Do you have time to plan and implement lessons collaboratively with your colleagues? Have you ever watched your students with others, noting what the kids learned and/or are still confused about? Have you had time this year to debate an idea with a colleague without reaching an immediate consensus? The last month or so has been a wonderful kind of busy and much of it has been filled with working together with teachers to create curriculum based upon their students’ needs. Some of the teachers I work with use resources to help them teach writing, and some don’t. In either case, most of our time is spent talking about the students in front of us, not the lessons in the resource. To me this is teacher engagement at its best. I love thinking about ways to foster teacher engagement because ultimately student engagement comes from deeply engaged teachers.
Here are the types of questions we explored while watching students in classrooms.
- Are kids engaged and joyful? How do we know? Is there something the teacher did to create this? Are there other things we can do to foster more joy and engagement?
- What learning do we see? How do we know students are learning? What did the teacher do to support this learning?
- What confusions do we see? How do we know? What might the teacher have done differently to support the learning OR What could the teacher do over the next few days to untangle that confusion?
I would love in the comments below to hear what you do in your schools to help one another feel engaged in the art of teaching. As always, feel free to to send me an email with your questions or if you want more information about how to get this kind of work going in your school.