Blow it Up a Little Bit | Hooray for Monday

May 29, 2023

By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President, Center for Inspired Teaching

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.

You can now listen to Hooray for Monday on Spotify! Check out our podcast here.

As Teacher Appreciation Month winds to a close, I’m reminded of a LinkedIn Live interview we did early in May with Dr. Tangy Millard, principal at West Potomac High School, around the importance of school connectedness. In that discussion, Dr. Millard shared her appreciation for the challenges all of us in education face right now which exist alongside a strong desire to get back to normal. But maybe normal isn’t where we should be setting our sights.

Dr. Millard explained, “Our kids came out of the pandemic understanding that they are new and their world is new and that they have to function in a new way. So when we started to apply the old stuff to them, they started to let us know that’s not going to work and we’re going to need something else. The industrial school complex way of doing things, it’s over, it’s been over. COVID put an exclamation point behind that and said, we have to look at how we do things differently because students are consuming their learning differently. Staff need to be able to distribute that learning differently. How can we blow it up a little bit? Because if we just keep doing what we’ve always done, that’s the definition of insanity.”

Change takes time, and Dr. Millard’s examples of “blowing it up a little bit” illustrate that this is a community-wide effort. But step by step, change is possible.

Gather data on student and staff well-being and look at it together. A district-wide SEL screener gave Dr. Millard and her staff insight into the fact students at West Potomac “very clearly showed a lower level of that sense of belonging.” And they knew they had to address that right away, “because if students don’t have that, it is very difficult to find the need to come into a building that they don’t feel that they belong to or to stay engaged in the school.”
Listen to the children. Dr. Millard said they learned more about what students needed when they asked them more questions. “Student voice became a big piece of that sense of belonging. They felt like things were being done to them. That was compounded by the two previous years of COVID, when there was no control for them and no real way to determine or understand or make sense of their academic world because of the way things shifted so drastically.” With that information in hand, the school found new ways to ensure students are seen and heard.
Look for structural ways to create more connections. The high school is large. It has 2,700 students and so Dr. Millard and her team devised a new advisory system to make it feel smaller. Starting in 9th grade students are assigned to an advisory group with an advisory teacher who they will continue to be with throughout their remaining years of school.
Enlist the community to nurture wellness. West Potomac hosted two wellness days this year where the entire student body, faculty, and staff rotated through a series of fun and engaging activities that included everything from a petting zoo to pickleball and car washing. Community members outside the school donated supplies, time, and expertise to the events. Dr. Millard said, “the response from staff, students, and parents about that day blew us out of the water.” And a community-wide event like that communicates to families that mental health is as important as academics. “You can’t do reading and writing until that’s right, and students feel safe and they have intellectual safety. You have to build all of that before you can even get to reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

My wish for you as you head into June and soon summer break is that you find yourself the peers, and ideally the community, that will engage in “blowing it up a little bit” when you start all over again this fall. What learnings from this year will inform what you do next year? What will you change? What will you keep the same? But most importantly who will you blow it up with?

What We’re Curious About

Each week a member of the Inspired Teaching community shares something that’s piquing their curiosity. Maybe it will spark yours too!

ARE MVPS FAIR?

Emily, 5th Grader at Friends Community School, College Park, MD

I’m curious about if MVPs are fair. I am wondering this because: are they actually really fair to all the players on the team? Is it right to single out just one player as the most valuable player? Because if they were just playing against another team, would they actually be the best person?

Teacher Resources

Interesting, Important, Useful

In her interview, Dr. Millard spoke to really rethinking how and what students are learning in order to foster more connection. In this activity students are enlisted in that rethinking as they identify what’s driving their curiosity.

Yes. But… vs. Yes! And…

As teachers, embracing an improvisational mindset can help us think creatively about problems like the need for more belonging in our classrooms, and building this kind of thinking in our students can do the same for them. This activity is a good place to start.

What would make you look forward to coming to school?

As we near the end of this school year, think about what more you can learn from these experts in your classroom. This activity invites their imagination and just might give you insights into things you can try this fall.

Listen to This Issue of Hooray For Monday

InspiredTeaching · May 22, 2023: Disrupting the Egg Carton

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.