Trust Teachers: Hooray For Monday! - Center for Inspired Teaching

November 9, 2020

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.

On Saturday night, as Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris took the stage to deliver her victory speech, the giant screens behind her read “The People Have Chosen Empathy.” President-Elect Joe Biden began his speech expressing appreciation for his wife Dr. Jill Biden and proclaiming, “For American educators this is a great day for you all. You’re going to have one of your own in the White House!” As a lifelong educator who is devoted to infusing empathy into the way we teach kids, I was overjoyed to hear our future leaders center both teachers and empathy in their remarks.

This past week, so many of us have struggled to process and understand the complex and emotionally-charged rollercoaster we’ve been riding – waiting for votes to be counted, constantly hitting refresh on our phones to see if the electoral map had changed color, and continuing to navigate worries about Covid and the stresses of quarantine and social distancing. Empathy seems more important now than ever.

So what does this mean for us as educators? Empathy in this moment means offering students the opportunity to express and process feelings, to ask and try to answer questions about the process and outcome of the election, to share concerns about quarantine as well as creative ways to stay safely connected to friends and family. It means ensuring that school – the place where kids come everyday for the express purpose of learning – offers the opportunity to learn about the important history they are experiencing in this very moment.

It has been heartening to hear stories of teachers leading their students in meaningful learning about the election. However this kind of school experience is far from the norm. Nearly every friend I spoke to on Wednesday told me their children did not discuss the election at all during school. On Thursday night, when we gathered with over 30 students from high schools around the DC region, few students reported any learning about, or even acknowledgement of the election in their classes.

Learning about and processing the election shouldn’t be noteworthy (or even frankly newsworthy). I understand why school leaders and teachers may feel afraid of discussing complicated and controversial topics with their students. If the conversations around emotionally-charged topics are not handled thoughtfully, real damage can be done. It can be very challenging for a teacher, for anyone, to discuss this election with students in a way that is respectful to everyone. But isn’t the point of school to teach students how to embrace challenge?

How can we expect kids to take school seriously when we’re in the midst of one of the most important events in our lifetimes and we fail to address it in school?

Teachers are smart, teachers are thoughtful, teachers are observant, teachers are worthy of trust. Over the years, when the opportunity to engage students in difficult conversations has arisen, so many of my teaching colleagues have told me, “I don’t trust myself to have that conversation with my students.”

Could it be, as teachers are told by their school or district leaders to steer clear of the election in the classroom, that part of why so many teachers don’t trust themselves is because teachers themselves are not trusted? Could it be that school leaders and district leaders have, perhaps unintentionally, sent a message that teachers cannot handle leading students in challenging or courageous conversations? And could it be that students are receiving the same message – that they really aren’t capable of talking about things that matter?

At our Speak Truth session this past Thursday a 12th grader said, “if teachers really want our engagement in things, just be current. One thing that I love about Speak Truth is that you asked us what kind of topic we wanted to talk about. And I think that’s what schools should start doing overall. That would make us actually want to engage.

An 11th grader concurred, “if I have to discuss something in school it’s going to be ‘analyze this speech and discuss it with your classmates’ and we don’t get to choose that so no one’s going to care. I try to engage in classes but it’s honestly a lot harder if I don’t care and I don’t have a personal relationship to the material.”

School leaders, it’s time to trust teachers. Teachers, it’s time to trust yourselves, and your students.

Trust means:

Being prepared.
Building strong relationships with students.
Creating clear structures for student-led conversation.
Engaging with students from a stance of curiosity, not presumption or judgment.
Listening with all our hearts to what students have to say, to what they need, what they wonder, what they think.
Letting students know that school is in fact a place to have meaningful conversations and engage in learning about things that matter.

This week you CAN talk about the election without getting into partisan politics. How?

Ask your students what they need, how they’d like to discuss the election, and what they’d like to learn about at this moment. Build your curriculum for the next few days around their responses. (Check out this preview from our Speak Truth Guidebook that is designed to help students prepare and lead their own discussions.)
If asking students to share their feelings with one another feels too hard to manage, invite students to journal, and write alongside them, as you model a way to process powerful emotions.
Discuss why this election took longer to reach a conclusion than past elections, exploring together what “having your vote counted” means.
Talk about the impact of Covid and the role mail-in ballots played in creating a way for voters to participate and stay safe.
Research together why some states started counting votes before election day while others waited until election day to begin the counting.
Explore probability and statistics, percentages, why a vote cast in Maryland might matter differently than a vote cast in Georgia or Nevada, or even Virginia.

The months ahead will be filled with a combination of new beginnings and ongoing battles with old problems. Our children need us to acknowledge this reality. One of our students recently said, “We deserve the provocative!” Let’s begin with empathy and trust teachers to make meaningful, student-led learning the norm.

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.