I Don't Need a Root Canal - Hooray For Monday

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. Prefer audio? Listen to the Hooray For Monday podcast! Available on your favorite platforms here.

November 27, 2023

By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President

With all that’s going on in the world it can be hard to find reasons to give thanks.

If you’ve experienced the Inspired Teaching Institute, you’ll remember an activity called “When the Opposite is Also True.” The key takeaway from this activity is that we can hold multiple truths, even conflicting truths, in our lives, and that the way we choose to frame events in our lives affects how we experience them.

Last week I spent two hours at the dentist having an old filling replaced. My dentist had prepared me for the possibility, the likelihood, that I would need a follow-up appointment with the endodontist to get a root canal. But it turned out the tooth was in better shape than we’d feared, and a crown would do the trick.

Hooray! No root canal!

For that, I am grateful.

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It is true that my morning spent in the dentist’s chair was unpleasant. It is also true that that same experience sparked gratitude. As I heard my dentist’s voice resonate over the drill, explaining the tooth was stable, I felt gratitude because…

My tooth was ok.
All that brushing, flossing, and Waterpik-ing had paid off.
I was in good hands with a skilled and caring professional.
I remembered that sometimes things turn out better than expected.
Even with my jaw numb and the drill ringing in my brain, I had found a little joy.

For over three years, my colleagues and I have been doing our very best to find joy and share it with you, our Hooray For Monday community. And for 28 years -– through our in-person workshops, school partnerships, toolkits, and any other way our imaginations could conceive of -– we have been doing the same. And we will continue to use all our resources to center joy along with curiosity and wonder in the teaching process.

In this season of thanks and giving, I want to say thank you to the teachers, parents, students, school leaders, and community leaders who are part of the Inspired Teaching family. You participate in and contribute to our mission. You make us strong, just as we strive to make you strong.

There are many ways to give and receive support. Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, a day when we have the opportunity to reflect on what we value, the organizations, causes, and movements that make a difference in our lives, and support those organizations, causes, and movements with financial donations. If you are able, we encourage you to make a financial donation to Center for Inspired Teaching, the organization that I founded in 1995 and that for 28 years has been committed to making school a place that is engaging and joyful for students and teachers alike.

We have a lot of joyful work ahead:

Continuing to support our Teaching With Improv Fellows and Teacher Leaders in Washington, DC through the Inspired Teaching Institute;
Continuing to distribute the award-winning ABCDE of Learner Needs Guidebooks to teachers across the DC, Maryland and Virginia region;
Continuing our partnerships with schools in the DMV, in Chicago, in Ukraine, and in many other places;
Continuing to model excellent real world teaching through Real World History;
Continuing to engage young people in talking across difference during the 2024 election season through Speak Truth America, and much more.

When you teach in a way that elevates wonder, curiosity, and student voice, you are supporting Inspired Teaching by helping us accomplish our mission. You are already part of the movement. Today I invite you to deepen your engagement with Inspired Teaching by making a donation.

You can donate tomorrow when you see our Giving Tuesday email in your inbox.

You can donate right now with this link.

Hooray For Monday will always be free to our teaching community. Our generous donors make this possible. So if you are able to make a donation to help Inspired Teaching continue and expand our work, we would be grateful. Any amount makes a difference, and means the world to us.

For those of you local to Washington, DC we have another way to give in December that comes with a gift for you. Join us for Inspired Breathing for Inspired Teaching at PureFire Yoga in Bethesda, MD on Sunday, December 17. We will lead this workshop in partnership with Catherine Dahlman, a neuromuscular massage therapist, Ayurvedic yoga specialist, and expert in bodywork and breathwork. All registration fees for this special workshop will be donated to our organization, and the session is being designed specifically for educators.

There’s much to look forward to and be thankful for in December: Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, and, apparently, National Pie Day. Inspired Teaching has exciting professional development opportunities and Speak Truth sessions on the calendar. And I’m preemptively grateful for the installation of my permanent crown – hooray!

Wishing you many opportunities to find and create joy in unexpected places in the week ahead, and sharing my thanks for all you do to help Inspired Teaching thrive.

For additional insights, resources, and information on Inspired Teaching teacher and youth programming, subscribe to the Hooray For Monday newsletter!

Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication by Center for Inspired Teaching, an independent nonprofit organization that invests in and supports teachers. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Our mission is to create radical change in the school experience – away from compliance and toward authentic engagement.

Listen to This Issue of Hooray For Monday

InspiredTeaching · May 22, 2023: Disrupting the Egg Carton

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.