Principals began the second session of the seven series professional development with Dr. Jon Saphier on Tuesday September 18, 2012. The ongoing purpose of the series is to enhance principals capacity to improve classroom teaching and learning.
The desired outcomes are for principals to be able to ‘see more’ when observing teachers, analyze with insight what they have observed and ‘communicate better’ with teachers about the classroom visit.
The five specific objectives for the workshop:
- Be able to identify the relationship of stated, lived and worthy objectives.
- Be able to take detailed literal observational notes.
- Be able to communicate about observed teaching with a balance of claims, evidence and impact.
- Be able to support teachers in making the non-defensive study of teaching a consistent feature in school culture.
Principals were asked to share in small groups a teaching moment in their lives that were memorable. Principals shared many classroom experiences that illustrated how teaching makes a difference in the lives of students that will last a lifetime.
Dr. Saphier presented a five step process used when teaching with clarity.
- Framing the Learning…Clear objectives and plans in advance for the lesson,
- Presenting Information…Well chosen ways to explain the learning, such as charts, analogies, mental imagery, graphic organizers…..etc….
- Creating Mental Engagement…Student and Teacher engagement, asking students to compare and contrast, foreshadowing…etc…
- Getting Inside the Students’ head. (Cognitive Empathy) …Checking for understanding, Unscrambling confusions and Making Students Thinking Visible.
- Consolidating and Anchoring the Learning…Summarizing
Examples of classroom activities that illustrated these instructional strategies were provided. Dr. Saphier modeled examples, provided classroom videos in which principals used their observation skills to analyze the work of the teacher and the impact on students. When observing, a principal needs to not only observe what the teacher is presenting and doing, but how the students are responding and if the students seem to perceive what they are doing as valuable to them. Are the students understanding the lesson and finding the information useful? It is important that teachers let students know the targets of lessons, so students can verbalize it and understand how to apply it and what it means to them and the world around them.
Principals were given homework that included reading two articles provided during the workshop, conducting 3 classroom observations for 15 minutes with the focus on worthy ‘mastery objectives’ check in with their teacher leaders and try a summarizer activity before the next class in October.
