June 2, 2016
With the aim of expanding Inspired Teaching’s reach and impact, the Board of Center for Inspired Teaching is pleased to announce the appointment of Jane Dimyan Ehrenfeld as Executive Director, effective July 1, 2016.
Jane will lead Inspired Teaching’s work to prepare, train, and develop extraordinary teachers in Washington, DC and the region. Jane will oversee the organization in executing a multi-year growth strategy to create positive change in the ways teachers teach and children learn here and elsewhere in the country.
Aleta Margolis, Founder and Executive Director for twenty years, will assume the role of President and will continue to play a leadership role with Inspired Teaching. Aleta will focus on spreading Inspired Teaching’s core message to a local and national audience to shift the norm in education away from compliance-based education toward engagement-based education.
For two decades, Inspired Teaching has transformed the role of the teacher from information-provider to Instigator of Thought through programs for new and inservice preK-12 teachers. In 2009, Inspired Teaching launched a DC-State accredited teacher certification program. In 2011, the organization founded the Inspired Teaching Demonstration School, an award-winning DC public charter school.
The Inspired Teaching model transforms school from a place that prizes compliance to a place that celebrates engagement and the student as expert. Inspired Teaching has enjoyed support from thousands of individual, foundation, and corporate funders; won local, national, and international accolades; and earned special recognition from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Bridgespan Group, Education Week, National Public Radio, the LRNG Innovation Challenge, and the LEGO Foundation and Ashoka Changemakers’ Re-imagine Learning Challenge.
Jane Dimyan Ehrenfeld is an educator and attorney with a decade of teaching experience in the classroom. For the past year, Jane has served as Director of Teaching and Learning at Inspired Teaching, and she was a member of Inspired Teaching’s Board of Directors before joining the staff. Jane is deeply involved in the DC education community and serves as Board Chair of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, where she has served since 2010. Jane taught in public elementary schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland and in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. Jane’s classroom was the focus of Jonathan Kozol’s 2007 book, Letters to a Young Teacher, and she has worked with Mr. Kozol on advocacy projects related to public education; she has also published education-related essays in a number of publications.
Jane received her JD, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a Public Interest Law Scholar. Following law school, she served as Deputy Director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy; clerked for The Honorable Judith W. Rogers on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; and served as an attorney in the Office for Civil Rights at the US Department of Education. Jane is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College (BA, Sociology, Anthropology, and Education) and holds a Master’s degree in Anthropology and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Jane and her husband Michael are the proud parents of three daughters.
For further information, please contact:
Shelley N. Fidler – Board Chair, Center for Inspired Teaching:
202-298-1905; snf@vnf.com
Jane Dimyan Ehrenfeld – Executive Director, Center for Inspired Teaching:
202-462-1956; jane@inspiredteaching.org
Aleta Margolis – Founder and President, Center for Inspired Teaching:
202-462-1956; aleta@inspiredteaching.org