Visit the Inspired Teaching Institute
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The
Inspired Teaching Institute is our flagship teacher-training program,
now celebrating its 13th year in Washington, DC. Join us for a few
hours and meet a group of teachers who are starting a yearlong journey
to improve their practice.
Visitor dates are: July 14-17. Visiting hours are 10-2.
The Institute is located at
Georgetown Day School Upper School campus, 4200 Davenport St., NW
Washington, DC.
RSVP to Kristen Boswell. |
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Center for Inspired Teaching is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that exists to ensure schools make the most of children's innate desire to learn. We do this by investing in teachers. Please visit our website to learn more about our philosophy, programs, and results.
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Inspired Teaching Alumni Conference
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Save this Date:
August 18, 2008
Alumni of the Inspired Teaching Institute are invited to join us for a day of rejuvenation before the 2008-09 school year begins. Now in its third year, this annual conference is designed to reconnect our alumni and reinvigorate Inspired Teachers so they are ready to jump into another successful year.
This year's conference will be held at the Washington Ethical Society
7750 16th St. NW
Washington, DC 20012
The conference runs from 8:30 am to 3 pm and breakfast and lunch will be served.
The Inspired Teaching Alumni Conference is free to alumni.
RSVP to Griffin or Jenna Fournel 202.462.1956
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Becoming Inspired: Step 5
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This week we complete our study of the Five Step Process educators are currently experiencing at the Inspired Teaching Institute. The process leads participants towards the goal of achieving their full potential as Inspired Teachers.
Last week we talked about Step 4: Build the skills of effective teachers, including listening, asking
thoughtful questions, observing, and communicating effectively. This week we move to:
Step 5: Practice! Create and practice new strategies that will make my
classroom an active place of learning fueled by students' ideas. Arm
myself with research that shows children learn best when they engage in
work that is important and challenging.
Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done. ~ Rudolph Flesch
Once you've begun to examine your teaching philosophy and think about ways to match your practice to your beliefs, it can be a little overwhelming to face the mountain of work that will require. But the best way to take on this challenge is to jump right in.
As you ponder the standards you have to teach this year and how you will approach them as an Inspired Teacher, it's worth revisiting the old "5 Ws and an H" as they apply to your classroom:
- Who are your students? What are their learning styles, skill levels, and interests?
- What is the content you are teaching? Which skills could you teach to enable students to understand this concept?
- Why is this content important for your students to know?
- When will they use their knowledge of this content in their lives outside of school?
- Where will they learn this content best? Should they take a field trip, visit the computer lab, tour the neighborhood, explore concepts further at home?
- How do you want your students to learn this content and show they understand it? Will they be solving a problem, researching a topic, debating an issue, experimenting to find an answer, or something else? How can they learn this content through their preferred learning styles?
You can use these questions to guide the creation of each lesson you plan. If you approach your instruction with your own teaching philosophy and these questions in tow, you are likely to come up with wonderfully engaging lessons that are far superior to the prefabricated one-size-fits-all models in your textbook manuals.
Unfortunately, teaching in this way goes against the grain and may raise some eyebrows and even some concern on the part of your colleagues and principal. You're doing something different. And when the academic futures of children are at stake, you need to prove that different is just as good, if not better, than what everyone else is doing. It's important to back as much of your practice as possible with solid research in favor of your approach. In this issue we provide more research resources.
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This last step of the Inspired Teaching process starts with the word "practice" because that's what the work of an Inspired Teacher is all about.
To practice is to do something over and over again in pursuit of doing it better and better. The Inspired Teacher is engaged in a relentless pursuit of better lessons, better rapport with students, better collaboration with peers, better student performance on assessments, and the list goes on. Driven by a deep understanding of her own philosophy, a respect for the unique differences that shape her students, and a quest to teach them how to think, not just what to think - she knows that this is not a job with a defined end point or a single finished product. The Inspired Teacher knows she will always be learning, growing, discovering, transforming - and she relishes the chance to dive into the vast and wonderful unknown.
Thank you for joining us on this journey for the past five weeks. We hope you'll do so in person some day soon.
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Teacher Resources
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Student Engagement and its Relation to Quality Work Design: A Review of the Literature (PDF)
This article out of the Schlechty Center for Leadership in School Reform presents a wonderful summary of what engaging instruction requires and why it is important for students and teachers. The piece is well documented with dozens of references in support of the kinds of teaching strategies an Inspired Teacher would employ.
Teaching and Learning Strategies
This page from New Horizons for Learning provides a list of learning methods with links to full articles about how and why they work as well as a guide to more web-resources on each topic.
New Research on Best Practices
The National Education Association shares its own research as well as that of others on best practices in instruction. This page contains articles on Professional Development, Classroom Management, Learning and Teaching, and School Working Conditions. Reports are in PDF format.
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Inspired Teaching Institute Blog
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Want a real first hand account of the Inspired Teaching Institute in action? Check out this blog from our Communications Associate, Griffin, who will make an entry each day for the next two weeks sharing her observations and insights from the experience.
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