Deputy Principal (Andrew Healey)

The BEST Teachers

Classroom Observations

To assist teachers in this area the Coffee Club is on again. It is held in Rm30 starting Tuesday 9 August at 8.00am. If you are interested in developing yourself further as a teacher then come along. This is a safe environment for everyone to share and explore strategies to improve their teaching. In Japan, developing teaching is driven by teachers and certainly not from ‘above’. The Japanese argue that why would you have Administrators driving change in teaching when they are no longer practitioners? They view the classroom as a laboratory where teachers work with other teachers to further develop the craft of teaching (jugyō kenkyū). In effect, the Japanese have developed a system that entirely invests responsibility for the development of teaching with teachers.

Lemov’s – No Opt Out

In earlier Heard on the Hill’s, I have shared snippets on the No Opt Out strategy as a means to increase student accountability within the classroom. There will be many hurdles to get this strategy running smoothly, and you could join the Coffee Club to have a peer observe you trying to establish this strategy.

One approach to get this going, if you do not wish to start cold, is a “rollout speech” telling your students in advance that you’re going to use this technique and explain why and how they should respond. By rolling out the technique, you may head off any potential hiccups.

• What will happen when you use No Opt Out
• How students should respond
• What will be tricky about it
• What it will be like over time as they get used to it
• Why you are doing this.