Best of 2023 | Hooray For Monday

Hooray for Monday is a weekly blog filled with questions, ideas, reflections, and actions we can all take to remodel the school experience for students. Prefer audio? Listen to the Hooray For Monday podcast! Available on your favorite platforms here.

December 25, 2023

By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President

I love engaging with you — the teachers, school leaders, parents, and other amazing people who read and listen to Hooray For Monday every week.

Thank you for being part of our learning community. This last week of 2023, we’re sharing our most popular issues from the past 12 months. I hope you enjoy reflecting on this year, and our whole team looks forward to continuing to engage with you in 2024!

The Urgent Need to Increase School Connectedness
Following the release of the CDC report on teen mental health and well-being, Inspired Teaching began an ongoing, in-depth exploration of School Connectedness. This issue of Hooray For Monday offered a look into these worrying trends – and Inspired Teaching’s approach for reversing them.

Curiosity and School Connectedness
Curiosity underpins everything we do at Inspired Teaching; it is the solution to much of the divisiveness and isolation affecting society today. In this Hooray For Monday, Aleta describes how curiosity – using seven simple prompts – can help teachers create connection in their classrooms.

Create Connection by Sharing Student Expertise
Each of the nearly 200 issues of Hooray For Monday has been informed by Inspired Teaching’s connection to teachers and students. In this issue, Jenna’s experience speaking with students in Inspired Teaching’s Real World History and Speak Truth programs, as well as those at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration school, offers concrete strategies for teachers to create school connection.

Don’t Know How? Your Students Might!
Inspiration often comes when we least expect it – including this anecdote from Jenna! After jamming a copier and being rescued by the calm expertise of a group of high school students, she was struck by the role young people can and should play in ensuring our school communities work.

To, Not, For, With
This issue offers a deeper, compelling look at a model of discipline that goes beyond getting students to follow the rules, and focuses on helping students thrive.

Learning History from Those Who Lived it
Inspired Teaching’s mission is to create radical change in the school experience, away from compliance and toward authentic engagement. We achieve this primarily by teaching school leaders and teachers, but we also know “proof of concept” makes a strong case for the Inspired Teaching Approach. Our social studies course for DC-area high school students, Real World History, does just that!

Rules of Inspired Teaching Improv
Research shows that teachers trained in the skills of improvisation are well-equipped to handle the rapidly changing nature of what’s happening in schools. Better yet, classrooms steeped in an improvisational mindset foster the kinds of engagement and feelings of belonging essential to school connectedness. The 5 Rules of Inspired Teaching Improv are a teacher’s guide for building a community full of play, creativity, and authentic learning.

Fireflies and Mathematical Models
Hooray For Monday’s primary audience is preK-12 educators who seek fun and practical advice they can use to build classroom and school communities where everyone thrives. And sometimes, the lessons we learn each week come from unexpected sources – like professors of applied mathematics and statistics!

Know Your Goal
What’s that saying about the best-laid plans!? This Hooray For Monday offers an exploration of the Inspired Teaching Rule of Improv Know Your Goal, and shows how common the art of improvisation is in our everyday lives.

The Hooray For Monday podcast began in 2022 as an additional channel for receiving Hooray For Monday’s insights and resources. In 2023, it continued to evolve. A wonderful tool for those who prefer to listen while they learn, the Hooray For Monday podcast has become a source for original interviews and deeper storytelling.

Subscribe (rate and review!) to the podcast on your favorite listening platform and be sure to check out the below episodes — some of our most-listened-to of 2023!

The Urgent Need to Increase School Connectedness

We Find Connection in the Process

Can AI Bring Us Together?

Reflections from a First-Year Inspired Teacher

Learning History from Those Who Lived it

You Can’t Be Joyful Yesterday

Fireflies and Mathematical Models

What Makes a Yogi Curious

Words that Connect Us

I Don’t Need a Root Canal

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.

