Professional Learning Conception #2 – Peer Observation

One of the common things I’ve heard from teachers for years is that we want to “watch someone else do it”.  This concept led me to a team-teaching model in my classroom so that I could have the daily experience of teaching in front of a partner for feedback and learning from observing another’s style.  Even those who think having an audience is unnerving, by-and-large I still hear them voice a desire to see others teach.  In some cases we want affirmation that what we’re doing is right or good, in others we are looking for qualitative improvements that inform our own learning.  Emotions and reasons aside, there remain logistical challenges to implementing true team-teaching or peer observations to scale.

Consider this: A team has worked through the problem-solving of particular content.  From an instructional viewpoint and from looking at their student outcomes they created evidence that the methods they learned and used were really effective and brought the results they were seeking.  This is now part of their practice, so they’ve recorded a lesson, or maybe just a clip of the strategies, and placed it in a video library that you and your team can now access.  As you approach an evidenced-based challenge on your team, you realize you need outside support to complete a plan to help your students and develop your instruction. Can your team take a little “PD” time to watch these strategies and make them part of your plan?

OR

Your kids aren’t performing to the level you expect, but you can’t figure out what would improve the results you want to see.  Working with your team, you devise a plan to record things going on in the classroom.  Maybe it’s your own room, maybe it’s a team member’s room; it might be a specific lesson, time of day, or strategy; perhaps you want to see what the kids are doing or what the teacher is doing.  There are so many variables, but you know that reflecting upon seeing it in action is the key to improving it.  Is your team safe enough to observe and honestly reflect on each other’s private teaching?  Could your team take a little “PD” time to organize this record-and-review process for your professional learning and the sake of your kids?

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Athletic coaches and players watch video all the time to analyze individual and collective improvement.  We are so strapped for time and human resources in schools that instructional reflection is often relegated to the individual teacher, but digital videos are more available and efficient than ever.  It would seem that if learning by watching others remains a high interest among teacher, and we crave engaged learning, then we could use sparse resources and technology to fulfill a need that drives professional learning.

How do you see implementing this model into your work?  What might enhance or inhibit it for you?

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2 Responses to Professional Learning Conception #2 – Peer Observation

  1. Colleen says:

    I like it for individual reflection, too. I teach two classes–same content, different kids, largely varied results in assessment. I keep thinking, “Same teacher, same content, why the huge variance?” I know the demos are different in the classes–one is largely g/t and one is very Average-Joe, even a little Low-Average-Joe. Might try recording both lessons one day and see if there is variance in my teaching that skew the results, too. Thanks for the idea!

    • Walt says:

      That would be really cool, maybe telling even, if you found you were doing something substantially different with the different demographic groups. Sounds like they’ve clustered kids to get those different groups. Let us know if you tape it and what you find!