June 20, 2022

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 the last day of our yearlong Inspired Teaching Institutes, we invite our teacher-participants to reflect on what they’ve learned and what they’ve experienced over the course of the school year. We gather in a circle and ask, “What are you taking with you?”

Responses range from “new strategies to engage my students” to “a deeper understanding of why, and how, to care for myself” to “activities to make math accessible and fun for my students.”

This simple question What are you taking with you? offers learners an opportunity to synthesize discoveries they’ve made as they’ve puzzled through problems, navigated challenges, and built relationships.

It can generate a robust list – of concepts examined; ideas explored; questions generated; and information learned about academic content and about ourselves, our communities, and our country.

So as the 21-22 school year winds down, I offer you this question to pose to your students and yourself.

What are you taking with you?

When asking your students, encourage them to create one list of responses to share with the class, and another list to keep private. Do the same with your own responses.

Here are more end-of-year questions to consider asking your students, and yourself:

What’s something you couldn’t do or didn’t understand at the start of the school year that you can do/understand now?
What’s something about which you’ve changed your mind since the beginning of the school year?
What’s something that’s changed in our community or country in the past year?

In addition to fostering personal reflection, questions like these can engage students in exploring history, including history being made in real-time. Just over one year ago, for instance, President Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Though this important day has been celebrated in African American communities across the country for over 150 years, it was not a Federal holiday until a year ago – and that’s a meaningful change. Imagine sending your students off into summer break full of curiosity about the history and significance of Juneteenth, and about other aspects of our country’s history as well.

As you support your students in cleaning out their desks and lockers, as you make sure they return their textbooks and overdue library books, I encourage you to carve out a few minutes to ask, “What are you taking with you?”

As for me, I’m taking with me an ever-growing appreciation for you – the school leaders, classroom teachers, specials teachers, instructional aides, and support staff who inspire, engage, push, and uplift students. Who make school a safe and nurturing place even in the face of so many external pressures. Who serve as my co-conspirators in making school the kind of place that inspires students and teachers to say “Hooray For Monday!” every week.

That’s what I’m taking with me.

What are you talking with you?

Resources

More Ways to Reflect this Week

3-2-1 Surveys

So often we do surveys at the end of the year they are too extensive to be useful and too overwhelming to process. Using something simple like the 3-2-1 format can give you useful information without requiring hours to process. Here are some examples:

For Students

3 things you enjoyed learning this year.
2 things you wish we had learned more about.
1 word to describe this class for students who take it next year.

For Parents

3 things your student shared with you about this class this year.
2 things you wish had gone differently for your child in my class.
1 tip you would give to parents of children in my class next year.

Reflective Metaphors

Sometimes when we reflect on an experience it helps to situate ourselves in an imaginative space. See what happens with these prompts both if you use them for yourself and if you use them with your students. You can also come up with several of these and make a choice board where students pick which form of reflection they would like to try. What can you learn from the creative responses?

If this school year were a color, what color would you say it was and why? (Consider having students color squares with the colors they chose and put together a paper “quilt” with these pieces. Take a photo and send it to them on the last day of school.)
What would you choose as a theme song for this year and why? (If your students try this one, consider creating a playlist from their songs!)
Imagine this year like a road trip. Create a map to show the journey and label the key the spots you visited along the way. Have students share their maps with one another, noting the similarities and differences between what stood out for each.
Create an interpretive dance that captures your experience this school year. Students can do this alone or in pairs or groups.
Think about the class as parts of a whole. If the class were a car, what part of the car would each person in the class represent and why? What about a pizza, a home, a forest, a plant or an animal cell. (See if you can refer back to a complex system or concept you learned in class this year!)

InspiredTeaching · June 20, 2022: What Are You Taking With You?

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.