September 16, 2024
By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast for the conversation between Jenna Fournel, Director of Teaching and Learning, and Kaneia Mayo Crumlin, a long-time educator, as they discuss ways to build relationships with students and help them build relationships with one another.
As part of the webinar presented during the September online Inspired Teaching Institute, which focused on supporting students as they build and strengthen their relationships with one another, Director of Teaching and Learning Jenna Fournel spoke with long-time Inspired Teaching collaborator and elementary teacher at Beauvoir School in Washington, DC, Kaneia Mayo Crumlin. Ms. Crumlin shared a wealth of insights and advice for connecting with students in the early days of a new school year, and for creating intentional opportunities for them to learn about themselves and each other.
Below, you’ll find the recording of that Inspired Teaching Institute, which includes part of the conversation between Jenna and Ms. Crumlin, as well as in-depth exploration of the Inspired Teaching resources, activities, and lessons participants in our professional learning programming get access to.
I encourage you to listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast for their full conversation; it is a joy to hear Ms. Crumlin share her experiences with her second- and third-grade students. Included below are a few highlights, as well!
Play
Ms. Crumlin makes it a point to join in at recess; she even brings an extra set of sneakers with her to school! It’s a wonderful way to create opportunities for connection and a fun way to learn more about who your students are, as individuals and as a community.
“[The students] like it and then we get to chat about it afterward. And I also get to see their dynamic at play because I don’t see that in the classroom necessarily. That’s also another opportunity for them to see me, but also for me to see them and gather [more] data points.”
Stay Humble
As the grown-ups in the room, it can be easy to slip into a mindset of “knowing it all,” but Ms. Crumlin points out that each student in our classroom offers their own background knowledge that can and should inform our interactions with them.
“I want to learn, I want to lean into someone else’s perspective. Yes, while I know a lot, while I’m so degreed and so buttoned up, I don’t know everything and I might not know you.”
Classroom Rules are Life Skills
When Ms. Crumlin helps her students strengthen their empathy, humility, and self-advocacy, she is careful to identify these skills not as requirements for success in her classroom, but as necessary tools students will need throughout their lives.
“‘This is not just for now, this is for tomorrow, and next year, and when I become a grown up.’ I try to make sure that we are deliberate, intentional, and purposeful about these skills.”
Have Resources at the Ready
As Ms. Crumlin identifies some of the challenges in teaching young children whose formative experiences in education began during the pandemic, she also finds opportunities for optimism in parents eager for resources. Inspired Teaching’s Resilient Children Handbook is an easy-to-share digital guidebook filled with insights and activities for parents and guardians. The ABCDE of Learner Needs Guidebooks also include practical tools for identifying and addressing needs outside of the classroom.
“Parents are aware of [the challenges]. They come in like: ‘I know my child was doing this and that and not really engaged in school and I really want to help them’… And so they’re looking for resources, which is hopeful for me because I’m like, ‘Great! You’re hungry for it and I got it.’”
For additional insights, resources, and information on Inspired Teaching teacher and youth programming, subscribe to the Hooray For Monday newsletter!
Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication by Center for Inspired Teaching, an independent nonprofit organization that invests in and supports teachers. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Our mission is to create radical change in the school experience – away from compliance and toward authentic engagement.