LMMS PLN

Stepping back and determining what is actually happening in a classroom before judging what should be happening, however, is a crucial step to changing instruction for the better.

It says let’s take the evidence before us, see where we are, and see what we think we need to do next to make progress, instead of people with formal authority who are supposed to have all of the answers.”

n order for rounds to work properly the focus must be on teaching–not teachers–with everyone in the room free to speak his or her mind and respect strict confidentiality for participants.

he “instructional core”–the essential interaction between teacher, student, and content that creates the basis of learning– is the first place that schools should look to improve student learning.

personal from the practice — something Elmore says medical professionals do well, but not educators. “Educators . . . tend to confound and confuse the practice with the person,” he writes. “Indeed, for most educators, their practice is who they are.”

he and the other facilitators spend a lot of time at the beginning helping rounds participants understand that everyone involved — not just teachers

stress the importance of collecting meaningful, raw evidence when observing a classroom, and to do it without judgment

“There’s tremendous value in slowing down. We go in and watch a reading lesson. Normally the observers want right away to say, Wasn’t her approach fabulous? or, Oh! We use that book, too, instead of, What went on in there? How did that student learn?” she says. “Rounds is stopping to really try to understand those interactions.

“As educators, we have such different ideas of what effective teaching and learning is.”

training model — one that includes a shared language and a common sense of what’s effective — work for educators?

Once the group forms, they identify a problem that the school or district is struggling with, observe classrooms, debrief, and then focus on what needs to be done next.

These networks can be formed in one school

Here, a basic question is asked: What is the next level of work?

ultimate goal, say the authors, is for the protocols and practices learned doing instructional rounds to become as much a part of the culture of education as they are a part of the culture in medicine.

roup-learning mentality — which centers on the idea that everyone involved is working on their practice

“School leaders started looking at each other as resources to learn and share ideas,”

great if we had a coherent, national model of what effective teaching is

It’s a practice, not a theory.

how do you prioritize and narrow down the content you want to teach so it fits within the limited framework of the course?

What will you accept as evidence that students are making progress toward the learning goals of the course?  How will you know if they are “getting it”?

Finally, after you have decided what results you want and how you will know you’ve achieved them, then you start planning how you’re going to teach.