Teachers learn from each other

It had been a busy period in Sue Brown’s third-period English class at Flathead High School.

Pairs of students had presented information about two Robert Frost poems. Their classmates had listened and taken notes — and then had taken more detailed notes when Brown led the International Baccalaureate class in in-depth examinations of the poems’ imagery.

Brown was still pointing out insights when the bell rang. Once it stopped, the class remained still and silent, rather than shuffling papers and leaping to their feet.

Kim Nystuen was impressed. As Brown finished her point and dismissed the class, Nystuen made a note on the paper on which she had been scribbling throughout the period.

Nystuen, a Flathead High Spanish teacher, had spent the class observing Brown in action. So had French teacher Harlan Fredenberg, English teacher Ryan Malmin and Assistant Principal Bryce Wilson.

They were there as part of Flathead’s learning cadres program, a professional development tool that takes teachers out of their classrooms and into their co-workers’ rooms to observe other instructors’ teaching styles.

The program is not intended to mold all of Flathead’s teachers into one ideal educator’s image but to encourage teachers to consider their own strengths and ways they might become even stronger.

“It’s teachers working with teachers to improve their instructional practices — teachers learning from the best of each other,” said Dan Zorn, assistant superintendent of Kalispell Public Schools.

Wilson started the cadres at Flathead during the 2008-09 school year. About 15 teachers participated that year; this year there are about 55, Wilson said.

Next year the program is expected to grow even more. Wilson and Zorn have been collaborating to expand the learning cadres model beyond Flathead High.

The model involves small groups of teachers spending time in other instructors’ rooms. They watch how other teachers engage students, lead discussions and manage their classrooms.

After observing one class period, cadre participants spend the next period discussing what they just saw.

Brown’s senior IB English class provided plenty of fodder for discussion.

Nystuen brought up how the students hadn’t moved a muscle when the bell rang. The other cadre teachers had noticed it, too.

Nystuen said she thought that indicated the respect the students had for Brown.

“They were totally engaged because she wasn’t finished,” she said.

Wilson admired how Brown sat in a desk during students’ presentations. The desks in her room were arranged in a circle, and by sitting in the circle with the students, Brown eliminated some of the intimidation presenters might have felt, Wilson said.

Fredenberg pointed out that Brown is knowledgeable — “a lifelong learner” — without being aloof. She knows how to make topics relevant to students, even with casual references.

As an example, Fredenberg pointed to how Brown had asked students to think about the poet’s use of the word “froth” — a word, Brown had said, that precedes lattes.

That was smart, Fredenberg said. “None of those students were born before Starbucks.”

For nearly an hour, the teachers cited other scenes they had witnessed in Brown’s class and strategies they could employ in their own classrooms. When the bell rang, they headed for another classroom to observe another teacher.

Teachers in the cadre have opportunities to observe co-workers who teach subjects different from their own and to see teachers who teach the same subjects they do, Wilson said.

The program gets teachers outside the bubble of their own classrooms and exposes them to different ways of approaching the profession.

The “Super Teaching Squad” program, as Nystuen calls it, “is hands-down the best and most satisfying and successful offering I have encountered in my eight years of teaching here” she wrote in a Feb. 10 e-mail to administrators and school trustees.

All committed teachers want to learn how to improve or adapt their teaching to help students succeed, Nystuen wrote.

“It is the challenge of every committed educator to find time to do this,” she wrote. “This ... opportunity has provided us the chance to spend a day soaking up what is occurring in other classrooms, thereby giving us insights into our own practices, new ideas to consider and techniques which are working to increase student engagement, involvement and ultimately achievement.”

While teachers benefit from the experience, the real winners are the students those educators teach, Zorn said.

“The goal is ultimately to improve student achievement levels,” he said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.