July 28, 2025
By Jenna Fournel, Chief Curiosity Officer
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast to hear Jenna’s conversation with Michele Turner, an Inspired Teacher in Maryland, who shares her experiences over 18 years in the classroom.
As part of our 30th anniversary celebration, we’ve got a special time-travel issue this week and next, in which we get to revisit the 2010-2011 school year. In that school year fidget spinners were making an appearance along with Silly Bandz, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep was the #1 song, and skinny jeans were still a popular thing. But what we’re sharing today goes a little deeper than these trends.
Fourteen years ago, we created a documentary about what happens when a teacher participates in an Inspired Teaching Institute. The film followed the experience of two teachers, Ben Frazell and Michele Turner, who were both in the Inspired Teaching Institute that year. At that time, this Institute was for certified teachers seeking engaging improvisation-based professional learning. It ran for 2 full weeks in the summer and then had monthly follow-up sessions throughout the school year.
We couldn’t have known when we chose to feature Ben and Michele that they’d both still be thriving as educators more than a decade later, but the curiosity that flowed from them back then is just as vibrant today. And, in the intervening years, they’ve impacted the lives of hundreds of students and colleagues.
We wanted to share their insights from then and now as a powerful reminder of what’s possible if we support teachers and make it viable for them to build and share their expertise in schools for the long term. Teaching is incredibly complicated, intellectual work. We are never done learning how to do it, and truly Inspired Teachers are those who stay committed to learning for the duration of their careers. Every child deserves to learn from a teacher like Ben and Michele every year of their K-12 experience. This is why we remain committed to this work.
What Michele, the Kindergarten Teacher at Gladys Noon Spellman Elementary School, was aiming to do in the 2010-2011 school year when she took the Inspired Teaching Institute:
I want to find ways to do things differently in my classroom. I’m going to open myself up more to allow my students to just blossom the way they want to. I had to figure out how to do what’s best for the kids and not just take the easy way out. Being around like-minded people [in the Institute] gives you that inspiration and that motivation back.
Now I’m more aware of the kids’ interests and needs. I make myself more conscious of it, and more in tune with it. [I ask myself] what needs must be met in order for them to achieve this goal or complete this activity?
What Michele, the English Language Development Teacher (still!) at Gladys Noon Spellman Elementary School, is saying now, 14 years further along in her teaching career:
One thing that has always stuck with me is to invest the time in talking to my students and finding out about their backgrounds, especially now, because [my school community is] colorful. It’s such a variety of experiences. And finding out, you know, where students come from and what their life is like and how their home life is, and what they are interested in, and then turning around and finding ways to insert that into what it is that I have to teach them – it’s not always easy, but it’s absolutely worth it.
I’m always trying to figure out how to continually ask questions and let the kids come up with things on their own instead of me giving them the information, like asking them, “Well, what do you think? And why do you think that? And what makes you think that?”
Also, I’ve maintained a focus on movement. Students need to get up and move, have their brains stay active, and not just sit there and get the information. One thing I try to do with my ELD students is to incorporate more movement and more group activities, and just make the learning more fun.
Listen to our full conversation for more insights from Michele, at the button below!
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 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.
