Colorful Language - Hooray For Monday

October 17, 2022

By Jenna Fournel, Director of Teaching and Learning

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.

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What’s your favorite color? It’s a simple question that we’re taught from a very young age should have just one answer. Today we’d like to introduce you to a teacher who is approaching that inquiry a bit differently with her 3-year-old students.

Lacey Hunter is a preschool teacher at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration Public Charter School, where she began her career in 2016. She says when adults ask the favorite color question “it comes from a good place of wanting to connect with the kids. But I have just found that as an adult it’s hard to say that you have just one favorite color. And to assume that children aren’t as dynamic as we all are in their complex thoughts” is simply not the case. So Lacey stopped asking her students that question and instead asks them things like “What colors do you love? What colors are you using in your art today? I see you’re wearing purple, tell me about that.” These kinds of inquiries “open up conversations, especially if our drive for asking is to get to know the children and to get them to open up and share with us.”

A list outline of Inspired Teacher traits, outlining the capabilities for teaching students respectful discourse

That’s a big focus in Lacey’s classroom. She says “it’s not about teaching children what we think they need to know and retain. My goal is really building their thinking skills, their language, and infusing all of my interactions with children with rich language of my own and open-ended questions.”

This is how Lacey embodies one of the most important facets of being an Inspired Teacher: she focuses on teaching students how to think, not on what to think.

When she has two students in conflict over a basket of supplies, she sits down with them and shares what she sees. “I see that your face looks angry, I see that you look frustrated.” Then she uses questions like, “What can we say to help tell your friend what you need?” She says “when they see themselves as problem solvers, the next time they have this conflict you can see them start to implement that language themselves to solve it.”

Every interaction like this shows Lacey new pathways to helping her students learn and she is always retooling based on that new insight. “Planning, reflecting, and refining makes every day feel new and exciting.” But even within a plan she leaves room for spontaneity. “If the spirit moves us one day to bring in a rotting pumpkin and have it on the table and the kids get to dissect it and figure that out as a small group at centers, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the plans aren’t happening in other parts of the room. We definitely still have structure and we still have plans and goals and data that we record . . . but within that there is a lot of flexibility.”

The flexible thinking that allows us to love red and blue and sometimes purple, too, is how we learn. These vignettes from Lacey’s class offer a window into what that looks like in practice. This week, be on the lookout for opportunities to have rich conversations with your students. May lots of colorful language ensue!

**4 Ways to Shift Instruction from What to Think
to How to Think**

Take 20 minutes in your day when you consciously pay attention to the kinds of questions you ask students and try to turn all your yes/no questions into open-ended ones. See how that feels, and how your students react. Try to extend that time to 30 minutes, then 40, and eventually to the whole day.
When you’re introducing a concept, let’s say writing an essay, begin with models that students can pick apart themselves to identify key features and effective literary devices. Then derive a list of what makes a good essay from their discoveries.
Look for student questions you can throw back to the class versus answering yourself. For example, if they ask, “Why do we have to learn this?” see what happens if you say something like, “I have some ideas about how I might answer that, but I’m curious to see what the rest of you think first. Why do YOU think it’s important to know this? Where might you go to find some answers?” This approach elevates student expertise and helps them to practice their own reasoning rather than following yours. Even a question like, “When is this assignment due?” can be answered by other students or located on the board or perhaps online if you’re teaching them to use these spaces to find answers. Encouraging your students to seek and find answers on their own is part of learning how to problem-solve and think!
Seek opportunities to get a better understanding of how your students’ minds work. Invitations like, “share your thinking” or “tell me more about” or “I’d like to see how you did that” can give you insights that may uncover different ways of processing information or seeing the world. This beautiful piece by Temple Grandin illustrates what you can make possible for students when you adopt this approach.

Listen to This Issue 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.