March 23, 2026
By Meag Campos, Project Manager
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast to hear Meag speak with Marty Authier and Helen Schmehl, Integrated Sciences teachers, Amy Tilling, Coordinator of Assessment and Academic Advancement, and Kit Nelson, Director of Academic Studio, at New Orleans Center of Creative Arts, her son’s high school in New Orleans. They discuss their approach to teaching and learning and offer advice teachers everywhere can use to create authentically engaging lessons.
A NOCCA student demonstrating their pan flute
This year, as my son entered ninth grade at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), I officially earned the title of “High School Parent,” a prestigious title steeped in feelings of uncertainty, excitement, and flat-out disbelief.
Before our family decided on NOCCA, a public high school where the arts students audition to attend, I had the privilege of visiting area schools with the hope of finding one that would foster curiosity in my son and allow him space to become secure in his identity. We felt we found that at NOCCA and when he was accepted, we were thrilled. Halfway through the school year, I feel incredibly thankful that my son’s school has turned out to be even better than we could have imagined—and I think that can be attributed to the level of autonomy and creative freedom his teachers have in the way they present the curriculum.
The moment this clicked for me was one evening at dinner, when my son described a lesson he began working on that day in school. As part of the Louisiana curriculum requirements, students are required to “use mathematical representations to support a claim regarding relationships among the frequency, wavelength, and speed of waves traveling in various media.”
Rather than make this lesson about rote memorization of formulas, my son’s teachers turned it into a hands-on exploration of sound waves, frequency, and velocity created by panpipes the students construct from different length boba straws. And then, as a lesson on algebraic equations, students are tasked with calculating how to make a profitable panpipe business.
A NOCCA student measures boba straws as part of the pan flute math and science lesson.
I was thrilled to hear how authentically engaged my son was in his learning and impressed at how observant, collaborative, and creative his teachers are in building an authentically engaging lesson. And that is why I wanted to speak with them!
As you’ll hear in this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast, Marty Authier and Helen Schmehl, Integrated Sciences teachers, Amy Tilling, Coordinator of Assessment and Academic Advancement, and Kit Nelson, Director of Academic Studio, approach every learning opportunity with intention and genuine interest in the things their students care about. And while the teachers at NOCCA enjoy a high degree of flexibility and autonomy in their work, the insights Mr. Authier, Ms. Schmehl, Ms. Tilling, and Dr. Nelson share are valuable for teachers everywhere, in every setting.
Especially as educators continue to support their students and one another in the midst of rising class sizes, absenteeism, testing imperatives, and…everything else happening in the world today…I hope that this conversation serves as further inspiration for embracing the uncertainty of the moment and building community with colleagues and students.
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.
