Teachers Teach Teachers: Our Approach to Professional Learning
At the Goyen Foundation, we believe in elevating the voices and craft of incredible reading teachers—and learning from their experience and expertise. To date, this has looked liked the Goyen Literacy Fellowship, where we pay teachers (fellows) to record their teaching, share it with others teachers on social media, and learn together as a community and cohort. If you’re reading this, you’ve likely read some of our fellows’ blogs on this Substack! You should watch their teaching too.
This year, we’ve experimented with a more targeted approach. In partnership with the Science of Reading-What I Should Have Learned in College Facebook Group, we’ve launched Teachers Teach Teachers, a free professional learning program where we convene groups of teachers over Zoom and show and discuss short instructional clips from our fellows’ classrooms.
Here’s how it works:
We select a literacy topic that teachers have questions about: small group instruction, fluency in early elementary, K-2 writing, you name it!
Our fellows identify short, digestible clips that depict what this topic looks like in their classrooms.
Over Zoom, they share these clips with other educators, contextualize what they’re doing, and answer questions about their routines and practices.
Teachers leave with concrete, specific
That’s it! That’s the program. It’s Show and Tell for teachers.
Here’s why we think this approach is promising:
It’s concrete: instructional videos anchor the learning in actual practice, not abstract theory. This also gives participants a “shared text” around which they can build a good understanding.
It’s practical: teachers walk away with tangible routines and approaches that they can bring to their classes the very next day.
It’s teacher-led: one of my most often-repeated lines is “Teachers listen to teachers. Teachers learn best from teachers.” That’s exactly what’s happening here.
It’s relational: web-cams on, no webinars, minimal jargon, active chat. We try to keep the space conversational and fun.
So far, we’ve been thrilled with the response to these sessions. Teachers are showing up, staying for the full hour, participating thoughtfully, and asking to share the recorded sessions and slide decks with their colleagues.
And we’re already thinking about how we can evolve the program next year…including offering follow-up sessions where participants go off and try that new fluency routine in their own classroom and come back and report and reflect and troubleshoot on their process.
So stay tuned…and sign up for our remaining sessions!
Tuesday, April 8th at 7PM ET: Writing in Upper Elementary
Wednesday, May 7th at 7PM: Fluency in Upper Elementary and Middle School
And watch our previous sessions here: Small Group Instruction, Fluency in Early Elementary, Writing in Early Elementary
