Clark Scholar’s New Book Guides Teachers in Collaborative Learning
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Thomas Del Prete is the inaugural director of the Adam Institute for Urban Teaching and School Practice at Clark University.
How can teachers make room in their busy working lives to develop their practice together? The answer may be waiting right within their classrooms, or in a colleague’s just down the hall.
In “Teacher Rounds: A Guide to Collaborative Learning in and From Practice” (Sage Publications May 2013), Thomas Del Prete, director of the Adam Institute for Urban Teaching and School Practice at Clark University, explains how teachers can lead key facets of their own professional development by applying the Teacher Rounds methodology.
Developed by Del Prete, the Teacher Rounds model can help educators learn with and from each other through classroom observations and inquiry.
"It’s a highly collaborative peer-to-peer approach. Unlike so much professional development, it is also located at the heart of our work in education: the teaching and learning occurring in classrooms. Teacher Rounds help teachers—at all stages of development—build a community of trust and practice centered on kids and what best supports them in learning," says Del Prete.
Del Prete’s book includes: a step-by-step guidance and tools for implementing Teacher Rounds; insights on creating a positive environment for honest feedback; and a wealth of examples from a high-performing school and across all grade levels and disciplines.
Based on a whole-hearted commitment to the art and science of teaching, this book helps teachers take classroom instruction to new levels of excellence.
“ ‘Teacher Rounds’ is one of the best ways to get teachers out of their classrooms and into each other’s classrooms for their own learning and for school improvement. This book provides the theory and background of rounds as well as concrete examples of how a school can implement them,” says Lois Easton, educational consultant and author of LBE Learning.
"This clearly written and highly accessible book offers a form of professional practice that begins with a deep respect for teachers. I urge school leaders, teacher educators, classroom teachers, and others concerned with improving the educational opportunities of our children to read this book and immediately put the ideas into action," says Kathy Schultz, dean and professor, Mills College School of Education.
Del Prete is the inaugural director of the Adam Institute for Urban Teaching and School Practice at Clark University. He is past Director of the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark and a former teacher of history and English at the middle and high school levels. He has worked for 25 years in teacher education, school-university partnership, and school reform. His previous books include “Improving the Odds: Developing Powerful Teaching Practice and a Culture of Learning in Urban High Schools” and “Thomas Merton and the Education of the Whole Person.” He has participated in hundreds of Teacher Rounds, most with his colleagues in the urban schools of the Main South community in Worcester, in an effort to learn in and from practice.
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