Investing in Teachers to Transform Schools

Since our founding more than 30 years ago, Inspired Teaching’s mission has been to create systemic change, to transform the school experience for every child away from compliance and obedience, toward curiosity, collaboration, and authentic engagement. We are an equity-centered social change organization that believes curiosity is the antidote to assumption and prejudice, and thatcuriosity is the highest form of respect.

Through our yearlongTeaching with Improvisation Fellowship; our school partnerships; our monthly Institutes; our robust library of digital resources; and our campaign to make curiosity the word of the year through theCuriosity Challenge, Inspired Teaching is dedicated to creating tools, developing programming, and modeling best practices that inspire teachers and students and support learning and well-being.

• 5601 teachers and school leaders in the DC region and an additional 13,000 nationally and globally who experienced our live, asynchronous, and digital programming. 
• The Curiosity Challenge continued to resonate with people locally and around the world, committed to making curiosity a bigger part of their lives. Participants receive regular resources and prompts for sparking curiosity and combatting polarization.
• 12 Monthly Institutes on Emotional Self-Awareness, Raising Cultural Awareness, Teaching Empathy, and much more.
• 31 Inspired Teacher Leaders trained to provide professional learning for hundreds of their colleagues across the DC region.
• 52 editions of the Hooray For Monday newsletter and podcast, reaching thousands of teachers, school leaders, and parents around the world every week. 

A Special Milestone

Inspired Teaching celebrated our30th Anniversary! We catalogued three decades of milestones—and plans for the future—through Inspired Teaching’s 4I’s:Intellect,Inquiry,Imagination, andIntegrity.

Our Founder and President, Aleta Margolis, shed light on our core value of curiosity in an article published by Educational Leadership Magazine, available to read here. 

Empowering Teachers To Embrace Improvisation

TheTeaching with Improvisation Fellowship is a yearlong program for teachers in Washington, DC that immerses them in an improvisational mindset and theInspired Teaching Approach. Each cohort begins their journey with Inspired Teaching with an intensive summer Institute and continues to participate in professional learning throughout the school year. By employing a train-the-trainer model, Fellows are equipped to facilitate their own Inspired Teaching trainings for their colleagues. This creates a powerful multiplier effect that means even more teachers – and their students – can benefit from the Inspired Teaching Approach.

Teaching Fellows represent a diverse array of educators, coming from public, public charter, private, and independent schools, teaching students from PreK to high school. After a deep dive into the ABCDE of Learner Needs and the5 Rules of Inspired Teaching Improv, Fellows commit to bringing Inspired Teaching to their students, colleagues, and school community.

During the 2025-2026 school year, Teaching with Improvisation Fellows:

• Shared their work in the program inHooray For Monday and with future Fellows.

• LedInspired Teaching Institutes for their colleagues and teachers from around the world.

• Welcomed Inspired Teaching into their classrooms for observation and support.

Feeling Great About Monday Morning – And Every Day Of The Week!

Hooray For Monday supports teachers and school leaders in cultivating engaging and relevant classrooms every week. When feeling enthusiastic about Monday morning proves difficult,Hooray For Monday offers insights and strategies for reframing tough moments as rich opportunities for learning.

It is also an outlet for sharing the real-world experiences and expertise of Inspired Teachers and thought leaders. These voices offer meaningful examples of what is possible when you integrate thevalues Inspired Teaching champions—curiosity, empathy, critical thinking, joy—into the everyday.

Links:

• https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/curiosity-starts-with-us
• https://inspiredteaching.org/what-can-i-do/