Have you heard about the #ObserveMe idea? It started about a month ago, posted on a blog from Robert Kaplinsky. I saw it on twitter and retweeted it to the other Instructional Coaches on my campus. I’m at a high school and we have 4 instructional coaches: Math, Science, ELA, and Social Studies. Other Instructional Coaches around the district started tweeting and emailing about it as well and it has grown!
I could not be more excited about teachers being vulnerable, opening their doors, taking risks, and working on goals to improve their teaching!
Here are a few examples:
So far, a lot of teachers are putting their goals as the instructional focus for our campus, which I think is great! We have a strong campus instructional focus this year on:
- Small Group Purposeful Talk
- Writing Critically
- Framing the Lesson (we took the phrasing/terminology from the Fundamental Five).
For me, in Social Studies, this means there is more time for the students to interact with their learning (to analyze, think, process, question, create, and more) and less time for the teacher to be the giver of information. Many of the teachers on my campus are already working well with more student focused lessons. Physically writing their goals and displaying them on the #ObserveMe sign outside their classroom door is enabling more opportunities to grow and practice. It is also giving them more feedback from others on those goals and growth.
I am so excited that teachers are embracing #ObserveMe. I love that they are making goals on what they are working on improving! If you follow any Steve Barkley, you have probably heard him say that Teaching is a team sport and Teaching needs to be a public act. I think #ObserveMe helps connect both of those!
The Empowered Learner 