Making Learning Joyfully Rigorous for Students

At Center for Inspired Teaching, the 2023-2024 school year was filled with teacher and student programming that celebrated the power and importance of finding joy in learning. Highlights include:

• The 2024-2025 Teaching with Improvisation Fellowship, with support from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, kicked off with an intensive hands-on, whole-body Institute in June. 32 teachers from Washington, DC schools — and one from Ukraine! — were selected from a record number of applicants to begin a year of professional learning, growth, and joy. These Fellows will join teachers from the ‘23-24 cohort in bringing Inspired Teaching to dozens of school communities across DC.
• Thousands of educators in DC and beyond connected with the Inspired Teaching Approach — our always-growing, always-accessible library of digital resources; twice-monthly professional development Institutes provided both in-person and virtually; weekly Hooray For Monday publication and podcast; and contributed articles in leading education magazines.
• Students from 21 high schools in Washington, DC and from schools across the country expanded their empathy and strengthened their communication and critical thinking skills during monthly Speak Truth sessions — vital lessons ahead of the 2024 Election.
• Teachers from around the globe participated in our monthly online institutes.

Teaching with Improvisation Fellowship

The 2024-2025 Teaching with Improvisation Fellows jumped right into their year of joyful learning at the summer Institute, held in June at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration School in Washington, DC. Teachers of all backgrounds joined together for an in-depth exploration of the Inspired Teaching Approach.

From raucous rounds of Red Ball to reflecting and connecting during the Me Museum activity, Fellows deepened their understanding and appreciation of their practice and their colleagues. Visitors from the Inspired Teaching community, including the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DC Collaborative, the Share Fund, and OSSE, also had the opportunity to witness Inspired Teaching’s unique approach to professional development first-hand — and participate in some of our learning exercises!

In the school year ahead, Fellows will continue their journey with ongoing professional development, Inspired Teaching classroom visits, and the opportunity to lead professional learning workshops in their own school communities.

Online Webinars Make Our Resources Globally Accessible

Inspired Teaching will continue to provide monthly online institutes. These webinars focus on essential resources for teachers and are directly linked to our monthly professional development topics, covering areas such as thriving in action, teaching empathy, building learner confidence, and more. We have been thankful to provide these online sessions for people who are local to the United States as well as internationally from countries such as Dubai, Brazil, and South Africa.

Speak Truth America

We held a special session of Speak Truth America on June 12 at George Washington University in partnership with National History Day. Our student participants hailed from Montana, Missouri, Georgia, Washington, Idaho, North Dakota, California, and Oregon. We engaged them in a Speak Truth seminar about the film The First Step (which is at the core of Speak Truth America). Students explored the role young people can play in creating policy change, the ways in which connecting with people whose lives are different from your own expands your understanding of shared issues, and the ways in which educational systems may well be the most effective levers for positive social change.

Inspired Teaching Approach - Student as Expert

Through student-facilitated conversations, Speak Truth participants learn to productively and respectfully discuss current, controversial topics. These thought-provoking conversations teach students to defend their stances on a myriad of issues and help them develop and recognize the power of their voices.

Student as Expert means adults trust that students have the ability, and the inclination, to solve academic and social problems, instead of assuming students need adults to solve problems for them. This means student voice and ideas are abundant in every lesson, in every interaction. 

The Student as Expert approach is at the heart of our Speak Truth program, though it takes time for high school students to trust their emerging expertise. For a variety of reasons including safety and content expertise, high schools tend to center teachers as information providers, so that is what students are used to.

When we prepare students to lead Speak Truth discussions there is foundational information about structure and strategy that we do provide. But we also use inquiry to spark students’ own ideas about:

• what kinds of questions will resonate with their peers,
• what angles on a topic will spur the most discussion,
• and what opening activities will garner the best engagement.

Students soon learn to take the foundational information we start with and build on it through their observations, instincts, and expertise.

3 Ways to Cultivate Student Expertise

1. Build a Knowledge Inventory. Many video games include a feature where players gather resources into an “inventory” that they can pull from as they encounter various challenges. Encourage students to gather their emerging expertise in the same way. Have them create a list of all the things they know how to do, then revisit that list periodically so they can add to it and reflect on which items they’ve recently used.
   
   
2. Let the Students be the Teachers. As we near the final months of the school year, look for opportunities for students to lead class. This can involve taking over the role you typically play in familiar routines, including leading morning meetings, giving feedback on each others’ writing, guiding review for tests, or leading a read-aloud. It can also involve sharing new content that they study and build into a lesson they teach their peers.
   
   
3. Reflect on the Process. Reflection is a valuable way for students to both recognize and build their expertise. Include reflection as part of large projects or assessments where students are asked to think about how they prepared, how well they did, and what they’d do differently the next time. Seek students’ feedback on your own teaching by asking them what helped or hindered their learning, and what recommendations they have moving forward. (Check out these5 activities to give you feedback.)

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