May 5, 2025
By Aleta Margolis, President and Founder
This week’s Hooray For Monday podcast features the voices of some of the teachers we’re grateful for today, and every day.
Today marks the beginning of Teacher Appreciation Week. The teachers who inspire our work give us many reasons to be grateful. This year we wish to express our gratitude for how all of you fuel our curiosity.
We know Inspired Teachers face many obstacles as you work to create authentically engaging, joyful learning environments for your students. And yet, you manage to find new ways to cultivate classrooms where learners are equipped with the skills and knowledge to be curious, compassionate, critical thinkers. Your ingenuity makes us wonder what else is possible. It is an immense privilege to be in community with you, the teachers doing this work.
This week, teachers are sure to receive mugs, gift cards, baked goods, and other well-deserved tokens of gratitude. At Inspired Teaching we’re sharing some powerful experiences we’ve had with Inspired Teachers who have kindled our curiosity and made us especially thankful.
I hope you enjoy them.
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Witnessing Inspired Teaching in action through our Teaching with Improvisation Fellows.
In the fall, we observed the critical role physical space plays in helping students cultivate their autonomy in the John Lewis Elementary classroom of Sabrina Burroughs, and we touched base virtually with Kyiv-based Fellow Olena Poteraiko, who shared her Inspired Teaching experience with her Ukrainian colleagues during back-to-school professional learning.
Fellow Ada Ezeh and Inspired Teaching Residency Alum Shay Schoppert joined Inspired Teaching for an online Institute in November, during which they shared advice for replicating classrooms as warm and welcoming as the one they lead at Brightwood Elementary in Washington, DC.
During a visit to Brightwood in December, we learned that for a unit on gingerbread men, Fellow Rachel Houghton visited multiple libraries in the District to source as many diverse stories of the character as she could find.
This spring, Denise Dawkins’ students at Hearst Elementary expertly showcased the conflict resolution skills she was teaching them, and Sheena Styles, a math teacher at Takoma Elementary, joined Inspired Teaching’s April online Institute to offer insight into the benefits of teaching that centers student voice and mutual respect.
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Learning from Inspired Teachers we’ve taught over the decades.
Kaneia Mayo Crumlin has been a part of the Inspired Teaching family for two decades—first as a teacher participating in our programs, then as a staff member, and now a faculty member who leads programming for us in addition to her day job as an elementary teacher at Beauvoir School in Washington, DC. Ms. Crumlin brought her expertise as a parent, teacher, and education consultant to September’s Inspired Teaching Institute. She offered advice for helping students and their teachers cultivate rich relationships with one another.
Kalpana Kumar Sharma is a Teaching With Improv Fellow, an early childhood ABCDE of Learner Needs Fellow, and an alumna of the Inspired Teaching Institute. In December, Ms. Sharma led an Inspired Teaching Institute, teaching teachers how to use yoga and breathwork to sustain wellbeing in the classroom and beyond.
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Building community with teaching artists.
In partnership with DC Collaborative, Inspired Teaching led a series of workshops to train arts educators from institutions around Washington, DC to bring the 5 Rules of Inspired Teaching Improv into their work with young people. We were struck not only by the creative leaps they took with activities but also by how their professional commitment to authentic self-expression accelerated the creation of a community. One teacher commented, “It’s felt like a warm hug; a breeze on a spring day as well. I often don’t get to be in community with so many creative artists at one time…and so being in a room with people who are already excited about pouring into their learning…is already a gift. But to really be in an environment like that, it’s like we come alive.” This made us curious about what else is possible when creative self-expression is prioritized right at the start of the school year.
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Appreciating the teachers who taught us lessons beyond the classroom.
A frequent participant in our workshops, Alicia Galvan offered us a beautiful perspective on how the ways we interact with 3-year-olds sets the stage for how they understand human interaction for the rest of their lives making it all the more important that we trust them to build their own emotional intelligence.
Recently, Inspired Teaching team members reflected on the teachers we had growing up whose impact was felt beyond academic instruction. The gratitude expressed was contagious – and inspired several team members to reach out and express our appreciation directly to our former teachers!
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 of Center for Inspired Teaching, a social change nonprofit organization that champions the power of curiosity and is dedicated to transforming the school experience from compliance-based to engagement-based. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
