How to Get Better

May 9, 2016

The Best Foot Forward Toolkit, as well as its potential for helping teachers become better educators, is referenced in the following HGSE Usable Knowledge blog post. 

My friend in New York City teaches at a charter school. He tells me about his teaching coach, who drops in weekly to watch him explain metaphors and similes to seventh graders. Each week he meets with his coach for about an hour, one-on-one or in groups, to discuss strategies and review techniques. A friend in California, also at a charter school, describes a similar process of observation, evaluation, and discussion. A third in Ohio says the same.

Conversations with friends who’ve taught in traditional public schools are often (but not always) starkly different. One friend told me, “In my first semester, no one came to my classroom. It was really a triage situation. In October, my assistant principal told me I was doing a great job. I asked her how she knew, since she had never been in my classroom. She replied, ‘Whenever I walk by, the students are looking at you.’”

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Continue reading at gse.harvard.edu

Learn more about the Best Foot Forward project at cepr.harvard.edu/best-foot-forward