Instructional Rounds, Global Lab Schools, and Searching for the Holy Grail of Educational Transformation

Last week my colleague, Dr. Shamara Graham, and I traveled across the ocean to the UK–ostensibly as learners and operationally as leaders–seeking the essence of a practice called Instructional Rounds. As co-leads of 2Revolutions’ emergent US Global Lab Schools Network, a project built in the spirit of Mr. Dewey and anchored in equity, agency, and personalization, we came at the bequest of our partner, Bolton University’s International Center for Educational Enhancement (ICEE), to learn about, and participate in, Instructional Rounds being held at two infant schools in Norfolk, England (an infant school refers to a school for children between the ages of four and seven years). We also spent half a day visiting a lab school, Northgate High School, completing its second year in the network. As a startup global lab network, we have a unique task: to seek and invite schools to showcase and disseminate exceptional teaching and learning while absorbing all elements of the model. The Instructional Round is the common language we will use to do this, uniting a network of 31 schools across the UK, Sweden, Shanghai, India, and Australia (with Saudi Arabia, Africa, and the US coming on board). Needing to see for ourselves what this powerful approach to building culture and capacity was really about, and more importantly, how ICEE leads and supports schools so that we could discern its viability in a US context, we embarked over the ocean, underground in tubes, and by train across a vast universe of green rolling hills to Norfolk.

Would we find a holy grail of educational transformation, an elixir that enabled schools to do right by students and teachers by heightening the awareness of both through a lens of appreciative inquiry? Or would it be yet another paradigm that could “improve” instruction without ever touching a classroom? If we were to find a truly catalytic process, could it translate across cultures and contexts to be used by schools in already beleaguered systems after two insufferable years of stress? 

What Instructional Rounds Are and What They Are Not

Instructional Rounds are foremostly appreciative experiences modeled in the spirit of the thoroughness and objectivity of medical rounds. They represent a tool for engaging teachers through a cycle of observation, discussion, and synthesis. They are not to be confused with learning walks or observations done twice a year in most public schools under the anxiety-producing and often punitive umbrella of “being evaluated.” Instructional Rounds are the opposite in tenor and practice. They are opportunities to appreciate and apprehend life in classrooms, something we rarely allow ourselves to do. Attributed to the work of Richard Elmore, they support a framework of protocols and beliefs in which instruction is the locus of all school change.The Instructional Round is a way into the classroom and provides a means and a method to capture great practice. Instructional Rounds are not evaluative; they do not judge or supervise. They are designed for teachers to discover, capture, and share great teaching. 

Imagine how liberating and challenging it is for instructional leaders and teachers to walk into a classroom without the onus of judgment, comparing, labeling, or fixing. Imagine the openness of  observing a classroom as appreciative inquirers, absorbing, observing, interacting and later distilling and synthesizing through dialogues with each other. 

Visitation and Debriefing: Transformation in Two Acts

Three boys the size of hummingbirds but with the enthusiasm of scientists are busy surrounding a bottle that contains what appears to be butterflies. “What are you guys doing?” I ask. Without missing a beat, one says, “We’re watching the butterflies. Two died last week. They used to be caterpillars.” “Oh really?” I say. “There were 5 of them, and now there’s 3 butterflies,” one says. One boy says to another, “Why is this one flying all the time?'' Another picks up a magnifying glass to examine. “Why isn’t he moving?” asks the boy with the magnifying glass.“Is he sleeping?'' “Maybe he’s watching a movie,” his friend answers.

A carpet full of children occupy the rug area where a teacher is holding court on a letter the children will be writing to the Queen, who is celebrating her 70th Jubilee. They have been reading “The Queen’s Knickers,” and an entire wall is covered with categories of words describing hair, shapes, colors, dresses, fabrics and yes, knickers. The teacher sits beside the smartboard where she begins to write the date and the salutation of the letter. All of this is projected on the screen so that the children can watch while participating in the conversation. “So children, how might you start your letter….?” she asks.

Visitation

Visitation is built around protocols. Thou shalt not judge, compare, nor label. We (school heads and trustees) travel in triads for 20 minutes at a time and do not converse with each other. We observe and participate in three classes, interacting with students, asking questions, and recording. We enter the inner sanctums of classroom life as a painter or landscape photographer might, with enough humility and stillness to receive and render the beauty of a place or a thing. There are no checklists or rubrics, but rather, attentiveness and open-heartedness. Some children want to tell you their names and introduce you to all of their friends too. Visitation, properly done, allows you to table judging, blaming, and fixing through fieldwork that allows for possibility and potential to arise. It's a moment where, as practitioners, we can appreciate and comprehend the nuance and shades of great teaching and deep learning.

