Student-Led Instructional Debriefings

AN UNUSUAL ITERATION OF A PROTOCOL FOR CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS THAT AMPLIFIES STUDENT VOICE AT A SCHOOL IN STATEN ISLAND

Our unique public school in Staten Island, N.Y., serving students randomly selected in pre-K through 12th grade, acknowledges the importance of developing student voice in preparing our graduates to be productive citizens of the 21st-century world.

The Michael J. Petrides School ensures our students develop both literacy and content-area skills and master the college- and career-readiness behaviors to succeed beyond high school. Our collaborative staff has devised innovative instructional practices to ensure our students leave us as independent, confident, critical thinkers. (The high school graduation rate among students who’ve spent 9th through 12th at our school has hovered consistently around 95 percent.)

As part of creating a culture of collaboration, we developed something about 20 years ago that we called collegial walkthroughs. A group of teachers (and administrators) would visit several classrooms and then meet together with the host teachers to discuss the instruction observed. The process allowed teachers to adopt each other’s noted best practices and to build camaraderie.