Investing in Teachers to Transform Schools

It’s hard to believe that 2022 is now behind us! As we reflect on the past 12 months – filled with continued uncertainty as they may have been – I’m reminded of an issue of Hooray For Monday that considered Inspired Teaching's impact in the last year.

We held in-person Institutes and an in-person Speak Truth event in the spring, our first since 2019. Our Real World History students gave the keynote presentation at the DC History Conference. Hooray For Monday won an award and we launched the Hooray For Monday podcast on Spotify. Aleta Margolis, Inspired Teaching President, shared our philosophy with readers of The Washington Post, ASCD, and 350,000 educators in Italy. And, most importantly, we connected with thousands of teachers, school leaders, and parents.

The pandemic inspired a new approach to sharing with a wider audience the Inspired Teaching strategies, activities, and programming that educators in the DC area have enjoyed for decades. Our new digital guidebooks make incorporating our approach into any classroom more seamless than ever. Our online Inspired Teaching Institutes bring our improvisation-based professional learning to your living room. And our library of online tools for assessing students and building an engaging classroom continues to grow.

2022 by the numbers

     52 issues of Hooray For Monday

     34 episodes of the Hooray For Monday podcast 

     24 Inspired Teaching Institutes

     5 Guidebooks published

     28 Real World History students 

     92 Speak Truth participants

     9,400 educators reached, including 3,600 in the DC area

Every Sunday last year our subscribers could count on (the award-winning) Hooray For Monday to show up in their inbox. And you can expect that – and more – in the year ahead! We launched the Hooray For Monday podcast in 2022 and we’ll continue to offer new, exciting ways to engage with our weekly insights, tools, and activities in 2023. From highlighting the on-the-ground experience of educators to offering insights on assessments, the importance of mistakes, classroom community, and more, Hooray For Monday is a resource teachers can depend on to make their instruction engaging, joyful, and relevant!

We embraced a “yes, and…” mindset during the pandemic and began to offer our Inspired Teaching Institute via Zoom, where we met teachers from near and far in 2022. In 2023, we’ll continue to offer opportunities to join us online for these fun, interactive professional learning opportunities – AND we’re excited to be back in-person at some of our favorite places in Washington, DC for monthly workshops beginning this spring. When teachers can’t join us live, they can now access the strategies and activities we share during our Institutes with our digital Institute Resource Guides.

We were happy to see students holding in-person Speak Truth discussions once again in May at E.L. Haynes High School in Washington, DC. We also welcomed our inaugural class of Speak Truth Fellows over the summer, who joined us for an intensive training, in partnership with Ford’s Theatre, to bring the program to their students during the 22-23 school year. At a time when open, respectful discussion is more important than ever, we’re looking forward to watching their classrooms host Speak Truth events in the new year. 

“Our country needs its teachers. And it’s our collective responsibility, as a society, to find ways to help them thrive.”

     ~ Aleta Margolis, ASCD, December 12, 2022

Looking ahead to 2023, we are excited about what is in store – both the known and the unknown.

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