Curiosity in the Classroom

A curiosity-rich classroom is a classroom where students — and teachers — thrive.

Cultivating curiosity in the classroom, for students and ourselves, can often feel secondary to aligning with curricular standards and meeting performance goals. But research shows that curiosity is not second fiddle to learning — it is learning. Below you’ll find an array of strategies, activities, and programming that will support you in sparking curiosity in the year ahead.

Join Inspired Teaching in making 2025 a year full of curiosity.

Sign up for the Curiosity Challenge today! Each month, Inspired Teaching will share exclusive interviews, prompts, and tools to support exploring and understanding new things about yourself, your community, and the wider world.

A Love Letter to the Library | Hooray For Monday

Libraries serve a unique function in society: hubs of reading, literacy, and knowledge that are also havens for children and families in need; people seeking vital career skills and public health access; and more.

Cultivate Your Inner Peace | Hooray For Monday

What if we could get good at wading through the uncertainty of the moment? What if we could become cultivators of peace, calm, and even hope?

Hope is a Discipline | Hooray For Monday

At this point in the school year, we have established relationships with our students built on trust and respect. This is the time to be intentional in handing over the reins and letting our students take the lead in their learning.

Girl Math | Hooray For Monday

Starting today, Girl Math means seeing the world through curious eyes. It means wondering about how many ways to calculate the right amount of postage on a letter and what the methodical marching patterns of ants can teach us about geometry.

Happy Pi Day (And Why It Matters) | Hooray For Monday

If we only learn pi as a number that can be plugged into equations to find the radius and diameter of a circle, we’re missing something really interesting and curiosity-producing.

Stand Up for SEL | Hooray For Monday

We cannot expect math and reading scores to improve, or for our young people to grow into capable leaders in the future, if they are not given the opportunity to be curious, compassionate, critical thinkers today.

A Lesson in Handshakes | Hooray For Monday

A recent classroom visit inspires Jenna to reflect on handshakes, trust, and peace.

What It Means to Love New Orleans | Hooray For Monday

An exploration of the city and Mardi Gras from Inspired Teaching’s Project Manager and New Orleans native Meag Campos.

Black History Month: Context, Connection, and Curiosity | Hooray For Monday

Curiosity is fueled by learning content in context, by connecting what we learn in the classroom to our own lives and the world beyond the classroom walls.

Moving Forward | Hooray For Monday

We’re redoubling our dedication to making school a place where both teachers and students feel safe, respected, and engaged in their learning.

Not Just a Mars Rover | Hooray For Monday

Arts educator, NASA outreach professional, and design thinker Sandra Vilevec shares her thoughts on AI, design thinking, and curiosity.

Curiosity and Dr. King | Hooray For Monday

Carrying forth the legacy of Dr. King is as much a call for curiosity as it is for service.

Ditching the Agenda | Hooray For Monday

Which kinds of questions serve to teach us something, and which just make us think we did?

Be Observant | Hooray For Monday

Teacher guests at Inspired Teaching’s November online Institute share with us the many ways observation supports a diverse classroom.

Top 10 of 2024 | Hooray For Monday

These issues of Hooray For Monday exemplify the Inspired Teaching Approach and what is possible when teachers and students learn strategies for cultivating engaging, curiosity-fueled classrooms.

Curiosity Demands Play | Hooray For Monday

What if this winter break, we prioritize connection and learning new things over all the other usual demands?

Polarization. And How to Beat It | Hooray For Monday

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2024 is Polarization; what would it take to make Curiosity the choice in 2025?

Curiosity and School Connectedness | Hooray for Monday

What can our students teach us about making better connections?

The Opposite of Curiosity | Hooray for Monday

If curiosity leads us to approach things from a place of wonder and interest, what does the opposite look like?

Stirring Up Curiosity | Hooray for Monday

Why might your next lesson be interesting or important or useful?

Channeling Curiosity | Hooray for Monday

Asking big questions is one of the most important things we can teach our students to do.

Curiosity = Respect | Hooray for Monday

Engaging with students from a place of curiosity, a genuine desire to deepen your own knowledge and understanding of that student, conveys respect and humility.

Begin Each Week with Curiosity

Hooray For Monday is Inspired Teaching‘s weekly collection of actionable insights, expert advice, and practical resources for teachers, school leaders, parents, and all adults who want every classroom to be filled with enthusiasm and excitement for learning. These issues have been curated to highlight content that focuses specifically on curiosity, but you can find curiosity infused into every Hooray For Monday!

Professional Development to Cultivate Curiosity

Inspired Teaching Institutes are FREE, improvisation-based professional development for teachers and school leaders. They move participants beyond passive professional learning: Inspired Teaching teaches the way people learn best – with our whole selves. Join us online or in person each month.

As teachers, we can’t control the stress factors that students experience outside of our classrooms, but we can help students build self-management skills within our classrooms that they may apply beyond our four walls. In this webinar, we will explore activities you can weave into your daily instruction and classroom routines to help students (and yourselves) build a stress management toolkit. These include: mindfulness practices with Inspired Teaching and tools and resources from our guests with Life Pieces To Masterpieces.

The Teaching with Improvisation Fellowship is an annual invigorating, yearlong learning experience for teachers at schools in Washington, DC, grounded in the art of improvisation and the 5 Core Elements that lead to an engagement-rich classroom.

Application to the Teaching with Improvisation Fellowship is open to educators at all DMV schools– public, public charter, and independent — and are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. Applications for the 2025-2026 cohort are now open! Learn more at the button.