Nowadays teachers who don’t think about their own practices tend to lose their jobs or never get one, in case they are unemployed. Any professional think about how to develop their work to better attend the necessities of the market. Why would that be different with teachers?
Last year I participated to a great book study from Diane Sweeney about Student Centered Coaching. And I was a volunteer to be coached by an excellent teacher I worked with. Good experience.
However, nothing compares to the experience I am having now. I became a student… kind of! I am sitting and listening to classes as any other kid in a class. I’m not doing homework or any classwork the way I should as a normal pupil, but yes, I am here class after class.
I have never reflected so much about my own practices. How many times have I done the same things the teachers I’m listening from are doing? I sometimes yawn so much I get embarrassed. Teachers still talk a lot. What happened to that tendency of having the TTT (teacher talking time) decreased to its half? When teachers talk, they take the time of kids participation. Believe me, they are still talking for at least 85% of the time. The 20 something students have to share 15 minutes among themselves. Gosh!
As a student here, I have to say that it is s bit frustrating listening to something that you already know and would like to contribute with comments and extra information but never gets the chance to do it.
I can say I now understand what Dianne mentioned about looking at the students and not the teacher only. The focus changed, it is not just the way teachers teach, but the way students learn better. How can one know if pupils are learning if they don’t even have the chance of showing it? Some of the result are that students get distracted and start to waste their time fooling around when they should all be engaged in learning.
We could not go through the whole process of coaching last year. We lacked time and we were not totally prepared for doing it the way Dianne suggests in her book. But I could open my eyes to the way students were learning and then get even more worried about the way I was teaching. Watching this teacher now makes me think about so many things I would do different…
The questions to ask are: are students learning? What evidences do I get from this? Are they all engaged? Am I using differentiation in order to achieve the highest number of students in the class? Am I secure about what I am saying? If the answer is no for any of these questions, then something is wrong. Review, reflect, and restart. Time to change the lenses.
Interesting to read
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