Know Your Goal | 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.

October 2, 2023

By Jenna Fournel, Director of Teaching and Learning

We practice improv every day but often don’t notice that we’re doing so. Here are some examples:

You hit a traffic jam which necessitates rerouting your trip.
You are cooking dinner and discover you don’t have an ingredient so you have to make a substitution.
You make weekend plans with friends that involve fair weather and have to change them up thanks to rain.

In each of these instances, you have a goal: to get to your destination, to make dinner, to spend time with friends. And in each of these instances when plans go awry, you notice the problem and change course so you can still arrive at that goal.

That’s improvisation!

Over the past two weeks, as we’ve explored the Rules of Inspired Teaching Improv, we’ve talked about how Respecting What Others Create raises the expectation that we are creating every day. And how a Yes! And… approach invites student input to shape our instruction.

Today’s rule, Know Your Goal, involves adapting to the unknown while still staying laser-focused on where you aim to go. The full rule is Know Your Goal: Stay laser-focused on where you want to go, but flexible in how you get there. Be present so you know what to do next.

As teachers, we get a lot of practice with this: the fire alarm in the middle of a test, the question from a student that makes you reconsider how you’re explaining the material, the conflict between two students that derails the lesson. You have to be on alert, using all your powers of observation to know what’s going on, and you have to be flexible in how you get to your goal as you navigate the detours.

We build our capacity to follow this rule of improv when we:

Recognize that process and product can both be goals; often the detours are an important part of the learning process. Taking time to better understand a student’s question might slow things down, but could it also help other students to understand the lesson better? Could it help you better understand how your students think?
Turn obstacles into opportunities. When you’re outside for that fire drill, could it be a chance for students to ask clarifying questions that might help them do better on the assessment?
Allow the space and time to work on multiple goals at once. A conflict between students may derail a lesson, but pausing for conflict resolution can build valuable social skills.
Convert students’ “off the wall” comments into fuel for learning. How might you meet “I got a new cat this weekend!” or “How long until we can play on the new blacktop outside school?” with curiosity and interest if these contributions occur in the middle of a math lesson? Consider responding with: “Amazing! How much food does your cat consume in a feeding; a day; a week? How much do you think your cat’s food will cost per month?” or “Who can find out the area of our blacktop? Who can find out how much gravel needs to go under the asphalt, how many inches of asphalt need to be laid, how long it takes to dry…?” (The list could go joyfully on and on…)

As you head into this first week of October, notice when you’re finding flexible ways to achieve your goals. If you encounter an obstacle hindering your path, get curious about how to use the obstacle or get around it. Chances are you’re using an improvisational mindset more often than you think!

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.