning tool—including a podcast—Hooray For Monday includes insights and resources to support educators in creating rich learning opportunities in the days ahead.
“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” Martha Graham
Inquiry
How would school be different if, instead of telling our students, “Here are the things we have to learn,” we asked them, “What are the things you want to learn?” and then we create the conditions for them to do so. Inspired Teaching’s definition of Inquiry challenges students and teachers to engage with content and with one another from a place of authentic curiosity and encourages teachers to help students work toward an answer, rather than giving them one.
Discovering Joy
Sparked by our whole school and district partnerships, which began in 2000 and continue today, Inspired Teaching witnessed early on the power of incorporating joy into our training. Partner schools are recognized for improving academic outcomes and teachers are celebrated for their engaging, enthusiastic classrooms. That’s why, years before it gained wider recognition as a necessary component of successful teaching and learning, Joy was included as one of the 5 Core Elements.
Research-Backed Revolution
Photo: After adults joined a student-facilitated conversation on Gentrification in the DMV during a Black Lives Matter at Schools Week Interschool Seminar Inspired Teaching hosted in 2017, students shared personal anecdotes about how gentrification has affected their lives.
Inspired Teaching’s work is rooted in best practices backed by extensive research—and has itself become a resource for the insights and innovations that have helped shape progress in education. An Inspired Teaching white paper on the benefits of relationship-based disciplinary settings published in 2007 outlined SEL strategies aligned with standards codified by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in Washington, DC in 2024. Inspired Teaching’s research into engagement-based teaching and its intersection with issues of social justice was borne from a partnership with Teaching for Change to bring Black Lives Matter at Schools Week to DC-area schools in 2018. And in 2025, we joined the Research Partnership for Professional Learning (RPPL) network to further strengthen our role in establishing education professional development standards.
Students in Inspired Teaching’s yearlong Real World History program, which launched in 2014 to demonstrate the ways students should get to learn, showcase curiosity in action through oral history projects and internships at cultural institutions across Washington, DC. Their oral histories are archived in the DC Public Library’s DIGDC and feature conversations with DC elders who experienced the Great Migration firsthand.
In January 2025, we launched an effort to reach everyone, everywhere through the yearlong Curiosity Challenge. After decades of experience supporting teachers in sparking curiosity in their classrooms—and witnessing its benefits on classroom community, academic success, and student well-being—Inspired Teaching knows cultivating curiosity is the solution to rising polarization (Merriam-Webster’s 2024 word of the year). Participants from places like Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Lebanon, New Zealand, and more receive prompts and activities to help support their curiosity as we all work toward making curiosity the word of 2025.
“I went through the Inspired Teaching program in 2009, and the insights and tools I gained from it continue to shape my teaching today. So many of the strategies and philosophies I learned through Inspired Teaching have not only made me a better educator but have also had a meaningful impact on my students’ lives. Making learning come alive and putting the students in the driver’s seat is something that I strive to do every day and it’s something I learned from Inspired Teaching.” Inspired Teacher
Imagination
Renowned improvisational theatre pioneer and founder of Theatresports, Keith Johnstone refers to adults as “atrophied children” because we often neglect our imaginations, or worse, consider them frivolous in the face of the challenges we encounter as grown people. At Inspired Teaching, our definition of Imagination involves generating possibilities that are below the surface, that extend beyond the usual.
Reaching New Places
Photo: Inspired Teaching began our work with Osvitoria, a leading Ukrainian education NGO, in 2023. Our partnership supports educators there as they, and their students, navigate the ongoing war. Pictured here are Aleta (fifth from left) and Zoya Litvin, Osvitoria’s founder (second from right) with Ukrainian teachers at an Inspired Teaching professional learning session during Helsinki Education Week in 2023.
In addition to the international teachers we reach through our online professional learning workshops and resources, Inspired Teaching has expanded to global student audiences over the years. Inspired Teaching alum have helped spread our Approach as they’ve fanned out around the world. Inspired Teaching mentor Judy White taught in India in 2005, Kgololo Academy in South Africa was founded by Inspired Teacher Waahida Thobekile Tolbert-Mbatha in 2015, and Gift of Education (GOE), an English-language instruction organization in Myanmar is led by Inspired Teacher Susan Coti. Inspired Teaching facilitated virtual professional development for GOE’s English-language instructors in 2023.
