Where Is Student Ownership Already Happening in Your School?
At almost every workshop I facilitate, someone tells me a version of this comment: “This is the only time I really get to talk with my colleagues about teaching.”
They work just steps apart all day. They share students, hallways, and copy machines. But they’re allotted very little time to collaborate, and almost never see each other teach.
That’s a loss for teachers, and it’s a missed opportunity for school leaders. Some of the best professional learning your faculty could have is already happening right in their school.
The Go-Gurt Scissors Are Already There
In last month’s article, I shared a story from one of my partner schools. A coach named something hiding in plain sight in the primary classrooms: the scissors for opening yogurt tubes at snack time. Every child knows where they are and how to use them. No one waits for a teacher to decide who needs the Go-Gurt scissors.
This minor observation led to a crucial shift.
That coach—and her colleagues—now ask teachers, What if our academic scaffolds worked the same way?
Here’s what I’ve come to believe: every school already has its own version of the Go-Gurt scissors.
Somewhere in your building, a teacher has built routines where students choose their own tools, fix their own mistakes, and ask for what they need. But it isn’t widely known or celebrated.
Instructional rounds are how you find gems like this… and amplify them.
What if the best things happening in some classrooms in your school became common practices across the school?
Rounds With a Focus
If you’re new to instructional rounds, my April article walks through the full process.
The short version: small groups of teachers visit colleagues’ classrooms, collect evidence around a shared question, and look for patterns across the school. They never evaluate or even name individual teachers.
What makes or breaks rounds is the focus, called the “problem of practice.” A vague focus (“What does good teaching look like here?”) produces vague takeaways. A sharp focus produces insights a faculty can act on.
If your school is working on UDL, expert learners, or student ownership this year, here is a problem of practice to explore:
To what extent are students making their own choices about what helps them learn?
Try This: Three Look-Fors for Student Ownership
When teachers visit classrooms, give them three things to look and listen for. Ask them to write down only what they see and hear, with no judgments:
Choosing tools. Where do students pick a scaffold, tool, or strategy without being told to? What did they choose?
Getting unstuck. What do students do when they’re stuck or finished? Who or what do they turn to first?
Talking about their learning. What do students say about how they learn? Listen for phrases like “I need ___ to do my best work” or “That didn’t work, so I tried…”
In follow-up conversations, the discussion could explore questions like this:
What patterns did we notice across classrooms?
Where did we see students choosing and using tools and scaffolds independently, and what was the impact?
What would it take for that to happen in more rooms?
You don’t need a full-scale event to start. A leader can begin with three or four volunteer teachers visiting a handful of classrooms for 15 minutes each, followed by a 30-minute debrief.
Why Instructional Rounds Works
When a leader says, “I’d like to see more student choice in our classrooms,” it can sound like one more thing to do.
When teachers see a colleague’s students reaching for the word bank on their own, or color-coding their exit tickets by confidence level, they often decide the same thing is possible in their own class. The idea isn’t coming from the outside. It’s coming from someone they trust, in their own building, with their own students.
That’s the heart of what I love about rounds. They honor the expertise already in your school, and they build the kind of culture where teachers learn from each other because they want to.
Ready to Open the Doors?
At Teach Learn Thrive, I facilitate instructional rounds for schools that want to build a culture of learning among their faculty. That includes preparing teachers before the visits, guiding the debrief, and helping leaders turn what they see into next steps for professional learning. Rounds pair especially well with UDL work, because they let a faculty see its own progress toward student ownership.
Book a conversation about instructional rounds for your school
