June 2, 2025
By Jenna Fournel, Chief Curiosity Officer
Listen to this week’s episode of the Hooray For Monday podcast for the audio version of this newsletter.
Jenna: “How has this school year been?”
Sabrina: “It’s been a bowl of hot crazy.”
In early April, I returned to the classroom of Sabrina Burroughs, a Kindergarten teacher at John Lewis Elementary in Washington, DC and Teaching with Improvisation Fellow, whom you may remember from this September issue of Hooray for Monday. The above exchange opened our debrief after the students left for lunch, and it made me laugh out loud. I told her I needed to share these words with teachers everywhere; I feel like most of us can relate. But I also laughed because the half hour I’d just sat in on seemed not to fit this description at all.
Ms. Burroughs’ class radiates joy, community, and genuine affection for one another, and if there are crazy things happening, they’re invisible to a random visitor. That’s because Ms. Burroughs has been working since before the students arrived in the fall to create a classroom where students are known, comfortable, cared for, and, as a result, caring.
As we talked, Ms. Burroughs shared that this group of kindergarteners has experienced a lot of loss and upheaval in their lives beyond the classroom, and she’s been teaching them how to navigate big feelings while continuing to learn in community. I asked her how she’s made this happen, and she modeled one activity she does at the start of small-group time.
Everyone in the circle, including her, holds a candle and has the option of sharing what’s on their mind. Not everyone does, but it’s in these circles that she learns about the dog that died, the parent who is sick, or the grandmother who passed away.
All of these things happen to all of us at some point. We spend more time in a “bowl of hot crazy” than we’d like. And Ms. Burroughs views teaching students how to tend to these experiences at an early age as a vital part of her work. If her students can learn to process their feelings and keep going, that’s a skill that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. Here are two examples:
- When a child’s dog died, she paused in the morning meeting to invite him to stand in the middle of the circle and get hugs from his peers. Those hugs continued organically throughout the day, but beyond that moment of recognition, she sought to show the student that he was capable of engaging in all the other learning taking place, even with this grief. That evening, she heard from his mother that the care he received from his peers had made such a difference.
- Another child has been struggling with issues at home that can make him act out in class, but when Ms. Burroughs sees that impulse emerging, she makes a point of having him help her manage classroom tasks like calling on students during circle time or engaging with the smart board. “I keep him busy and let him know he’s important,” she says. Redirecting his challenging behavior into purpose and action helps him feel better. It meets his need for Belonging!
On the morning I visited, the students were studying living and nonliving things, and I watched with delight as the entire class—including Ms. Burroughs—giddily pantomimed eating their favorite foods (consuming food is something living things do). What I noticed was that a bowl of hot crazy isn’t so bad when you and everyone else in that bowl trust that together, you’ll be okay.
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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.
