A Week-Long Walk in Our Teachers Shoes

During one of our weekly leadership meetings, my assistant principal asked, “Do you think we really remember what it was like to be a teacher? Is it really reasonable for our teachers to do everything we ask of them?” Instead of simply saying yes, the three of us looked at each other and realized that things had changed a bit since we had all been in the classroom and we didn’t really know what it was like to do everything that we are asking our teachers to do. In that instant, we all realized that we needed to get back in the classroom in order to show our teachers that we were willing to experience what they really go through every day.

For one week, my instructional coach, assistant principal, and I committed to each take a third grade class for their entire math period. We would do everything that we ask of them and allow them to pop in without notice like we do to them. What may seem scary to some, turned out to be one of the best weeks we’d all had in a long time. It reminded us why we went into education in the first place, reenergized our passion for teaching, and had an impact on our faculty that was truly remarkable.

Implementation

As a leadership team, we were determined to have an authentic instructional experience, doing everything that we ask our teachers to do. To get started, we met as a team to select a standard and make sure we knew what we wanted to accomplish by the end of the week. To do this, we had to unpack the core standard paying special attention to the prerequisite skills that students needed to know before they could achieve mastery. We then created a proficiency scale with specific indicators for each level of mastery, along with a clear exemplar of what mastery looks like. This information drove our instruction for the week and gave students a clear target for their learning.

Next, we developed a pre-assessment based on our proficiency scale so that we could determine exactly where our students present level of understanding was relative to that core standard. After reviewing the data, each of us created daily lesson plans, carefully crafted objectives with lesson sized chunks, selected Checks for Understanding to measure daily student learning, and then used that data each day to inform our instruction and make any necessary instructional adjustments.

Throughout this process, we invited teachers to drop in at any time to observe in any of our rooms. We wanted them to see us in action… No dog and pony show, just real teaching that was focused and intentional. However, this was not just about watching us teach. Our goal was to help teachers see how all of these pieces come together in order to increase student achievement. To really drive this idea home, we needed them to see the data at the end of the week and how we discuss learning as a Professional Learning Community.

Instead of our regular faculty meeting that week, we had all of our teachers sit around the room so that our conference table was in the center. From there, we led our team data meeting using our school’s format. As we discussed our outcomes from the week, we celebrated successes, looked for trends in the data, identified specific areas of concern for whole group re-teaching, talked about specific students and grouped them for interventions, and finished by creating a plan for the upcoming week.

Results

This was a powerful lesson for our teachers. Not only did they see that we are willing to walk in their shoes and actually do the work, but they were able to see how all of our “Non-negotiables” come together to help our students achieve at high levels. As a result, our data meetings have become more focused, our instruction is more intentional, and our teachers are using their data more effectively and efficiently in order to meet the needs of their students.

Next Steps

As a leadership team, we will continue to monitor the instructional processes throughout the building, paying close attention to their data conversations as teams. We will also continue to offer support to our teachers and commit to working side by side with them so that they know we are all in this together!