Dreaming

Although there are several reasons to like year-round school, I’m a proponent of the traditional calendar for a number of reasons.  From the teacher perspective, it offers something that is critical to continuous improvement:  time to dream!  If your dreams for next year include opportunities for teachers to observe in one another’s classrooms, the ideas below might help those dreams become a reality.

First, dream up a way for teachers to be released from their own classrooms.  Substitute teachers are the obvious choice, but can be costly.  To reduce the cost, work out a schedule where subs move from room to room.  I went to my principal with a plan for every teacher in our book study group to get into another classroom for under $200, and he readily agreed.  Some years I was able to come up with a small grant to cover the cost.  Here’s how it worked:  Two substitute teachers and I were floating subs for the day.  That meant that at least three teachers were observing at the same time.    Teachers signed up for a half-hour time slot to visit another class; then, during the half-hour immediately following their observation, they got together and talked about what they’d seen.  By the time the day was over, 18 teachers had stepped outside of their classroom walls, shared their own practice, and debriefed together.  It was a powerful day of learning!

Your dreams should include a specific learning focus for the observations.  Because our observations were initiated by our book study group, teachers used the strategies we had been reading about when they were observed.  This focus was important, because it allowed for fruitful follow-up conversations among the three teachers who got together each half-hour, even though those teachers had usually been observing in different rooms (they chose which teacher from the group they wanted to observe).  Although the formal debrief time didn’t include the teacher/observer pair that had been together in the same room, I found that these duos nearly always found some time on their own for a brief conversation, so the learning was extended. 

If you can find more money for subs, a “lab visit” is a powerful option for observation.  During lab visits, up to 10 teachers observe a lesson together in the same classroom (as wall flowers – no interaction with students, teacher, or each other).  The observation is both preceded and followed by time to talk with the teacher they observed and with each other.  As a coach, you facilitate these important conversations, including related professional readings and time for planning how they’ll implement what they’ve learned (see link below for learning protocols).  I’ve scheduled half-day lab visits, and these have been, by far, teachers’ favorite professional learning opportunities. 

If getting substitute teachers is not an option at all, don’t give up on your dreams!  Be creative about finding ways to get teachers out of their own classrooms and into the rooms of others.  Part of your coaching time can be used to free up one teacher to observe another.  Or two classes can be combined while one of their teachers visits another room.  Book buddies or writing buddies, where young children are paired with an older student, is one way to make this happen, If all the fourth-grade classes buddy up with all the first-grade students, then the whole fourth-grade team can observe and debrief together.  The purposes and possibilities for combining classes are endless and worth the effort!

Teaching is sometimes an isolated profession.  Dream up some ways to get teachers outside of the four walls of their classroom, and you’ll see good things happening for both teachers and students!

This week, you might want to take a look at: 

6 Ways to harness the power of daydreaming:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3026536/dialed/6-ways-to-harness-the-power-of-daydreaming

Protocols for professional learning:

http://www.nsrfharmony.org/protocols.html

This handy tool from North Carolina provides a great visual of how the CCSS standards change across grade levels (be sure to click “Highlight changes at each grade level”):

http://rt3nc.org/objects/standards/cclitmap/ela.html

Mix-up your exit slips with these printable templates (use with students or modify these for a PD exit slip):

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/printouts/Exit%20Slips.pdf

Download this free webinar on scaffolding the reading of complex disciplinary texts:

https://secure.ncte.org/digital-locker/92da55d0-53a0-41aa-a533-b172b13c5937

That’s it for this week.  Happy Dreaming!