“I spend the first days and weeks of the school year getting to know my students so that I can meet their needs as learners.” I have heard this statement each September since the 1970s and I frown. What hubris! Unless the child is new to your school, teachers have a wealth of relevant and reliable information about every student’s needs at their fingertips. There is no need under the sun to waste the first days and weeks “getting know” your students. Why don’t we do it differently and smarter and do educational rounds just as medical doctors do patient rounds? And, do these rounds at the end of the preceding school year so that a teacher has all summer to use solid information to plan for each child’s instruction in the fall.
Current Practice
On the last day of school in the spring, the experts who know the most about the students in a teacher’s next fall assignment go home. Historically, the last days of school are all about ending the current school year. Records are updated and classrooms are closed. School is vacated for the summer recess. The knowledge next year’s teachers need departs for the summer.
Ten weeks later teachers return to school in the last week of August to prepare for a new school year. The major focus of August work is getting classrooms ready for children and teaching. As a rule, more professional time is spent reviewing school rules and regulations and putting up bulletin board displays than is spent in discussion of student learning needs. We are compelled to get ready for the first day of school and most teachers sitting in August PD meetings wish they were in their classrooms doing their physical preparation tasks.
Check this out. A teacher who cannot pronounce the name of a child in their classroom on the first day does not know that child’s learning needs. Mispronunciation of the names of children who were students in the school last spring occurs in almost every classroom. Not knowing how to pronounce a continuing student’s name is a sign that no teacher-to-teacher discussion of learning needs has taken place.
At best, we hold rushed meetings in which counselors share information about various students and their learning challenges. There is scant time for a teacher to delve into those needs and plan instruction. We prioritize classroom readiness not instructional readiness.
The closest current practice comes to rounds is an IEP or 504 Plan meeting that includes all of a child’s teachers plus parents and advocates.
Student Rounds in the Summer
Better practice is to extend contracts for all teachers beyond the last of school and use time at the end of a school year for this year’s teachers to tell next year’s teachers what they know about promoted children. There are many ways to implement and schedule rounds.
Grade level to grade level – Within a schedule, 4K talks to 5K, 5K to first grade, until all grade level conversations are completed. This organization favors more global discussion as teachers discuss each child across all instruction. All teachers of a grade level, including special subjects and special education participate. Grade level to grade level applies to children 4K into middle school or until the next year’s student schedule is dominated with elective or leveled courses.
Subjects within grade levels – This organization focuses on each subject areas of instruction and completes one subject area before starting a next area. Regular, special education, and second language teachers share in discussing each child’s development in one subject at a time. If there are different art, music, PE, and technology teachers at different grade levels, subject area sharing is the pathway for “specials” teachers to share student information teacher-to-teacher.
Secondary Subject departments – The daily class pathway for children in secondary school fans out, especially in high school with multi-grade classes and electives and an array of teachers. Using the next year’s already developed student schedules, children are ordered alphabetically and information about their learning preferences, challenges, and uniqueness is shared.
Face-to-face – School leadership may choose to organize students rounds as a whole school, all teachers at the same time and in the same place activity. Every student-based meeting is face-to-face.
Virtual – We became better than average facilitators of virtual, group meetings in the pandemic. Rounds can be held with teachers in school or at home or other locations using virtual platforms. Virtual rounds accommodate teachers and administrators’ preferences to work from or home.
Why Rounds?
Fresh details matter. In primary grade transitions, the current teacher has fresh knowledge of the child’s mastery of phonemic sounds and letters and ability to pronounce new words and spell words on demand. Because these details are fresh, the current teacher can anecdotally describe what works best to support this child’s learning. Freshness details are diminished over the summer as each former student melds into the greater group of former students. This just simply happens.
Magnify this across all the children in a school and fresh details become even more important. There is no reason for next year’s teachers to await similar experiences to arise when they can learn from and plan using the expert commentary of their colleagues.
Learning styles and preferences matter. Although there is current literature that devalues learning styles profiling, the truth is that some children prefer to watch, listen, or do. Whereas teachers want to develop broader learning modalities for all children, starting a school year with a child’s preferences creates early school year success and nothing succeeds greater than early success.
Progress in annual strategies prepared by a teacher and a child’s parents’ matter. We tout and encourage parents to engage with teachers to create student-centered partnerships. There is no reason to recreate new partnerships every time a teacher assignment changes. Our current practice of starting a new discussion about their child confirms for parents that teachers are independent contractors and do not cooperate or collaborate. This is not the storyline we want to perpetuate. Just share what you know and build upon what you collectively know. Be professionally seamless.
SEL challenges matter. Children face developmental challenges as they transition from pre-school to 4K-5K, grade school to middle school, from pre-adolescence adolescence, and into semi-independent learners in high school. The pandemic and remote education caused challenges for children returning to in-person schooling. These mean that teacher-to-teacher discussions about children are even more important. In-school behaviors and dispositions about school, respect and consideration for teachers and fellow students, and consistent school attendance all took hits from the pandemic. Lack of shared knowledge hampers a child’s next teacher understanding of what she needs to know on day one of a school year.
What To Do? If you believe your current practices optimize your teachers’ knowledge of the children they will teach in fall, continue with your current practices. If you believe your current practices are not preparing all teachers for their next year’s students, develop your version of student rounds. You have a wealth of knowledge about your students, use that knowledge to their advantage in preparing for the 2022-23 school year. Do student rounds.