January 12, 2025
By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President
Listen to the Hooray For Monday podcast for the audio version of this issue.
I spent much of this past week recovering from the flu. Like many of us who’ve been hit with the flu this season, it’s taking some time to regain my strength. I figured that, while I wasn’t ready to head back to dance class or hot yoga, I would surely be able to sit at my laptop and write this week’s issue of Hooray For Monday. However, the first two times I tried simply to think about what I wanted to write this week, I ended up needing a nap.
Thinking is work! Creating something new is work!
According to Scientific American, “the brain uses more energy than any other human organ.” And also according to Scientific American, “learning a new skill requires more brainpower than a well-practiced activity.”
One of the core activities in the Inspired Teaching Institute, Point and Call, builds the brainpower needed to learn new things. In this activity, which we developed based on the work of the extraordinary improvisational theater director Keith Johnstone, participants begin by walking quickly, and in random directions, around a large gymnasium. They are instructed to sharpen their awareness of the other people in the room (including avoiding collisions) and also the objects in the room. Then, they face the challenge of pointing to objects in the room and naming them out loud, while still traveling at a fast pace. They call out, “Window!” “Chair!” “Light switch!” “Power cord!” and more. Then the challenge ramps up. Participants are instructed to continue moving through space, pointing to objects and naming them, but this time they must call everything by the wrong name!
Inspired Teaching Fellows practice Point and Call at the Teaching with Improvisation Summer Institute.
So, someone pointing to a table will call out, “Porcupine!” Someone pointing to a water bottle shouts, “black hole!” And someone pointing to a doorknob declares, “bowl of soup!”
The activity continues for a while, and it’s amazing to see how difficult it becomes. At the end, we discuss why it was so hard. After all, we all know lots of words.
The challenge here is that this activity asks us to circumvent our well-worn neural pathways. We are in the habit of calling a table a table, and a doorknob a doorknob. When we try to break that habit, to do something new, we are literally rewiring our brains. And that’s hard work!
It’s also valuable work. Consider this: while some habits serve us well (stopping at red lights and brushing teeth come to mind), some prevent us from growing. Habits like teaching a lesson the same way every year; getting pulled into another gripe session in the faculty lounge; letting your phone calculate the tip are worth reconsidering.
So as I’m regaining my strength after vanquishing the flu, I invite you to join me in letting go of old habits and trying something new. The new thing you try can be as simple as going for a walk outside or as complex as keeping world-renowned musical performances fresh.
Learning something new provides extraordinary benefits to our mental and physical health. And it makes us better leaders for the children in our care.
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.