Listen to This Issue of Hooray For Monday

InspiredTeaching · December 25, 2023: Best of Hooray For Monday

Micaiah Anderson

Community Outreach Specialist

As a Community Outreach Specialist, Micaiah is responsible for program promotion and outreach support for Inspired Teaching events and workshops. Micaiah has a passion for collaborating with community members to build-power and connect. She is an educator with a heart for youth and has experience supporting students fight injustices within their schools and communities. She has a BA in Political Science from, the real HU, Hampton University & anticipates graduating in May 2024 with a Masters of Arts degree in Educational Policy Transformation from Georgetown University.

AUTONOMY

"I want to have a say in what happens to me."

Autonomy is the need for independence; the ability to make choices, to create, to explore, and to express oneself freely; to have sufficient space, to move around, and to feel unrestricted with opportunities to exercise free will.

Brady Maiden

Outreach Coordinator

As the Outreach Coordinator, Brady helps maintain Inspired Teaching’s social media presence and supports the organization’s mission to connect with DC community leaders, educators, and parents. Brady has her Master’s in Public Policy from George Mason University and her BS in Political Science from Northern Arizona University. She is passionate about community, equity, and coalition building recognizing that learning and growing with the community at large is how we continue to be impactful.

What brings you joy in life?

I find joy in spending time with my friends and family and meeting new people. I like going to concerts and festivals, and finding new books to read.

The Learner’s Cycle, Wonder-Experiment-Learn, and the Teacher’s Cycle, Observe-Plan-Instigate, comprise Inspired Teaching’s approach to engaging students in inquiry-based learning.

When they are engaged in the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, students are immersed in learning. They take the lead in designing authentic learning experiences around their own interests and their school’s standards of learning. Each discovery leads to a new question which in turn leads to more wondering and more learning. In the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, Learn is not a destination or an endpoint; it is a deeper understanding, leading to a deeper wondering and new possibilities that create new entry points to further exploration. The cycle continues because what students have learned generates more wonderings that require more experiments that foster more learning – and on and on.

The Observe-Plan-Instigate Cycle is the work of an Inspired Teacher. While a student is expected to follow the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, the teacher joins them on the learning journey while following their own cycle of Observe-Plan-Instigate. This cycle ultimately serves to ensure an inquiry-based atmosphere is at play in the classroom.

Jaqueta Abbey

Teaching and Learning Specialist

Jaqueta is the Teaching and Learning Specialist for Inspired Teaching. In addition to her current role with Inspired Teaching, Jaqueta is a first-grade teaching assistant. Her background features a variety of traditional and non-traditional experiences in the field of education, including working as an adjunct professor, teaching summer reading programs to children and adults, and tutoring children in the foster care system. Jaqueta earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.A. in Interactive Media from Elon University.

What brings you joy in life?

Creative self-expression! In addition to my passion for storytelling, I love dancing of all kinds. I've studied belly dance, bachata, and Brazilian Zouk among other styles. I also enjoy glass fusing, crocheting, photography, and cross stitching. These art forms allow me to express myself and build connections with other people at the same time. I think life would be a lot less vibrant without artists and storytellers!

Michelle Welk

Communication & Marketing Specialist

As Communications and Marketing Specialist, Michelle is responsible for finding and creating new ways to highlight Inspired Teaching and promote its programs in order to expand and deepen the organization's impact. Michelle has worked in communications in an array of settings, from creative agencies to state politics to national nonprofits. She has a BA in Journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia and is passionate about education, access, and equity.

What brings you joy in life?

My son, the beach, making a persuasive argument and good food!

Max Peterson

Real World History Assistant Teacher

Max received his Bachelor’s degree in History and African American Studies from Boston University in May 2016. He has worked in museum curation at the Museum of the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Max has worked with young people of varying ages from young children to young adults transitioning to college.

Feedback and Accountability

We grow through feedback and an understanding that the quality of our work is a reflection of what we are learning, but the shift to remote learning this spring disrupted a lot of the tools teachers were used to using to evaluate student growth. How might we do things differently this fall? Participants in this workshop will explore ways to bring meaningful assessment into the virtual and/or socially-distanced classroom and approaches to student feedback that strengthen motivation, and build relationships and achievement.