A reflection on the wonder that has fueled 100 weeks of Hooray for Monday.

It’s been a big spring semester for students in our yearlong Real World History course!

How can we nurture students’ inquiry, imagination, and integrity, while maintaining a laser-like focus on growing their intellects?

In order to continue to grow and learn, we adults need to spend time in our zones of proximal development.

Focused and specific feedback on how we positively relate to others is good for our self-esteem and encourages us to lean into our authentic selves.

Learning to listen deeply may very well be one of the most important skills we can cultivate as members of a community and one of the ways we can demonstrate our understanding of what we hear is by sharing back what was said.

Using basic observation and listening skills, this activity can serve as a catalyst for building community in the classroom and deepening understanding of how each of your students thinks.

As teachers, embracing an improvisational mindset can help us think creatively about problems, and building this kind of thinking in our students can do the same for them. This activity is a good place to start. 

This activity invites students to step into the role of someone (or something!) else, imagine what they would say, and listen to what those around that person are saying too.

Considering the size of our problems in the relation to a bigger context can help us understand the nature of the issue better, and sometimes even make the problem seem less huge.

Exercising our brain’s time-traveling ability does even more than offer us late summer vacations. It’s a critical skill for learning.

Everything changes, and our ability to be resilient is closely tied to how well we can manage change.

If our mindset is to inspire our students, we’ll start a joyful chain reaction, and the learning will continue long after the lesson ends. That’s where the 4 I’s come in.

When we include building imagination among our goals for our students, we not only increase the likelihood they will learn and understand the content in the curriculum, we also increase the likelihood they will enjoy their time in school.

This activity combines observation and inquiry as learners exercise their imaginations to find multiple answers to the same question.

One way to stimulate our imaginations is to relax and let our minds flow uninterrupted. Automatic writing gives our minds the space to do just that.

Aleta Margolis, Inspired Teaching’s Executive Director, writes about the need to incorporate imagination and serious play into all classrooms so that students can thrive.