Mine the Data: Hooray for Monday - Center for Inspired Teaching

March 22, 2021

By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President, Center for Inspired Teaching

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.

In the month of March, my colleagues and I are bringing together teachers and school leaders from across the DC region and around the world to figure out how to make school worth it – for our students and ourselves – as we continue our return to in-person learning. Recognizing our shared experience of navigating school during a pandemic, we began last week’s workshop by describing the many things we’ve taught ourselves over the past 12 months. Our list included everything from learning how to use ZOOM effectively to making homemade bagels.

We spent the rest of the session collecting and analyzing information about our students’ and our own experiences this past year. We looked at what we’ve lost, and also at how we’ve grown and what we’ve learned. We built on this data as a starting point for reimagining schools and classrooms in a way that will make students feel welcome, engaged, and enthusiastic about learning.

We engaged in a design thinking exercise, focusing on the first three steps of the process:

Empathize: We watched three videos of an elementary, middle, and high school student offering advice to teachers, and sharing ideas for making school engaging right now. Then teachers examined the things they’ve learned about their own students, using an Empathy Map as a tool to deepen understanding.

Define a Problem: Building on the data we collected from students, we defined the following problems:

Learning is not the focus of education. How do we make sure it is, in creating change moving forward?
How do we ensure students leave class more curious than they entered, and incorporate more student-led learning and student feedback into classes?

Ideate: We engaged our radical creativity to imagine a wide array of solutions. Ideas ranged from learning outdoors to allowing ourselves to “suck at something new” to creating structures to solicit student input in lesson planning.

These early-stage solutions will serve as a jumping-off point for teachers to keep thinking about what’s possible. Teachers left the workshop with the tools to continue engaging in design thinking with their colleagues in school.

Most of us are exhausted from this unprecedented year. As Inspired Teacher Kate Rizzi put it, teachers are experiencing a tsunami of information. But we need to pay particular attention to the information we’re receiving from our students and incorporate it into our plans if we want our kids to thrive in school.

Too often in education, time and money are put toward solutions without understanding the true nature of the problem. Then the decision-makers wonder why their grand plans fail. Design thinking can help. It’s a clean and powerful tool to help move from overwhelmed chaos to clarity and action, with the actual needs of the people in our school communities at the center.

Join us this Wednesday for a repeat session of Making School Worth It to learn to apply design thinking to your own school setting.

And next time you see your students, in-person or online, see what happens if you think of them as members of a focus group. Ask probing questions like:

What have you taught yourself this past year?
What has worked for you in online learning?
What do you hope will be different when we return to in-person school?
What do you hope will be the same?

Listen intently to what they say. Recognize the power of the data our students can provide. And build from there.

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.