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Teacher Rounds

A Guide to Collaborative Learning in and From Practice

By: Thomas Del Prete

A comprehensive guide shows how to implement practice-based peer-to-peer professional development for teachers, including examples from a high-performing urban school and across all grade levels and disciplines.

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Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781452268156
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2013
Page Count: 184
Publication date: July 02, 2013

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Description

Teacher Rounds: Powerful peer-to-peer teacher professional development!

Teachers can be leaders of their own ongoing learning—and their best professional development resources may be their own classrooms and colleagues. Applying the Teacher Rounds methodology, teachers learn with and from each other through classroom observations and inquiry and develop a trusted community of practice.

Scholar-teacher Thomas Del Prete outlines every aspect of this practice-based approach to professional learning, including:

Step-by-step guidance and tools for implementing Teacher Rounds
Insights on creating a positive environment for honest feedback
A wealth of examples from a high-performing school and across all grade levels and disciplines

Based on a whole-hearted commitment to the art and science of teaching, this book helps teachers take classroom instruction to new levels of excellence.

“Thoughtful and packed with insights, Teacher Rounds is a valuable addition to the growing literature on important initiatives to improve teaching and learning.”
—Vivian Troen, Katherine C. Boles, authors of The Power of Teacher Teams

“Teacher Rounds is one of the best ways to get teachers out of their classrooms and into each other’s classrooms for their own learning and for school improvement. This book provides the theory and background of rounds as well as concrete examples of how a school can implement them.”
—Lois Easton, Educational Consultant and Author
LBE Learning, Tucson, AZ

“The protocol of Teacher Rounds has the potential to be a powerful tool for professional learning. The focused conversations that follow observation augment the learning for all involved.”
—Sue Elliott, Education Consultant
Suechelt Consulting, Sechelt, BC

Key features

(1) A conceptual and practical guide to Teacher Rounds -- a powerful form of job-embedded professional development with proven potential to support collaborative learning centered on student learning.

(2) Author has developed and refined the Teacher Rounds model over a 25 year period in his work with both pre- and in-service teachers.

(3) Provides practical guidelines for implementing and practicing Teacher Rounds and offers numerous examples drawn from actual school settings.

(4) Provides detailed examples of teacher rounds in action including a full chapter on a high-performing urban school (University Park Campus School) in which all teachers practice Teacher Rounds in order to foster shared knowledge about teaching and learning, and to develop the kind of learning community for themselves that the teachers value for their students as well.

(5) Includes an array of figures to illustrate the Teacher Round protocol and Teacher Round note-taking and inquiry as well as examples of actual (sample) "Rounds Sheets."

Author(s)

Thomas Del Prete

Thomas Del Prete is the inaugural Director of the Adam Institute for Urban Teaching and School Practice at Clark University in Worcester, MA. He is past Director of the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark and a former teacher of history and English at the middle and high school levels. He has worked for twenty-five years in teacher education, school-university partnership, and school reform. His previous books include Improving the Odds: Developing Powerful Teaching Practice and a Culture of Learning in Urban High Schools and Thomas Merton and the Education of the Whole Person. He has participated in hundreds of Teacher Rounds, most with his colleagues in the urban schools of “Main South” in Worcester, MA, in an effort to learn in and from practice.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1. The Practice of Teaching and Teacher Rounds: Aiming for the Sweet Spot

What Do We Teach For and How Do Students Learn Deeply and Well?

How Do Our Ideas About What We Teach for and About Learning Shape Teaching Practice?

How Do Teachers Develop Expertise?

Questions to Consider

2. The Teacher Round Protocol

Preparing for Teacher Rounds

The Teacher Round Protocol

The Teacher Round Protocol in Action: Kate’s 7th Grade Mathematics Teacher Round

3. Teacher Round Learning in High School

Leann’s Teacher Round: Understanding Theme in English Literature

Tara’s Teacher Round: Investigating Free Fall in One Dimension

Phoebe’s Teacher Round: Introduction to Constructive Critique in Art Class

Jeremy S.’s Teacher Round: A Visual Introduction to the Great Depression

Jeremy’s Preround Orientation: Immersion in the Odyssey

4. Sharing and Developing Expertise in Elementary School

Margaret’s Teacher Round: Early Guided Reading (Grade 2)

Teacher Rounds at Jacob Hiatt Elementary School

5. Rounds Day at University Park Campus School

Rounds Day

For Consideration and Reflection

6. Deepening Inquiry, Observation, and Reflection

The Challenge of Inquiry

The Challenge of Round Observation

The Challenge of Postround Reflection

7. The Courage to Learn in and From Practice

Developing Expertise in a Complex Practice

Trust, Openness, and the Courage to Learn

Establishing a Zone of Authentic Teacher Learning

Integrity of Teachers, Integrity of the Profession

An Inherently Hopeful, Reflective, and Democratic Act

Appendix A. Introducing Teacher Rounds: Several Examples

Chandler Elementary Community School

Claremont Academy

North Shore Technical High School Teacher Induction Program

Appendix B. Starting at the Beginning: Preservice Teacher Rounds

Rethinking Teacher Preparation and Practice

Integrating Teacher Rounds into Preservice Programs

Clark University Model

University of South Carolina Model

Teachers College at Columbia University

The “Rounds Project” at the University of Michigan

Towards an Integrated Practice-Based Approach: The Example of Clark University

Appendix C. The Teacher Round Protocol (Sample Short Version)

References

Index

Reviews

“Teacher Rounds is one of the best ways to get teachers out of their classrooms and into each other’s classrooms for their own learning and for school improvement. This book provides the theory and background of rounds as well as concrete examples of how a school can implement them.”

Lois Easton, Educational Consultant and Author
LBE Learning, Tucson, AZ

“In the PLC driven world of education, the author gives a real world model, Teacher Rounds, in which collaborative work is the focus for learning in and from practice. The model is both practical and humane while achieving results.”

Terry Morganti-Fisher, Educational Consultant
Learning Forward and QLD Learning, Austin, TX

“The protocol of Teacher Rounds has the potential to be a powerful tool for professional learning. The focused conversations that follow observation augment the learning for all involved.”

Sue Elliott, Education Consultant
Suechelt Consulting, Sechelt, BC

“Teacher Rounds is a terrific example of job-embedded learning.”

Andrew Szczepaniak, Director of Professional Development
Gilbert Public Schools, AZ

"Thoughtful and packed with insights, Teacher Rounds is a valuable addition to the growing literature on important initiatives to improve teaching and learning."

Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles, authors of The Power of Teacher Teams

"This clearly written and highly accessible book offers a form of professional practice that begins with a deep respect for teachers. I urge school leaders, teacher educators, classroom teachers, and others concerned with improving the educational opportunities of our children to read this book and immediately put the ideas into action."

Kathy Schultz, Dean and Professor
Mills College School of Education, CA

Other Titles in: Staff Development & Professional Learning | Teacher Leadership

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