Coaching & Feedback / Instructional Rounds Posted on:

Chatting About Instructional Rounds

Chatting About Instructional Rounds Last week, I was invited to chat (via Google Hangouts) with a group of students at Harvard about instructional rounds. Wow – what an honor! It was fun to share the experiences of my team since we launched the practice of IR at Mount Vernon in 2013. Some of the questions posed included… How do you transform the culture of a school? How much time do you spend aligning terms, norms, and expectations with observers and teachers? How do you measure and capture the demonstrations of the MV Mindsets? Have you ever included students or parents […]

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Book Review / Coaching & Feedback / Instructional Rounds / Reflective Practice / Teamwork Posted on:

Thanks for the Feedback

Thanks for the Feedback Our team has recently discovered this fabulous book, recommended by Meredith Monk from Folio Collaborative. The authors outline the 3 types of feedback we all need and receive as human beings: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. None of these concepts are new, but the clarification of each one, as well as the interconnectedness of them are providing important insights for us. Just the summary from Chapter 1 alone has given us great fodder for discussion and reflection. “Feedback” is really three different things, with different purposes: Appreciation – motivates and encourages. Coaching – helps increase knowledge, skill, […]

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Coaching & Feedback / Instructional Rounds / Professional Learning / Reflective Practice Posted on:

Implementing Instructional Rounds

Implementing Instructional Rounds Recently, the idea was posed to us about how to implement instructional rounds. I’m so excited at the prospect of sharing this valuable practice with other educators, that my mind began racing. Hundreds of thoughts all crashing together in my mind at the same instant. Pulling out a trusty, white legal pad, I began to scribble down questions. Ah, start with questions. It’s embedded in my DNA. Questions for Schools to Discuss Before IR Can you describe your school’s current model for observation? Current evaluation model? Feedback model? Is there any peer to peer observation happening in your […]

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Coaching & Feedback / Instructional Rounds / Professional Learning / Reflective Practice Posted on:

Traditional Observation v Instructional Rounds

In our third year of practicing instructional rounds, I continue to learn and grow in my ability to deliver quality, meaningful feedback to our teachers. They are the best. The top. The elite professionals. I often tell them they are the “Michael Phelps” of education. And even Michael Phelps needs a coach to be the best in his field. I believe instructional rounds is one of the most effective methods to professional growth in education. “A commitment to professional learning is important, not because teaching is of poor quality and must be ‘fixed,’ but rather because teaching is so hard […]

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Instructional Rounds / Reflective Practice Posted on:

Another Round of Instructional Rounds

This Fall will be our Middle School team’s 3rd consecutive year utilizing instructional rounds as a key part of our reflective practice and professional learning cycle. With the exception of developing and leading professional learning, I believe observing teachers and providing feedback through follow up debriefs is my favorite part of being an educational leader. Utilizing a data collection tool created by Bo Adams in Survey Monkey, we have provided detailed, written feedback to each individual educator observed, as well as mapped out a larger view of our collective pedagogical practices – a fancy phrase for “stuff that happens in […]

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Instructional Rounds / Professional Learning Posted on:

P.E.A.K. – Professional Learning

In 2009, I designed and piloted a program at Chattahoochee HS that enabled teachers to observe one another and share feedback for the purpose of professional growth. The program was called “PEAK” an acronym for “Peer Experience and Learning.” The idea being that if an educator desires to reach new heights in his/her teaching craft, then he/she must rely not merely on what was learned in teacher college and inside the four walls of the individual classroom, but also on the experience and knowledge of one’s peers. The PEAK program was part of my grad school work at GCSU and […]

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Coaching & Feedback / Instructional Rounds Posted on:

Teacher Feedback – Old School

In my basement are 5 large boxes of files from 10 years of teaching. It used to be more, but I have been slowly condensing the boxes over the last 4 years. I was amazed to discover some old observation feedback from my first year at Dunwoody HS. It was fascinating to compare how I received feedback then as a teacher to how I capture and deliver feedback now as an administrator, especially as it relates to instructional rounds (#IRFEDU).   Date: April 13, 2000 Focus of Lesson: Socialism/Capitalism Teaching Task I: Provides Instruction Your students participated in the classroom […]

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