March 7, 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. 

Twlya Tharp, who is considered by many to be the greatest living American choreographer, has much to teach about unleashing the possibility inside of us. In her book The Creative Habit, she says, “Art is not about minimizing risk and delivering work that is guaranteed to please. Artists have bigger goals.”

Inspired Teachers have bigger goals too. Yes, we must ensure our students master certain content and perform as they must on required assessments. There’s nothing wrong with that. But as we plan our lessons for the coming weeks and months, what might happen if, in addition to crafting a plan to support our students in the necessary requirements, we ask ourselves, What Else Might Be Possible?

At Inspired Teaching, we’re asking ourselves this question right now. It’s the focal point of our March Inspired Teaching Institutes for teachers and parents. The lifting of mask mandates is simultaneously causing a new kind of stress and a new kind of possibility. So are upcoming spring assessments, which are the norm in most US schools and districts.

So right now, as we enter the second week of March 2022, what else might be possible? How can we nurture students’ inquiry, imagination, and integrity, while maintaining a laser-like focus on growing their intellects?

How can time spent engaging in joyful, spontaneous writing build problem-solving and literacy skills? How can we use oral history as a tool to document the past, and the present? How can we practice citizen science simply by watching things grow? And how can dance deepen our understanding of mathematical concepts?

This is the rich content we’ll explore together this week in our Institutes. You can learn with us – in-person or online. You can also explore the question What Else Might Be Possible? in your own classroom and school building. Of course unleashing possibility isn’t limited to our work as educators. As the weather turns warmer, and bulbs push up from the ground and leaves emerge again from branches once bare, What Else Might Be Possible? is a useful question to accompany us all.