Inspired Teaching Institute Day 3: Inspired Teaching is reacting

After day 1, Julie, Inspired Teaching’s Director of Research and a linguist by trade, marvelled at the Institute leaders’ skill. Two in particular have led the Institute for years and have heard the same responses to similar questions over and over again. Yet somehow they are able to respond as if they’re hearing it for the first time. They took this skill from their theater backgrounds straight to the classrooms in which they taught. Now, in the classroom that is the Institute, they demonstrate it so flawlessly that we forget that our epiphanies and quandaries are nothing new to them.

So while we played an intentionally repetitive game, I followed their lead.

This is a horse.
A what? A what? A what? A what? A what?
A horse. A horse. A horse. A horse. A horse.
Oh, a horse.

Basically, everyone sits in a circle and takes a turn offering a random object to the person beside him or her, and saying that the object—which is not at all horse, much more likely a cell phone—is indeed a horse. The person responds by asking, “A what?” and the individual offering the object confirms, “A horse.” “Oh, a horse,” the recipient answers. If it were just one round, it would be so simple. But as the game continues, the question and answer must return each time to the first person who offered the object.

Too much information? Confused? Well, imagine 20+ people playing with both a “horse” and a “cow” circulating in opposite directions!

I confess: Other than feeling some anxiety when I had to simultaneously receive and pass two messages different ways around the circle, it got to be a bit dull.

Fortunately, we took time to unpack the activity, looking at what lessons could be taught through the game. Then we journaled in response to questions about the entire day. As a teacher, what do you do when you’re out of your comfort zone or are in the unknown? Co-teaching with a colleague whose mental processes are very different from yours. Engaging students during the last few days before a standardized test. Maybe fielding some of those curiosity questions: “Are you married? How old are you? Who’s that lady in the hallway?”

Or being bored. During the game I tried to do what Kaneia and Aleta do—to react genuinely to each statement as if I didn’t know what was coming because I had never heard it. It was a fake-it-till-you-make-it tactic, and it kept me amused and thoroughly engaged.

A teacher can show their students how to ask and answer questions, but over time, the magic might fade for the teacher. Remaining open increases the chances that everyone involved—teachers, students, families, principals—won’t get bored with school. Instead they might be inspired again and again by opportunities to learn.

Inspired Teaching Institute Day 2: Where self-care and play connect

Over a tasty lunch, I spoke to a few teachers about how they care for themselves. One maximizes summer break, building relationships with other educators through professional development opportunities. They all agreed that prioritizing whatever matters to them is essential. They make sure that their loved ones and hobbies are nonnegotiable, because the rejuvenation, they said, that these can provide help them to stay balanced. In turn, their teaching is enhanced because they can be 100% present.

Complete presence is also what the Inspired Teaching Institute facilitators asked of participants for day two. A variety of warm-ups led us into the “meat” of the day, which focused on observation. And what better way to practice tuning our observational skills than playing?

Yes, playing. Turns out that some of the games that I played at school and church growing up are excellent “Petri dishes” for observing myself and others. We dove into better understanding how we learn, building upon the unique space created yesterday of peers who care deeply about students.

In the quest for improving education, it can feel like there isn’t time to take care or to note that teachers, just like students and all people, see the world in a distinctive way. A couple of participants told me that their colleagues used to joke about who will have the next bladder infection from not maintaining their own heath. At the Institute and at school alike, many teachers struggle to “stop the cop” from stifling creativity and self-care in the class.

But this second day of the course and last night’s homework led me to another question that I now leave with you: Regardless of the subject matter, how inspiring can school be—for students and educators—if teachers are so distracted by their own needs that they can’t build relationships with students and allow creativity and observation of play to catalyze change and growth?