Charts N Chit Chat: Best Practices 4 Teaching: Dr. Trent Kaufman

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I received a wonderful book from the one of the largest publishers in the United States, Jossey-Bass, to review. The book is called The Transparent Teacher by Dr. Trent Kaufman and Emily Graham. The book is all about taking charge of instruction in your own classroom and having others collect data about how you teach. It encourages the 'lone wolf teacher' to be brave and bring other teachers into the classroom instead of relying on administrators' advice. In this type of scenario, the administrator is no longer making decisions about tenure independently or assigning grade level placement for the next year depending on just those one or two snapshots of the classroom during random visitation or that wonderful 'dog and pony show' that we have all put together before to impress our bosses. Once the data is collected, your team meets to discus the teaching methods and strategies used to teach the lesson that was observed. The book is set up to teach you how to direct your own observations and then choose the professional development that is best for you, rather than depend on the one size fits all approach to professional development that most school systems offer.

I found one of the quotes by one of the authors, Dr. Kaufman, interesting. He said, "When professional learning opportunities exist outside of the teacher's own classroom, the teacher encounters the challenge of transferring learning from a training session to the classroom." I hadn't really thought about that being a challenge...but it is...how often have we all been in training that we never used because we were overwhelmed in the classroom. I think these 2 authors have a great idea. If this is something you would like to learn more about, just enter to win!