Debriefing

Debriefing occurs after the visitations have taken place and can last for 2 hours. There is a forensic quality to this discussion led by an external coach, in this case John Baumber, the Director of ICEE. It involves conducting a conversation, listening alertly, capturing images and meaning, drawing out patterns and naming categories. It is a dialogue of voices and perspectives, each presenting evidence of what they have seen or heard. It is a process that John describes using the Leonard Cohen line, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Debriefing is where observations become illuminated with names, categories, and patterns of teaching and learning. As if by alchemy, these observations get distilled into nuggets of practice called Theories of Action, such as…

When children feel safe and cared about in an environment that is collaborative and allows for structured and free expression, their behavior and interaction with other children and adults is marked by kindness and an openness to communication. 

And…

When there is a climate of mutual respect and authentic relationships where students feel known and valued as learners and as individuals, they are more prepared to take risks, give their best, and engage fully in their learning.

In this realm, less is more. One or two Theories of Action can become the foundation for a school's work and can inform the trajectory for professional development. They contain the basis for action research and for deepening instruction. The job of the school leaders who participate in instructional rounds is to bring their experience back. A leader will engage their teachers to not only think about mutual respect and authentic relationships in their own lives, but also what that can look like in the context of the classroom and learning. These kinds of professional conversations, through the appreciative lens, can reignite a love of teaching and learning. The Instructional Round becomes part of a larger framework for tapping into that generative energy while deepening aspects of instruction and professional development.

So What Did You See?

I saw children exercising their imaginations in ways that were active and real, across subjects, skills, and activities. I saw enthusiasm and attentiveness through storytelling, painting, science, and language arts activities, seamless and organic. I saw students with attentive eyes interacting with classmates in caring and sharing ways. At round tables with scissors and colored pencils in hand exploring shapes. Lined up at smart boards with no adult oversight taking turns dragging nouns into the mouth of a verb-croaking frog. I saw teachers deployed in different parts of the room and I could not distinguish who was the lead. I felt a distinct energy of joy, play, and discovery. 

I saw children operate from the boundaries of freedom. I saw free play and dramatic play. I saw self-directed children as young as 5 move from workstation to workstation on their own. I saw diverse kinds of learning happening simultaneously in one room with the natural order and disorder of children coloring the space. I saw teachers as recorders and observers of children and teachers who used directive strategies to guide intentional learning. I saw language-rich walls with notes from visitors praising student work. I saw make-believe spaces with miniature beds, kitchens, refrigerators, and stoves, and extended families of stuffed animals in blankets. I saw open spaces–green, inviting open spaces sparsely furnished with wooden climbing platforms, soccer goals at either of the fields, and raised flower beds with garden patches on the periphery. I saw children running with the velocity of joy and others sitting cross-legged playing hand games. I saw make-believe and I saw didactic instruction and children left to roam or roar or come together peacefully on the mat to share something they learned. I heard more open-ended curious questions than closed ones. I witnessed children with magnifying glasses studying butterflies while others painted pictures of “The Queen’s Knickers” in cut-outs of the crown.

What We Took Away/What We Brought Back

The Instructional Round is adverse to gotcha culture–the demoralizing and controlling technique that always seeks to find a deficit in need of fixing, labeling or forever “improving.” The experiences at the Norfolk schools were supportive and affirmative, but not in a “nice” (read: bland) way. They provided collaborative, non-threatening, non-supervisory ways of observing and sharing classroom learning and teaching. To that end, Instructional Rounds in the Global Lab Schools can become a mosaic of experiences and practices that offer us narratives of learning instead of school improvement plans. 

Appreciative inquiry is the heart and soul in the Instructional Round. It's especially important in this country where we have systematically undervalued the artistry of teachers in America and are without language that celebrates and translates great practice. The use of Instructional Rounds introduces another world view which is appreciative and affirmative by nature, imbuing students and teachers with attributes rather than deficits. Instructional Rounds are opportunities that allow practice to become visual, documented, and shared. They can democratize our work and catalyze conversation and dialogue across the network.

Instructional Rounds are not holy grails, that much is certain. If done in cursory and unplanned ways without the seeds of buy-in, they will be as ineffectual as any other superimposed improvement plan. But if done with fidelity to the idea of appreciation and observation, they represent a framework and a method for refining how teachers learn and teach in ways that spark curiosity, wonder, and complex thinking. They can be bridges to a totally refreshed and revitalized view of teaching and learning, if a school is adequately prepared and open to dipping its toes in the waters of change and movement. They can be an occasion for celebrating what we aspire to become as learners and teachers, and an opportunity for reimagining what that might be.

Or put another way, although we found no holy grails in Norfolk, we did see examples of what is so beautiful and complex about learning and teaching. And in a moment when grief, horror, and emotional fatigue paint the American school landscape, the lens of appreciation and gratitude feels more fitting and purposeful than anything else we might do for the children and teachers in our schools.