Making Learning Joyfully Rigorous for Students

March 2020 brought changes and challenges to the world that would have been hard to imagine even 6 months ago. COVID-19 has up-ended our norms and forced us to adapt to unknown and constantly evolving situations; this is especially true in education. Despite these challenges, Center for Inspired Teaching continues our powerful work to build leadership and critical thinking via virtual programming.

At a time when we’re craving in-person conversations and missing the flow that body language can bring to a discussion, Inspired Teaching’s Speak Truth virtual sessions offer a beautiful antidote to all the things we’re growing fond of bemoaning about video conferencing. 

It turns out that well-structured, student-led discussions can be effective both in-person AND online because the elements that make them work in a physical space actually translate pretty well to a virtual one. 

As Inspired Teacher Cosby Hunt opened a session on ZOOM in April 2020 he explained, “Student led discussions are the way things should happen more often in our classrooms. We can be starting student-led discussions even while we’re at home.” He was speaking to a group of about 40 teachers and students who represented schools from up and down the Eastern Seaboard ranging from high school students and their teachers from DC and MD public, private, and charter schools to students and preservice teachers from rural New Hampshire. 

This discussion began and was facilitated entirely by a sophomore at Georgetown Prep High School in Bethesda, MD. The topic students would debate for the next hour was: Is the novel Coronavirus exacerbating inequality? Alejandro did a stunning job of keeping the discussion flowing with questions he’d prepared ahead of time, visuals he shared to set up new lines of inquiry, and an effort to balance the voices present so everyone who wanted to jump in could do so. Here is a sampling of the questions discussed: 

• Have people overreacted or underestimated the magnitude of this virus?
• How can this inequality manifest itself in the nationwide switch to online school? 
• What types of workers are facing unemployment? Is it fair to say that those of low-income working jobs are disproportionately affected?
• How will this pandemic change how the government spends money?

Speak Truth sessions reflect the core elements of the Inspired Teaching approach. Students are the central experts. Their intellect, imagination, integrity, and inquiry drive the whole discussion. And as teachers, putting them in the driver’s seat for the discussion reflects a high level of mutual respect that they in turn learn to show one another. 

In most sessions only a handful of participants know each other in advance, and yet the discussion gets deep very quickly with students sharing their own personal perspectives on the relationship between wealth, power, and race in coronavirus response and ramifications. 

For example, in response to a question about whether education is right in the United States, a student from the Maret School in Washington, DC replied, “Not necessarily. As the government does not have any legislation pertaining to explicit human rights regulations, things like the internet for education are often left in the dust. I’d say the government views education as non-essential and therefore internet connection as an extension of that view.”

The points made by the assembled students who ranged from freshmen to seniors in high school were worthy of the most esteemed Sunday morning talk shows and the adults who joined the discussion just to listen shared their amazement after the conversation with the level of sophistication and thoughtfulness on display. 

As teachers experiment to find the best way to make use of video-time with students, the Speak Truth model is definitely worth exploring. There is a growing consensus that distance learning cannot replicate what we do in a typical school day and that the emphasis should be less on time spent vs. quality of that time. Having students plan meaningful discussions that you observe as they take place offers both a leadership opportunity for the students and tremendous learning opportunity for you as the teacher.

Even once the threat of Covid-19 passes, school will never be the same. We will continue building out our virtual and face-to-face programs for teachers and students, and use our 25-years of expertise to influence education to ensure students are in the driver’s seat of their education.

Center for Inspired Teaching came into the new year excited to champion impactful teacher development and insightful student-led discourse. Our professional development programs for teachers and educators held numerous in-person seminars and events between January and March 2020. We championed teachers as changemakers within classrooms, and engaged students as active learners and critical thinkers to help them learn and achieve at high levels. 

We hold sessions of Inspiring Changemakers and Critical Conversationalists on a monthly basis, but in January 2020 we held an additional special session to further enable teacher development. We brought the Speak Truth program to the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) Headquarters as part of an ongoing partnership between Inspired Teaching and WTU. We invited a larger group of DCPS teachers to view a small-session of Speak Truth and then participate in guided reflection and activities that teach them how to bring student-driven discourse into their own classrooms. It was a powerful session of Speak Truth where students discussed the rising costs of college tuition, with many teachers and leaders in education in attendance. Teachers left the session feeling empowered to bring student-led discourse into their own classrooms.

In February 2020, Speak Truth, Inspired Teaching's groundbreaking program that brings together high school students from public, charter, and independent schools across the region to engage in student-led discussion on powerful topics, held an intergenerational session at EL Haynes Public Charter School in honor of Black History Month. This is the one time that educators can join in with students for the discussion. The results were a powerful and diverse conversation on the topics of representation in video games; Black girls missing in DC; hip-hop-ology; the stigma around natural hair in school; and the “right” way to protest. We are proud of the way our city's young people and their teachers are engaging in civic (and civil!) discourse.

March 2020 has brought many new changes and challenges to the world, including education. In order to adapt to a virtual learning environment, Inspired Teaching is developing new ways to engage both teachers and students online. As a way to promote continued learning and exploration, we started the #Inspired2Learn challenge. We are posing daily challenges where students can utilize their at-home and in-neighborhood environment to learn, explore, grow and change. We welcome you to follow us and take an #Inspired2Learn challenge on your own or with a child or young person in your life!

In March, we held our monthly Speak Truth event as a virtual session. We were curious about how engaged students would be in a virtual setting, and the session turned out to be amazing! The official topic focused on the importance of Black teachers in schools that serve mostly students of color. The students had a lot to say, but the bottom line is that students deeply appreciate it when their teachers show they care. We look forward to continuing to host virtual seminars for as long as schools in the DC region remain closed.

Inspired Teaching is looking forward to another successful year of teacher and student engagement; and we are committed to working with all our partners to ensure the best outcomes for our communities.