Proud to Belong | Hooray for Monday

June 12, 2023

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.

You can now listen to Hooray for Monday on Spotify! Check out our podcast here.

Each year as school is wrapping up, Pride Month is starting up. Increasingly, teachers are using these last weeks to recognize the impact LGBTQ individuals have had on history – and many of these teachers are meeting resistance.

This is particularly striking in light of the recent CDC report raising alarm bells about children’s mental health – with a particular focus on increased risks and lack of school connectedness for those who identify as LBGTQ. Conflicts over whether their identity can be acknowledged in their classrooms are surely not helping.

A sense of belonging is a core need we all share. We long to be seen and heard. And we learn to be part of a community and to value others in it when we are taught to be open, to instead of afraid of, difference, and when we exercise curiosity instead of judgment.

The core purpose of school is to teach children about the world around them and equip them with the knowledge, mindsets, and skills to navigate it successfully. The world in which we and our children live – from distant lands to communities next door – includes all kinds of people with all kinds of identities. If we pretend otherwise, aren’t we engaging in educational malpractice? If we limit the kinds of literature our children read, the conversations we have with them and they have with one another, and the opportunities they have to share their full selves in a manner that intentionally excludes members of the LGBTQ+ community, we ARE presenting a false story to our children about the world in which they and we live.

It can be scary to practice inclusivity and advocate for true belonging in our schools when we know we will get pushback. But the consequences for our students could not be more clear. And there are experts rallying to support teachers doing this hard but necessary work. Here are a few sources to consider:

Developing LGBTQ-Inclusive Classrooms A toolkit from GLSEN
Actions LGBTQ Parents/Guardians Can Take to Support Their Children in Elementary School A toolkit from the Human Rights Campaign
Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students A toolkit from Learning for Justice
Know Your Rights: Students and LGBTQ Rights in Schools A guide from the Southern Poverty Law Center
The Trevor Project The Trevor Project’s mission is to end suicide among LGBTQ young people

The Hooray for Monday readers and listeners I hear from are staunch advocates for their children, and believers in the vital importance of mutual respect in their school communities. We are grateful for your persistence as you push through the resistance to change.

What We’re Curious About

Each week a member of the Inspired Teaching community shares something that’s piquing their curiosity. We’d love to include what’s making YOU wonder right now! Submitting a curiosity is easy. Just follow these steps:

Identify something you’re currently curious about. This could be in the form of a question or just a concept.
Think about where this curiosity came from and what else it’s making you wonder about as you explore it.
Record a voice memo (no longer than 2 minutes) in which you share your reflection on the above.
Email the voice memo to Michelle Welk, Inspired Teaching’s communication and marketing specialist, at michelle@inspiredteaching.org. Be sure to include your full name, title, and where you work in your email.

We look forward to learning with you!

Teacher Resources

Activities to Connect with Families

One way to affirm our students and their families is by establishing strong lines of communication early and throughout the school year. As you look to the fall, consider some of these strategies.

Seeing with Different Eyes

Our job in fostering inclusive classrooms isn’t to know all the answers, but to create a safe space for exploring the questions. This reflective activity helps students experience the many ways in which we all see things differently.

Poster Analysis

Creating an LGBTQ-inclusive classroom includes what GLSEN describes as, “finding opportunities for LGBTQ visibility and inclusion.” One piece of that could be looking at the posters on our walls and considering their explicit and implicit messages.

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.