Curiosity and School Connectedness

March 6, 2023

By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President of 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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In last week’s Hooray For Monday, we shared concrete strategies to increase school connectedness; and we received an unprecedented response from so many of you. You let us know that you are concerned about the young people in your care and that you are looking for more ways to connect with them. So this week, we’re sharing a tried and true Inspired Teaching activity that builds positive teacher-student relationships. It is built on a simple but essential instruction:

Let curiosity be your guide.

When you are worried for, frustrated with, or even feeling just fine about your students, curiosity is essential to understanding them, and keeping your relationship with them strong. At Inspired Teaching, we start our yearlong programs with an activity called “Sunshine vs. Up-at-Night Students” which is designed to help you focus on specific members of your classroom in order to better meet the needs of the class as a whole. Starting with just 7 reflection prompts, you do a deep dive into what you know about a student who brings you delight on a daily basis – your sunshine student, and one who keeps you worrying way past the end of the day – your up-at-night student. Here are the prompts:

What does this student like?
What does this student dislike?
What are this student’s aspirations?
What are this student’s contributions?
Describe a situation in which you’ve seen this student succeed.
Describe a situation in which you’ve seen this student really struggle.
Describe any specific problems you are having with this student. What have you already tried?

When my colleagues and I work with teachers over a length of time, we come back to these initial reflections throughout the year. This helps teachers recognize how their growing knowledge about their students provides more insight into how to help them learn. If you try this approach, we recommend this regular revisit as well.

The students you choose at first for this activity are typically the ones that get the most of your attention. Extending the activity to other students in your classroom helps you deepen relationships with all your students. Humans thrive on being seen and heard, so this activity pushes us to think of new ways to see and hear our students.

Engaging with these 7 prompts creates new habits. It’s a tool for teaching your brain to respond to worry, frustration, and the like with curiosity. Curiosity is the opposite of panic; defensiveness; jumping to conclusions; and apathy – and curiosity is a wise starting place for increasing school connectedness and supporting students.

Wishing you a week of productive engagement, with sunshine and up-at-night students alike!

What We’re Curious About

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

String Theory

Michelle Welk, Communications and Marketing Specialist

As a non-physicist, string theory is a really abstract concept for me. But I do know that it suggests the existence of infinite, concurrent, universes. And that is really interesting. I’ve always wondered about the possibility of multiple Michelles, existing in timelines where I made different choices throughout life. After watching the movie “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” recently, I’m fascinated by the idea of interacting with the versions of myself that took those different paths.

While we aren’t yet capable of jumping between universes, as Michelle Yeoh’s character does in the film, I wonder what else might be possible if I opened myself up to the choices I’d previously thought were already decided? What might it look like if we woke up each day with the knowledge that even the most mundane of choices we make have the ability to alter our lives in infinite ways? Do we really need proof that alternate universes exist to think more deeply about our own?

Teacher Resources

Sunshine vs. Up-At-Night Student Reflection Sheet

These pages offer space for reflection on the questions posed in the post above. You might use these with a group of colleagues and share and discuss what you've written. Then come back together in a few months to see how your observations have changed!

Finding the Zone of Proximal Development

Helping your students identify their own strengths and areas for growth benefits them, and you as well. This activity introduces Lev Vygotsky and his construct, the zone of proximal development and offers a good space for learning about productive struggle.

What would make you look forward to coming to school?

As we head into the final stretch of the school year, it can be challenging to hold students' attention and maintain those connections we've been working to make. This activity will create some student-generated solutions to that problem!

Listen to This Issue of Hooray For Monday

InspiredTeaching · February 13, 2023: Moral Beauty

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.