A former public school teacher, Aleta Margolis developed the Inspired Teaching Approach to challenge a prevailing norm: too many children, teachers, and parents accepted the reality that school was something to “get through,” and that the “best” students exhibited compliance and obedience. This Approach engages teachers as allies to make learning engaging for children and their teachers.
The Inspired Teaching Approach was developed and consistently evolves in response to the most pressing needs in education – like growing absenteeism and mental health crises, teacher retention, and leadership turnover – improving teaching methodologies and practices while also building community and ensuring equitable outcomes for all students. For nearly three decades, we have collected quantitative and qualitative data via surveys of teachers, students, and school leaders; focus groups; in-classroom observations using nationally normed tools; and case studies. Our approach is also validated by ample third-party research.
In practice, the Inspired Teaching Approach looks like children and their teachers in action - learning math, science, literature, history, arts, and more with their whole bodies, hearts, and minds.
For 30 years, the Inspired Teaching Approach has been at the root of our school and district partnerships, teaching residencies, and professional development programming. We began in Washington, DC, then expanded across the US and in India, South Africa (where one of our teachers opened a school rooted in our Approach), Turkey, Thailand, and elsewhere. During the pandemic, we created digital resources – reaching more educators worldwide, including in Myanmar and over 1000 teachers in Ukraine. We’ve received international recognition (including an Ashoka Fellowship, Anthem Awards, and a Global Collection 2024 selection). In the future, we aim to reach more educators and engage parents to help us shift the norm in schools away from compliance and toward authentic engagement.
We offer an array of resources – ready-to-implement classroom activities, self-paced professional development, booklets filled with insights and tools – teachers can use to bring the Inspired Teaching Approach into their classroom with the click of a button. They can also join our monthly live online PD workshops, or contact us directly to bring customized programming to their school community.
