Hemet USD: Towards Teacher-Led Cycles of Inquiry
Educators spend more than 40 hours per year analyzing assessment data. Even though there’s no evidence that doing so changes learning outcomes.
What does change learning outcomes, and learning equity, according to decades of research, is student talk. More specifically, teaching practices that facilitate student engagement in meaningful, equitable, academic conversations.
If we are going to put students at the center of their learning in the classroom, we need to put teachers at the center of their own cycles of inquiry.
That was the focus of our conversation with Ashley Yazarlou of Hemet USD. Click to watch the replay below, or read on for the highlights.
It starts with thinking differently about instructional coaching, professional development, and PLCs
Shifting the focus from assessment data to visible evidence of engaged learning requires new thinking. Thinking that puts teachers at the center of their own cycles of inquiry.
TNTP’s research has found that teachers who receive objective feedback and regular coaching show the most consistent improvements in teaching practice. (And there is no evidence to support the efficacy of the many other approaches at work today.)
When instructional coaching, professional learning, and PLCs are inquiry-led and data-informed, teachers identify how they’d like to change their practice, self-reflect, learn collaboratively, and see the results of their efforts.
That’s the approach at work at Hemet USD. Listen to Ashley and Hannah talk about how this happens in Hemet USD by clicking on the flyer below.
How one instructional coach is placing new teachers at the center of their own inquiry cycles
The teachers at Hemet USD set an inquiry focus. Then they use TeachFX to gather their own feedback on classroom equity, student engagement, and essential teaching practices.
It started when a group of the teachers on Ashley Yazarlou’s Center for Teacher Innovation caseload volunteered to try TeachFX as part of their inquiry cycle.
Each teacher set an inquiry focus for themselves, each unique to them, including:
actively engaging students in meaningful conversations
implementing effective strategies to stimulate academic discussion
incorporating wait time and talk moves
understanding teacher/student talk time to create more effective lessons
With their own focus of inquiry set, each teacher used TeachFX to record a lesson, reflect on the insights created for them, then set a specific goal to pursue. For example:
Decrease teacher talk and ask more meaningful questions to engage students in academic discussions
Increase group talk and wait time, while decreasing teacher talk
Increase student talk and allow more think-time after asking questions
Each teacher can see their progress towards these goals each time they TeachFX a lesson.
This is key – the inquiry cycle model here is teacher-centered and data-informed. Each teacher worked with their coach to set their focus of inquiry and then is empowered with TeachFX to gather their own objective feedback, whenever they choose, to see their starting point and to reflect on their progress over time.
And, teachers work with their coach – and with each other in their PLCs – to decide the specific talk moves and other teaching strategies that they’ll try in their classrooms, then TeachFX the lesson to see the difference and decide what to do next.
New, first-year teachers, leading their own cycles of inquiry.
Hannah is a first-year teacher, teaching seventh grade english, and working to clear her credentials.
As her coach, Ashley provides Hannah with tools and resources for strategies for student engagement, classroom management, and participation. (TeachFX is one of those tools.)
The first time Hannah TeachFX’d a lesson, she was surprised at what the insights revealed.
“I saw myself as a teacher who didn’t have a lot of trouble talking in my classroom….but I talked 64% of my class time. I needed to see the data to have that realization that there was something I needed to change.”
That’s when Hannah chose to set her focus on think time. And doing so provided another revelation.
It’s easy to assure that if it seems challenging to get students to raise their hands and participate, that perhaps they’re shy or don’t know the material.
But seeing her insights in TeachFX allowed Hannah to think about that challenge differently. She could see not only how much teacher talk was happening, but how infrequently she was providing think time.
Hannah looked to TeachFX to see both how many times she provided think time and how many questions she asked during her subsequent lessons.
That informed her conversations with her coach, the strategies she knew she needed to work on, and what she’d look for the next time she chose to TeachFX a lesson.
This cycle of inquiry brought a powerful realization – that it might not be that students don’t want to engage in meaningful conversation…….”But sometimes you just need to give them a few extra seconds to think and gather their thoughts and respond to what you’ve said.”
Assessment data doesn’t help teachers change teaching practice
No matter how much time Ashley’s teachers might spend poring over assessment data, they wouldn’t see these elements of teaching and learning at work in their classrooms. And they wouldn’t be able to see their own progress or their students’ because assessment data is a point in time.
TeachFX is different. Teachers often think of it like a pedagogical fitbit. They can choose to gather insights into specific teaching practices, as often as they choose, in a format that’s only for them.
Whether they want to see the amount of teacher talk, student talk, or group discussion that happened during a lesson, the academic vocabulary used most, or insights into specific teaching practices like think time, questioning, and conversational patterns, teachers choose what to focus on.
