March 24, 2025
By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast to hear Xochi Cartland of Operation Understanding DC share her insight into supporting young people as they discover their own voices and learn to respect those of their peers.
Project Manager Meag Campos recently spoke with poet and transformative justice practitioner Xochi (SOH-chi) Cartland as part of Inspired Teaching’s ongoing Curiosity Challenge. Xochi works with Operation Understanding DC, a nonprofit that serves “youth in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia (DMV) with the goal of empowering a generation of social justice leaders who will promote respect, understanding and cooperation while fighting to eradicate racism, anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Xochi references the Miriame Kaba quote, “Hope is a discipline… that we have to practice… every single day,” as an explanation of the discipline that drives her work with young people. She helps lead the organization’s Social Justice Fellowship, a year-long program for high school juniors and, as you’ll hear in her conversation with Meag, it is work that both inspires hope in our future leaders and requires her to check her impulses as the “adult in the room.”
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. As Xochi shares, it can be uncomfortable — for them and us! — but it’s imperative, in this moment and always, to equip them with the skills they’ll need to navigate this world with empathy, critical thought, and curiosity.
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Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication of Center for Inspired Teaching, a social change nonprofit organization that champions the power of curiosity and is dedicated to transforming the school experience from compliance-based to engagement-based. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
