Working on the Work: Rounds in Action

During the 2012-13 school year our faculty took steps to develop a common language of instructional practice. During school-wide collaboration in November 2012, our staff engaged in dialogue to calibrate definitions of student engagement, teacher engagement, and differentiated instruction.

Our leadership team led this activity as staff members discussed their perspectives in small groups and posted their thinking for the staff on Today’sMeet. This initial activity led to the development of a small group observation form to be used during instructional rounds at Excelsior Springs Middle School. As the 2012-13 school year drew to a close our leadership team and department chairs committed to a book study on instructional rounds for the coming year.  We selected Instructional Rounds in Action by John Roberts and began our study in August of 2013. The 2013-14 school year brought several changes to our learning community, most notably a new teacher evaluation system, the Network for Educator Effectiveness or NEE. In anticipation of the new school year the leadership team and department chairs helped modify our procedures for instructional rounds. During 2013-14 instructional rounds have taken place on two levels, small group and school-wide.

Rounds are an important part of small group reflection, where a team of teachers who share a common planning hour observe two classrooms each month. In this format teachers will look for descriptive evidence and avoid subjective speculation about practice. Small groups use our faculty observation form and also look for evidence in support of NEE indicators 1.2, 4.1, 5.1, and 7.4.  Rounds are also conducted by department chairs as a school-wide strategy to identify problems of practice.  As defined by Roberts (2012) "a problem of practice is a statement that describes the instructional problem that a school is struggling with and that serves as a focus for classroom observations" (page 4).  Department chairs have conducted rounds twice this year (once each semester) to support our progress toward our building goals.  The purpose of this practice is not evaluative, this practice will report broad trends for staff reflection from a school-wide perspective; no individual teacher data will be reported.

During a fall in-service day in September 2013 our staff reviewed the purpose of instructional rounds and discussed our problems of practice. Our next big step as a faculty was the collective development of problems of practice. Together we identified the following as our problems of practice for 2013-14:

Meeting the needs of diverse learners Instructional methods are not always appropriate and don’t lead to high levels of student engagement Students understanding the objective or learning task for that day Having students complete tasks to completion.

In addition to developing our problems of practice, our staff took more steps to maintain a common language of effective instruction by defining what rigor and relevance mean in the instructional setting.  Last week our learning community took another step to build our capacity through collective inquiry.  Five department chairs worked as a team to complete our second day of school-wide instructional rounds.  As first hour began they divided into observation teams and built their schedule of classes to visit for fifteen minutes.  For the next five hours our department chairs visited classrooms and met to debrief.  During this experience our team of teacher-leaders collected evidence on the instructional core: the interactions between teacher, student, and the instructional task.  Using our problems of practice as a filter, the following observations were noted and shared with our faculty through our Faculty Focus:

More formative assessments observed this time Students were actively engaged in learning A variety of instructional strategies were observed Students were involved in more complex tasks than the fall Student engagement was noticeably higher Students had much more responsibility in their learning

During our latest round of school-wide observations a few of the department chairs inquired about a change for the 2014-15 school year. To expand our understanding of effective instructional practice and grow our capacity it was recommended that each department have a day for school-wide instructional rounds next year. Our instructional coach will serve as a facilitator on each departmental team as collectively we engage in inquiry, focusing on our problems of practice. We look forward to continued growth this spring and next year as we work together as a learning community to prepare students for the challenges of the 21st century.

REFERENCES

Excelsior Springs Middle School. (2014). Overview of Instructional Rounds Process. Hubbuch, C., Stucker, K., & Rubey, B. (2014). Keeping the Change Alive. Principal Leadership, 14(8), 46-50. Roberts, J. (2012). Instructional Rounds in Action. Harvard Education Press. Cambridge, MA.