Empowering Teachers

During the morning session we were working on having teacher leaders examine different communities they have felt connected to and examine what it was about those communities that caused them to feel connected. One teacher bravely said, “This is going to sound silly, but I really feel connected to my class this year. This year is the first time in my career my class really feels like a community.” She thought some more and then said, “I can’t believe it. The students are using kind words and I-messages. There is laughter. We are having fun. It just feels good.”

When I asked her why she said, “I just seem to have gotten a special group of kids.”

She had a sparkle in her eye—you could see she was really happy about what was happening in her classroom. But it was her last comment that stuck out to me. “I just seem to have gotten a special group of kids,” she said. What strikes me about that comment is that it is so disempowering. What I wanted her to realize is that we get a special group of kids every year. It is what we do with them that makes the community feel the way it does. It is the little things we do, teaching I-messages, doing team builders, planning an engaging curriculum, and showing we care that make the difference.

I then probed her thinking—“You may have indeed received some great children, but my hunch is that special kids come into our rooms every year—what did you do this year that made a difference?”

She thought for a bit and said, “Well, I have a much different attitude this year. I mean, I came into this year deciding that things would be different.” I have also used lots of tools and strategies to help my students come together.”

Exactly—it is our hard work (coupled with our students' work) that makes the difference.
 

“The data says that the students really worked well in partnerships. It was really amazing. They read and discussed the article, they were on task, they were focused, and just worked well in teams.”

He then went on to say, “They must have had a great deal of practice on working together before this lesson.”

It was the last comment again that struck me. He taught the research lesson in a classroom of a colleague—not with his regular students. So by saying this he was basically saying that the students performed well because of something the students had done before—not by what he had done.

I probed further by saying, “You all spent a great deal of time planning that lesson yesterday. What did you do in the lesson that may have contributed to the students being successful in their partnerships?”

As they examined their lesson, they realized a couple of key things. They noticed that at the beginning of the lesson, they told the students right away that they were going to work in pairs. They also partnered students quickly—right at the beginning. They also noticed how clear their directions were. There was little room for confusion and misunderstanding.

My colleague Susie Alldregde said it best when she wrote into our Lesson Study Support Kit the following phrase:
 

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