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Transcript: John Calton, PhD

Listen now as John Calton describes some of the ways he helps teachers to work collaboratively in his elementary school (time: 1:30).  

One particular way is that when we look at our data, if we all look at the data together—I look at it first but we share data—if I notice that a teacher’s assessment scores maybe are lower in a particular area, maybe it’s in reading or the language mechanics or math computations or vocabulary, whatever it is, if it’s relatively low then the first thing I’ll do is facilitate that teacher being able to spend more time planning with a teacher who’s done well. I’ll call them “model teachers” or “exceptional” in that area. We don’t have to use that term with them. They know that their kids did better than my kids. And they have that pride of wanting their own students to do better. One thing I’ll do, and the assistant principal will do, we’ll go into a classroom and teach a group of second or third graders or kindergarten, I’ve taught kindergarten for half a day so that that teacher could go and visit another kindergarten teacher’s classroom. And those teachers actually went to another school. But we have excellent teachers within our own school. So sometimes the assistant principal and I will go and teach a classroom for an hour, two hours, half a day, whatever, so that a teacher can visit another classroom. We also have common planning times. That’s one thing I put in our schedule that our teachers plan together. Pretty much they, four out of the five days for the most part, sometimes depending on schedule it may only be three times, but they have to meet together at least once a week. But they have lots of opportunities throughout the week that they can get together and plan. We have focus days about six times a year next year, those are half days. Again, there’s six times a year which teachers can plan together with teachers from our own school, they can also get together with other teachers within the school district.

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