Making the Rounds at Pleasant View West

As 2012 gets under way, the Pleasant View Elementary School District is moving forward in a unique way — with Instructional Rounds, a program developed at Harvard University, focusing on observing students in order to address systemic-education and student-learning issues that might be holding students back.

The rounds, similar to medical rounds in teaching hospitals, allows an educational team to quietly move through classrooms, observing students from the front of the classroom.

On Jan.10, Pleasant View Superintendent Mark Odsather hosted a rounds visitation at Pleasant View West. Odsather and his leadership team, along with the superintendent of Corcoran Unified and members of the San Joaquin County Office of Education and policy consultants from California Department of Education, formed three teams of four to observe the students — paying close attention to the type of questions teachers asked and the responses drawn from the students. The group then assembled to debrief — individually organizing findings before separating into groups before sharing the results with the entire group, and coming up with what the program calls “predictions.”

Odsather said he feels Pleasant View has made significant growth but in order to sustain the growth, the students’ oral and written language development needs to be addressed.

“We have had numerous conversations with our staff about the importance of students talking in class, and the importance of developing oral and written language,” Odsather said. “At the same time, our observations have shown that our students tend to give very low-level blooms responses.”

With that in mind, the teams separated the students’ responses into several areas — Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation — each segment consisting of specific data. Knowledge answers pulled from the students’ recall and recognition, Comprehension answers grasped the understanding or meaning of informational materials and Application applied previously-learned information or knowledge to new and unfamiliar situations, and so on.

“I think it’s having a huge impact on student learning,” Odsather said. “This allows us to be very reflective on the decisions teachers are making on a daily basis and what the students are actually doing.”

Odsather said the program began after he and several other superintendents and educators attended the Instructional Rounds Institute at Harvard University.

“Connie Tate had the vision for us and it has played out really well,” Odsather said. “That’s when we went to Harvard. From that we launched the California Rural Network and have been doing extensive work to improve the quality of instruction within our schools.”

The California Rural Network consists of six superintendents, each one with it’s leadership team that visits schools within its district and twice a year visits a partnering district.

Tate, director of Reading Technical Assistance Center, SJCOE in Stockton, said she is working with four Rounds networks in the Central Valley. Other Rounds networks also exist in various cities in California, including Bakersfield. She suggested the concept after learning about the Rounds from the Kennewick School District in Washington.

“Their leadership team had attended the Rounds Leadership Institute and realized immediately that one of the barriers in their district was the differing opinions regarding rigorous instruction,” she said. “We began using parts of the process in our leadership training to develop common understandings, but we were still leaving out the most important people in the process — the teachers and the students.”

However, as the local team started implementing what they learned, they caught the attention of the three Harvard professors who wrote the book “Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network to Improving Teaching and Learning.”

“They have chosen to work directly with us as we move forward in this process,” Odsather said. “They will be coming to California in March to work with just the California Rural Network.”

In addition, Odsather and the other superintendents in the CA Rural Network, are working with Harvard to bring their Institute — a one-week program to teach California teachers — in May to California.

“The thing with Harvard is — you don’t choose them,” Odsather said. “They choose you. We are very fortunate that they are looking at us and helping us.”

Tate said she believes in the program — collecting data and redirecting the focus from individuals to the actions resulting in improved students’ understanding and excitement about a subject.

“I believe Rounds is the opportunity for educators to show ourselves and others that we are capable of as professionals,” Tate said. “My hope is that Rounds will stimulate excitement and energy in classrooms. It’s not about fixing individual teachers. Rounds are about understanding what is happening in classrooms, how we as a system produce those effects and how we can collectively move closer to producing the learning we want to see for all students.”

Contact Esther Avila at 784-5000, Ext. 1045 or eavila@portervillerecorder.com. Follow her on Twitter @avila_recorder.