Student Learning Institute

14 December 2018Cheryl Murtland, Director of Academics

Teachers as learners is the basis for the Student Learning Institute at Brentwood this school year. Sixteen teachers have embarked on a journey of investigating student learning through classroom observations. When most were finishing their summer holidays, these teachers came together for a one and a half day workshop to begin to develop the skills of effective classroom observation where a focus on student learning is practiced. This is a far cry from the traditional idea of an administrator coming into the classroom to look at what the teacher was doing. For the Student Learning Institute, the goal is to develop a culture within the faculty where teachers go into other teachers’ classes to be eyes and ears to focus on some aspect of student learning. A pre-observation meeting takes place where the teacher is able to identify what aspect of student learning they are curious about and need more information on. Specific, non-judgemental observations are recorded by the team of observers and then a follow-up conversation takes place so the teacher can go through the data and identify patterns that help to answer the question identified at the outset. In September, the institute participants went into five different classrooms for 15-20 minutes and intensely wrote observations based on the question that the teacher had asked. These groups then met with the classroom teacher to look over the observations and, after identifying patterns, decide on how they would make adjustments to what they were doing – or maintain the current approach. To give you an example of some observations, you would see notes such as; S fidgeting with magnets (where S is a student); S maintained eye contact with teacher; S checked Google Classroom site for a diagram. These observations in isolation may not seem to be valuable, but in context and in sufficient number, they provide information to the teacher that they would not usually see or hear. As well as creating collaborative opportunities to discuss student learning, the institute participants are also developing skills in coaching which will allow more teachers to grow in their capacity to evaluate the learning opportunities for students. Since that day in September, they have been continuing to have the conversations and go into each others’ classrooms. The hope is that when we are curious about learning, we will now have a resource to help us investigate. Please speak with the teachers about their experience. The participants are: Robyn Amiel, Sue Cheung, Paul Collis, Kate Coull, Gillian Coy, Scott Doehler, Marco Hernandez, Giselle Lawrence, Dave McCarthy, Wendy Patel, Steven Prokopchuk, Rebecca Reynolds, Neil Robinson, Phil Smith, Edna Widenmaier, and Sarah Wolinsky.

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