Why We Sing: Hooray For Monday! - Center for Inspired Teaching

December 7, 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.

This past week along with my colleagues Jenna Fournel, Judy White, and Christine Sheridan, I led a virtual Inspired Teaching Institute for teachers. We called it An Element of Joy.

Like all of our professional learning, this past week’s sessions were 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically. We opened with breathing exercises, recognizing breath as a starting point and fuel for movement; engaged in a physical warm-up; and learned strategies for infusing joy into subjects where it can be harder to find like grammar, analyzing standardized test data, teaching geometric proofs, and computer science. Judy exercised our imaginations as she guided us through an automatic writing exercise that led to more than 40 pieces with titles such as as, “It Takes A Village,” “Forest Friends and Mystical Adventures,” and “Unicorns Forever!” Jenna led us through an exercise in exchanging feedback while instigating thought, encouraging us to notice, wonder, and suggest. And we learned strategies for incorporating student-led dialogue into virtual and in-person classrooms, building on the work of Speak Truth.

As we do in all Inspired Teaching Institutes, we sang together. We closed the Institute with “Come As You Are,” a song – written by the teaching artists at Living Stage Theater, including the late, great Oran Sandel – that has been core to the Inspired Teaching Institute since 1996.

Teachers, whether you teach young children, elementary, middle, or high school, singing deserves a place in your classroom.

Here’s why:

Singing creates connections and builds community.
Singing makes us breathe. It rewards deep breathing; bigger, deeper breaths equal louder, stronger, and more resonant sound.
It makes us vulnerable – we sound different when we sing than when we speak, so those in our community hear a different part of us when we sing.
Singing literally creates good vibrations – in our chests, throats, and heads.
If we learn to read music, we learn fractions (time signatures and the circle of fifths) and many other mathematical concepts.
Singing supports language development.
Singing connects us to our elders and our youth, across generations. It carries forward the artistry of each song’s composer and lyricist, and of every person who’s ever sung that song before. In many cultures, songs were and are a key tool for capturing and sharing important elements of history and tradition.
Music has the power to elevate our moods. Singing makes the day feel different.

Despite what we may have been told, singing is something everyone can do. Singing is simply sustained speech. If you can speak, you can sing. And if you haven’t tried to sing with your students yet, this is a perfect Monday to begin.

Wishing you joy, and song, this week and always.

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.