Hooray for Monday: What’s your handstand?

By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President, Center for Inspired Teaching

Hooray for Monday is a new blog series we’ll be posting each week with questions, ideas, reflections, and actions we can all take to remodel the school experience for students.

For the past few months, I have been taking virtual yoga classes and, to my great delight, I have learned to do a handstand, something I couldn’t do before. It took a lot of trial and error – on my part and my teacher’s. She had to watch me carefully through her screen, noticing and pointing out the micro-bend in my elbows and lack of engagement in my core that were keeping me from achieving the proper foundation. I had to sharpen my listening skills, incorporating her feedback in real time, sometimes even coordinating my breathing with hers. And I had to figure out how to assess, for myself, whether my shoulders were really lined up over my wrists and whether I was using my core (correct) or relying solely on momentum (incorrect) to get my feet up over my head.

After each class I felt closer to my handstand goal, closer to being able to do something new. And, perhaps even more importantly, I left each class energized and transformed, propelled forward mentally and physically from where I’d been an hour earlier.

The kind of remote learning that brought me to my handstand is quite different from what I more often experience in virtual spaces. Six months into our new ways of living and working, we know what it feels like to sit still and receive information. And we recognize that sitting in place, eyes glued to a screen, is a necessity – sometimes. But it shouldn’t be the default experience for our students, or for us as teachers.

It will take work to make engagement the norm this year. It will take marshaling our knowledge of observing and listening to kids, giving and receiving feedback, finding the right words to push a learner forward, and applying creative energy to planning lessons that engage all our students’ senses.

Most of us are not teaching handstands, but it’s worth asking ourselves how we can create the online learning conditions that facilitate that kind of full-body learning. School should be a transformative experience for students – and teachers. By definition, learning is transformation. Just as we challenge ourselves to ensure our in-person classrooms offer students ways to engage intellectually, emotionally, and physically, we now face the challenge of ensuring our virtual classrooms are also places of transformation.

Here are some strategies that can help:

Pause for reflection on what you’ve learned together and what you need to explore more deeply moving forward. This works with faculty as well as with students.
Build community with virtual check-ins to “read the room.” Understanding how people are feeling helps us support them.
Look for ways to ground learning in the physical. As you explore different topics, ask students to get up and find related objects in their homes to share, to move their bodies in some way that represents the ideas discussed, or take a walk as part of an assignment.

As we launch into a year where progress and growth are going to be achieved by means we’ve never tried before, it’s worth asking ourselves what our “handstand” will be. It’s worth asking our students what they want their “handstands” to be as well. As teachers we want to help them build the strength, balance, perseverance, and self-awareness necessary to reach their full potential. Perhaps we need to start with the end in mind and ask ourselves how we hope our students will feel when they hit ‘Leave Meeting’ at the end of the school day.

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.