Guest Blogger- Visiting a Colleague-Lauren

As part of one of my PGP goals, I am seeking out opportunities to observe fellow teachers in their classrooms. This goal developed when I had the revelation at the beginning of this school year that while I know many of you personally, or I know what students say about you and your classes, I don’t actually know how a typical day in your classroom looks through the eyes of our students. I believe it was during a building tour for the August BLT meeting that we re-entered the school through Gabe’s room and I said, “Wow, this is my 5th year here and I have never been in Gabe’s classroom!”  I decided then that I was going to make an effort to get into multiple classrooms this year. We have a great teaching staff that I know is doing great things, so I want to observe, and hopefully learn a thing or two from some of you!

So far I have spent a period in T-B and Abby’s rooms. While I did not discover anything revolutionary with regard to teaching strategies, I did see a lot of “best practices” being used in a different content area than my own and that really reinforced for me the effectiveness of using some of our basic tools in our teaching toolbox on a daily basis to reach the most students.

I saw T-B have students practice using the language individually, as a class, and by getting up and mingling with each other to practice dialogue. She also used a variety of mediums—text, speech, and (attempted 😉) audio. Again, not a new concept in teaching, and I’m sure she does these things every day without a second thought, but it helped me to reflect on my own classroom; am I providing opportunities for my students to learn the material several different ways with a variety of mediums?

In Abby’s room they were practicing parliamentary procedure. She had warned me ahead of time that it was going to be organized chaos, which is always fun to watch as an outsider. A teaching practice that was reinforced during this observation was student connection/contribution to the content. Students got to make up their own motions and amendments, and while most were silly, the students showed that they understood the process and all students were involved. One thing that really stood out to me during my observation was Abby’s use of a random word list. Each time students were to announce if they were for or against a motion she would use a different random word which kept the students fully engaged in the activity. I enjoyed the list so much that I’ve started brainstorming ways that I can use “random” words in my own classroom to encourage buy-in during certain activities the way it did during Abby’s parliamentary procedure practice. I’m leaning towards the route of content specific “random” words of the week or day in which students will interact.

I know we are all very busy during the day, and giving up a planning period to observe another teacher’s classroom may not currently be at the top of our list, but I encourage you to give it a try. The students enjoy seeing you in their other classes, you learn some things about the students watching them in a different setting, and you just may pick up a new teaching idea, or be reminded of one you haven’t utilized in a while.

Questions to consider:

1. Is there a teacher that you are curious about what goes on in their classroom or you want to see why they are a student favorite…or possibly non-favorite?
2. How can you set aside time to get in their room for a period?
3. After spending a period in their room, what did you take away?