Investing in Teachers to Transform Schools

Dear friends,

The past three months at Center for Inspired Teaching have been full of growth, presenting the Inspired Teaching staff with new challenges, opportunities to learn, and reasons to be excited!

Recently, we’ve been developing, piloting, and evaluating a family engagement curriculum for teachers in a partnership with the Flamboyan Foundation. A strong body of research confirms the importance of family engagement in ensuring students succeed in school and in life. With Inspired Teaching’s family engagement curriculum, teachers are becoming more skilled at effectively involving parents in their children’s education – and more than 200 teachers have been involved to date. 

As teachers in our programs pilot this new curriculum, they are also beginning new coursework in their respective professional development programs. For the 2010 Inspired Teaching Fellows and Residents, winter courses began last week. Early Childhood and Elementary Education Fellows are learning how to provide age-appropriate, fun lessons in math for young learners. We’ll post pictures of their Math Dance activities—used to teach important concepts like length and congruence—very soon! Meanwhile, our English Language Arts certification candidates are learning the Art of Teaching Writers to boost literacy and provide students with a productive outlet to express their creativity.

In addition to all of these exciting classrooms, Inspired Teaching is in the process of developing several unique curricula for our Professional Development Partnerships at local schools. Our current partners include: Orr Elementary School, Arts and Technology Academy, IDEA Public Charter School, and Thurgood Marshall Academy. The Professional Development Partnerships provide customized training to each school based on its needs including: mentoring, collaborative lesson studies, coaching, retreats, and coursework.

Creating new material to share with teachers and principals has been an extremely rewarding process—our program participants show confidence in their abilities to master content and boost student success.  For example, one of Fellow Bri Zika’s students with a profound love of music struggled to learn geography. Bri worked with her to put the names of each country in South America into a song, and with this mnemonic device, the student mastered all of the content and excelled on the next test. Teachers like this are one of many reasons why I, and Center for Inspired Teaching, appreciate your support. YOU have made this important work possible.

Best,

Aleta Margolis

Executive Director

PS- Chocolate Inspiration will be at the Canadian Embassy on February 24, 2011. Join us for a night of delicious confectioneries and thoughtful conversation about education!