Consuming vs. Savoring - Hooray For Monday

August 22, 2022

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.

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Late summer has always been my favorite season. This past week here in the DC region the warmth of summer persists, though I’ve enjoyed a few evening walks cool enough to require a sweater. According to the 5 element theory in Chinese medicine, late summer is a time when our bodies and minds are primed for savoring. Savor means to enjoy something completely, and savoring “is the use of thoughts and actions to increase the intensity, duration, and appreciation of positive experiences and emotions.”

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

My beloved acupuncturist Kate Stewart explains it this way: She distinguishes between consuming, which many of us do habitually, and savoring. “It’s the difference between wolfing down a granola bar while driving from point A to point B and thinking about topic C versus sitting down to a skillfully cooked meal, feeling gratitude for the land, plants, animals, and people who produced it, enjoying the colors, flavors, and textures, and giving yourself time for the meal to settle. Both get calories into you, but only one feeds you on a deeper level.

How might this translate to the classroom?

Imagine a school experience in which we encourage students to savor their learning experiences, instead of racing to consume them – to pick a math concept to wonder about for a whole week; or delve into a single poem by speaking, singing, and drawing it; or spend 30 full minutes without multitasking.

The 2022-2023 cover of the Making School Worth It toolkit for parents and teachers

Imagine modeling this kind of savoring as adults – spending time really listening to the stories our colleagues share, or even allowing ourselves to get excited at the prospect of delving into young adult novels or geometric proofs alongside our students.

The pressure of making up for learning loss and covering much-needed academic content can push us into consumption mode, where we cram in as much “learning” as we can between Monday and Friday. In our current educational context, being intentional about savoring might be considered an act of rebellion.

So be it. It’s a joyful rebellion – one worth savoring.

I invite you to join me in savoring these late summer days and evenings, and in savoring meaningful learning with your students all year long.

Resources for Savoring

Savoring doesn’t prevent us from covering a lot of ground. In these first days and weeks of school, when we are learning new names, new procedures, new instructional goals, and of course, new content, we must process a lot of information. But as we take it all in, we can, if we act with intention, devote time to savoring the experiences we’re having. One way to do this on a regular basis is to incorporate a question like “What did you find fascinating about that math problem/chapter in the novel/period of history?” into our regular classroom dialog.

Here are some additional concrete things to try:

Profile Pages – Take time for each student to savor who they are and what aspects of themselves they want to share with others in this reflective activity. Once every student has created a profile page, spend a good chunk of time during a class period having students read what others have written and encouraging them to find shared interests and experiences among their peers.
Scribe’s Record – See what happens when you close each day with a student-led reflection on what they’ve done each day that was most meaningful to them. (Bonus: when their parents ask “What did you do today at school?” this activity decreases the likelihood your students will say “Nothing”!)
Do Just One Thing – In this #Inspired2Learn activity, students practice stillness and focus, important skills for savoring vs. consuming knowledge.
Build Sensory Awareness – when you guide students through mindful activities that tap into their senses, you are teaching them to savor, sharpening their skills of observation, and building bodily awareness. The activities linked here offer prompts for this reflection, but you can also simply go outside and notice what’s going on with the air temperature, the humidity, the smells around you, the texture of the grass, the temperature of the concrete or asphalt, the sounds of birds, insects, cars going by, and, for our DC area readers, the helicopters flying overhead.
Savor Favorite Foods – Invite students to bring favorite foods for others to try. If your school has strict food rules have students write descriptively about these foods and what makes them delicious and then host a “feast for the ears” where students read what they have written.

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.