During the 2011-2012 school year, I sat in a classroom and observed an engaging and empowering seventh grade math lesson. The teacher was masterfully implementing strategies from recent professional development and the students were enthusiastically learning new material. In instructional leader mode, which principals can relate to, I thought about how I could explain what this high-quality teacher was doing at an upcoming staff meeting. Thankfully, at about the same time I stumbled across an article published in the May/June 2009 edition of the Harvard Education Letter titled, Improving Teaching and Learning through Instructional Rounds.

Written by Lee Teitel, the piece described teams of educators, made up of principals, teachers, union leaders, and central office personnel, who visited schools and examined classroom instruction in a “focused, systematic, purposeful, and collective way” (p. 1). I was intrigued by the idea of Instructional Rounds and wondered if my school could implemented the practice in a slightly different way—using already-established teacher teams. Instead of attempting to describe exemplary teaching during staff meetings, I could use Instructional Rounds to take groups of teachers to see it in action. We could all learn from each other. We could learn from the experts right here in our building.