I've been talking about our Instructional Rounds at NHS a lot recently. Usually, when I take on a project like this I hit the books and learn everything I can so that I can anticipate problems and give focus and direction to our efforts.
This time, however, there isn't very much out there about having a staff doing Rounds on themselves. Everything I've found says things like, "Staff Rounds are the next progression of this practice." I hear that Robert Marzano is currently writing a piece about staff rounds but is yet unpublished. We're on the clock at North and we don't have time to wait. We did them yesterday. Luckily we have a lot of brilliant people on staff.
We trained ourselves last week on being objective and taking good data. That part went really well. People were dressed up, on point, really thinking and listening (and we only had 2 people who were sick).
But when it came time to do the analysis in the debrief, even our very best teachers were hesitant and defensive. It is hard to look objectively at the practice of your friends or make realistic assessments of our beloved school. I have a particular understanding of that dilemma, having taught at North for 13 years before becoming a School Improvement Leader.
By the time we had concluded the Debrief, we were starting to come around and doing actual objective analysis. It really started to catch! We need to do it again then I think we'll really start to get develop the skills we need to have a staff full of Instructional Leaders.
And boy, are we all tired today!
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