Going Online
Reimagining Inspired Teaching’s Institute—historically in-person and fully immersive—became necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person professional learning was not possible. Enter Zoom and cameras-on, interactive online learning with educators from around the world in the fall of 2020. Monthly online Institutes are now a regular feature of Inspired Teaching’s programming.
Inspired Teaching was named one of 10 Worldwide Champions of Learning Through Play by the LEGO Foundation and Ashoka
In more than a dozen digital guidebooks, teachers can find strategies, classroom activities, and research to support them in building classroom community, meeting learner needs, and practicing self-care.
As technology has evolved and online learning has become the norm, Inspired Teaching remains committed to serving educators locally while also translating the Inspired Teaching Approach into digital resources for teachers and school leaders everywhere. In 2016, we launched the Instigator of Thought Challenge, supporting teachers on their own time in reframing their role as more than mere deliverers of information. The Inspired2Learn collection was created as a resource for teachers to use during the upheaval of the pandemic in 2020. It has since evolved into an ever-growing library featuring dozens of free activities designed for easy implementation in all grades and subject areas.
Integrity
Integrity is often perceived as a simple and straightforward concept. But when Inspired Teaching codified our 4 I’s over a decade ago, we found Integrity to be the most complex. Our definition of Integrity means to take seriously the power we have to impact other people; acknowledge the accompanying responsibility we have to educate ourselves; and doing our very best to understand an issue from as many perspectives as possible before taking any action.
Learning From and With
In 1999, Inspired Teaching launched Summer STEP (Student and Teacher Enrichment Program) to provide ongoing instruction in math, reading, and science led by Inspired Teaching Fellows. STEP served both as a supplemental learning opportunity for students and as a demonstration site for what Inspired Teaching looks like in action. STEP laid the foundation for the creation of Real World History in 2014 and Speak Truth in 2017, two demonstration programs for DC-area high school students that are today being adapted for use in classrooms across the country.
Global Recognition
Photo: Inspired Teaching’s ABCDE of Learner Needs was selected for the HundrED 2024 Global Collection from among thousands of international applicants. As part of the recognition, Aleta traveled to Helsinki in 2023 to participate in the Global Summit and Helsinki Education Week.
Three decades of hands-on work with teachers and school leaders in Washington, DC and around the world has given Inspired Teaching a depth of insight into what’s effective—and what isn’t—in the classroom. This perspective serves as the basis for the messages we share through the media, whether it’s national outlets like The New York Times or The Washington Post, leading education publications like Kappan, EL Magazine, and The 74 Million, or TEDx’s global stage. It also informs our programs and resources, resulting in local, national, and global recognition for the effectiveness, innovation, and necessity of Inspired Teaching’s work, including Aleta’s appointment as an Ashoka Fellow in 2001.
As the first nonprofit to train and certify new teachers in Washington, DC, Inspired Teaching ran its Teacher Residency program from 2009 to 2019. More than 200 teachers earned a Master of Arts in Teaching through Trinity University and a DC teaching license after receiving targeted professional development and coursework from Inspired Teaching, and a Residency Year spent in the classroom under the guidance of a lead teacher. The Inspired Teaching Residency carefully prepared teachers for long-lasting, rewarding careers as educators and changemakers.
Since 2014, Inspired Teaching’s Speak Truth program has showcased what is possible when our young people are given the space and skills to strengthen their communication, connect across divides, and hold respectful dialogue on the complex and complicated topics facing society. Each school year, hundreds of students from high schools across Washington, DC participate in weekly Speak Truth sessions at MLK Library. Inspired Teaching also partners with individual schools to bring Speak Truth programming directly to the classroom.
Impact
Over three decades, Inspired Teaching has taught more than 50,000 teachers in urban, suburban, and rural school districts across the country and around the world. We teach educators how to teach students to approach academic problems, social challenges, and other people from a place of curiosity and respect. Classrooms led by Inspired Teachers are classrooms where students and teachers thrive.
