Students as Owners: Hooray for Monday - Center for Inspired Teaching

March 1, 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.

Dancing is one of the ways I’ve kept joy in my life during Covid. My zoom dance studio, aka basement, is the place where I warm up, engage in exercises familiar and new, and connect with the other people in my class, including my beloved teacher, Helen Hayes. During each class, Helen teaches us a piece of choreography, a dance phrase. We continue working on the same phrase for a few weeks, deepening our understanding and skill, and refining it until we’ve mastered it. Then we move on and learn a new piece.

Recently Helen introduced a piece of choreography that was particularly challenging. At first this aggravated me.I had really mastered the material from the previous weeks; I’d felt confident and competent while dancing the phrase. Now I was forced to leave behind the comfort of the piece I’d mastered and step into the unknown. I didn’t really want to start over, to experience that shaky I-don’t-know-this-yet feeling. I knew I wouldn’t be good at it for a while. Nevertheless, I stepped in and started to learn. As I engaged in productive struggle to learn the new material, I began reflecting on what I was experiencing, cognitively and emotionally.

At first, I thought: This is Helen’s choreography. She created it and she owns it. She knows it intimately, and so far, I don’t know it at all.

By the middle of the class I was thinking: I am beginning to have access to Helen’s choreography – as she demonstrates the steps and I stumble through them, make mistakes, and receive feedback or figure things out on my own. I’m starting to understand the logic of the way the parts of the dance fit together, how the momentum from one movement prepares me for the next movement, how the tempo rises and falls, how the through-line feels in my body. Helen is still the owner of the dance phrase, but now I have access to it too.

Toward the end of class I thought: I’m no longer struggling to remember what comes next. In fact, as I dive into each dance step, I have muscle memory of how it felt the last time I did it, and my brain and body know where I need to invest my energy to improve it, to take it to the next level. I’ve figured out how to use my breath intentionally to fuel my movement and sustain my stamina throughout the piece. The dance phrase has become mine. Helen created it. She taught it to me. But now it’s in my body and my brain. I own it and I can dance it. It’s mine.

After years of dancing with Helen, my body and my mind are a virtual library of movement and vocabulary I’ve learned from her that is now mine. And this is true for hundreds of students who have studied in her care.

In teaching new material, Helen once explained that she sometimes adjusts the choreography as she sees how we respond to it because seeing her students engage with the material offers her new information on how to improve it. That suggests that in her body and her mind there is also a library of movement and vocabulary enhanced by us, her students.

This is the power of good teachers. Their lessons are not just meant to be poured into passive minds, ready to take them in their entirety without struggle or question. Their lessons are ideas transferred from one creative mind to another, meant to be embodied and owned in unique ways by each learner, meant to be reflected in new ways back to the teacher.

As you head into this new week, consider:

In the coming weeks, what are some of the most important things my students need to learn?
How will my students (and I) know they own this knowledge once they have learned it?
What can I do to learn more from my students in the process?

I’d love to hear what you discover. (Email me: aleta@inspiredteaching.org)

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.