Blog Post

Learning Labs: Teachers learning from teachers

Maestra Maya waited eagerly while her three colleagues began writing on post-it notes. We were about to debrief a classroom observation the group had just carried out in Maestra Maya’s room. Each participant reviewed their collection of notes and chose a few pieces of specific feedback to transfer over to a post it note for the conversation.

Maestra Maya anxiously spoke up, “My mini-lesson went way overtime, I’m so embarrassed! And Carlos and Brian will not let go of that issue that happened this morning at breakfast. Maybe I should have stopped the lesson to problem solve with them…”

The instructional coach gently interrupted. “You asked us to look for teachers’ moves within the modeling and how students responded. Let’s see if kids took on the learning despite the boys’ distraction.”

Maestra Maya quickly let go of her regrets and focused her attention to the group.  After all, she had volunteered for this activity! A few weeks back, the coach sent an open invitation to any teacher interested in hosting a learning lab.  A lab is a way for teachers to choose an area of their practice in which they’d like to receive feedback. The teacher invites about three colleagues of her choice, and coverage is provided for the 1 hour lab. The coach facilitates a pre-conference where the host describes the lesson she has planned, participants ask clarifying questions, and the group establishes specific areas of focus to look for in the live lesson. Following the lesson (which ends up being about 20-30 minutes), the group debriefs their observations and supports the teacher in honoring what’s going well, along with some next steps or things to consider.

 

 

 

In this particular lab, Maestra Maya  was interested in feedback on effective partner work with her second grade students. Since the beginning of the month, her class had been making efforts to establish the norms of conversation . The teacher admitted how challenging it had been to secure these behaviors, and wanted colleagues to pay attention to things like eye contact, turn taking, and signs of active listening amongst her students.

Another colleague, Ms. Laura, asked Maestra Maya how she has been pairing her students to work together. When Maya explained that language was a driving factor in creating the matches, Ms. Laura proposed that we pay attention to examples of student exchanges in their pair and shares during the observation.  In our dual language environment, we’ve discussed maintaining language of instruction and providing scaffolds so that the developing language learners can participate orally.  It seemed to make sense that language be an area of focus for this lab.

Finally, Maestra Maya shared with the group how she’s been trying to improve in the delivery of her lesson.  Mainly, she’s made efforts to more clearly articulate her intention for the lesson with the kids and demonstrate the task with a teacher think aloud. She requested that the group pay attention to components of her lesson and how the kids seem to take on the learning. Today’s learning target was “I can read, cover, and retell the most important part of a text with my partner.”

One aspect of a learning lab that makes it worthwhile for the host is the element of teacher choice. In this type of professional development, the teacher controls most of the learning! When teachers feel empowered in this way, they are more willing to open their classroom up to colleague observations – a practice that can make us feel vulnerable.  While the experience is intimate, the coach takes intentional steps to make it safe. The coach frames the lab with some agreements of confidentiality and professionalism. The purpose of the lab is not to “fix” the host teacher, but rather strengthen our learning community through collaboration. Before going into the classroom, the coach gives a crash course on how to capture objective observations of teacher moves and student behaviors.

Back in the conference room, Maestra Maya’s colleagues chose their most relevant observations to place on a post it note under that area of focus.  Then, the coach guided the teachers to come to the board and read silently the pieces of “evidence” that were collected:  “Maestra Maya, we started this lab with three guiding questions. Given the notes that were collected from the lesson, which area would you like to discuss first?”

Maestra Maya chose the area of language. The coach suggested we organize the post into common themes.  Maestra Maya thought out loud, “wow, I never realized how my students who are Spanish-dominant, especially the girls, aren’t always getting a turn to share their part if they are with a talkative English speaker!”  The coach pivoted to address the group. “How many of us have had an issue like this? What strategies have we tried that we might propose to Maestra Maya?”  The coach was careful to remind the group of their working agreements, and also provided some sentence frames on the board for giving effective feedback in a professional manner.

 

The coach eyed the clock and noticed the teachers were expected back to their rooms in 5 minutes.  “Maestra Maya, we’ve discussed a lot of possibilities for improving partner work with your students. Could you share with the group a few concrete steps you’d like to take in the next few weeks?” Maestra Maya replied, “I’d like to be more consistent in posting my sentence frames for the pair and share talk, as well as identifying the person who’s starting to talk in the pair.  With regard to the interpersonal skills, while my kids have come a long way, I realize some reteaching is necessary. The idea I liked was celebrating the pair of Angie and Miguel who have really taken this on, and maybe inviting them to a fishbowl with the whole class.  Finally, I’m thinking about my modeling, and today’s conversation made me realize that checking for understanding is important.  In the next few weeks,  I’m going to make an effort to include an informal check in each lesson, before sending the kids to their partners. And… well, I’ll stop because you said just three!”

As a final step, the coach invites the participants to share takeaways applicable to their own practice. We briefly reflect on the experience and what we liked about it.. It turns out that what makes learning effective for students – inquiry, constructivist, collaborative, relevant – is equally applicable for us adult learners!