Speaking of Purpose, Persistence, and Action

By Jenna Fournel , Director of Teaching and Learning

Listen to today’s Hooray for Monday Podcast to hear Aleta share how Purpose, Persistence, and Action became one of Inspired Teaching’s 5 Core Elements

For nearly a decade, Inspired Teaching’s Speak Truth program has provided a powerful example of our teaching philosophy in practice. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be looking at how giving students the reins when it comes to conversation in the classroom can boost engagement and lead to learning at a level you and your students never imagined.

“I can’t believe how fast the time went by,” is something we often hear at the end of a Speak Truth session.

This is as true for the discussions that last 45 minutes as it is for those that last three hours. Consistently, students rate their experiences in Speak Truth as more engaging than their experiences in school; when we ask them why, the answers often come back to Purpose, Persistence, and Action.

In a Speak Truth session, students are 100% in the driver's seat as they choose the topic they discuss, the questions they ask, the flow the conversation will take, and the way they will summarize the learning at the end. The discussion requires no special web platforms or equipment. It doesn’t require engaging videos or games. And yet — students find it engaging because they must be wholly focused on and actively part of a discussion that matters.

Engagement matters. A 2016 Gallup poll found that only 32% of 11th graders felt engaged in school. A 2018 CASEL report found that nearly three-quarters of high school students are stressed and bored in school. And at a time when chronic absenteeism is a national problem, “disengagement” is one of the four leading reasons students aren’t going to school.

Our experience with Speak Truth offers a compelling reason to try adapting more of what we do in a school day to center around our students’ voices and lived experiences.

Listen to this week’s podcast for more suggestions from students who have participated in our Speak Truth session this month.

We are forever asking ourselves what more our students can learn; one way to push beyond boredom is to ask ourselves what more they can DO.