Rocking the Classroom

Our Gowanda Blue Team for Thoughtful Classroom traveled to Randolph Central School today and joined our colleagues from Randolph and Ellicottville for a day of Teacher Rounds and Coaching. Three dynamic and courageous educators from Randolph taught wonderful lessons while about sixteen of us watched. The kids were, of course, fantastic, the lessons spot on, the teachers energetic, and the learning (at least for me) inspired.

After experiencing the three lessons, we “debriefed”. In small groups, we traveled to three stations where we wrote on huge chart paper about our observations and our suggestions. Imagine. Sixteen colleagues watch you teach and then talk about what they saw. Brave folks, huh?

That’s how we learn! From each other, talking about teaching. It’s how it should look—it’s how we should be talking. And we’re educators for crying out loud, the RCS teachers who taught today did a stellar job and we who watched made very positive observations followed by some straight forward suggestions. All very nice stuff. No judgment. As Susan Morris from Thoughtful Education said, “Most of us are internalizing while we’re observing. We’re not thinking about you so much as we’re thinking about our own practice, how we can incorporate what we see you doing.” (I’m paraphrasing here Susan–think I got it, more or less.)

The thing that struck me was the same thing that I was thinking about on our own two days of in-district training last week. As teachers, we’ve got no swagger. We never tout what we’re doing really well. Those teachers went right to the “suggestions” section of the de-brief, almost embarrassed to focus on the section that was more extensive, where we recorded all of our positive reflections on these dynamite lessons.

We’ve got to get beyond this if we’re going to have really meaningful discussions/debates about best practice. I’ve got to be able to say, “I rocked this lesson today! And here’s what I did and how it worked.” and we also have to be able to say to one another, “this tanked and here’s what I did and how it worked”, and then give meaningful feedback to one another.

This is a significant climate change, fostering a risk-free, non-competitive environment where we’re all working together toward the best possible teaching for our students instead of teaching quietly in isolation.

I’ll say it again, those teachers were fantastic today. Lauren, Shelly and Scap–making it work for kids. You rocked! Not perfect. Not better than anyone else. Not know-it-alls. Not brown nosers. Just fantastic teachers for their students. Just like every child deserves, in every class, every day. Let’s start to revel in our great practices and that will lead to better practices by everyone.

A public shout out to our dynamic GCS Blue Team–Andrea Geist, Lois Piscitelli, Kathryn Jordan, Kyle Steever, Kris Ruzycki–for your willingness to step out, take a risk, and learn more. Let’s start sharing it with everyone.