Teacher Rounds: A Guide to Collaborative Learning in and From Practice

Teacher Rounds: Powerful peer-to-peer teacher professional development!

Teachers can be leaders of their own ongoing learning--and their best professional development resources may be their own classrooms and colleagues. Applying the Teacher Rounds methodology, teachers learn with and from each other through classroom observations and inquiry and develop a trusted community of practice.

Scholar-teacher Thomas Del Prete outlines every aspect of this practice-based approach to professional learning, including:

• Step-by-step guidance and tools for implementing Teacher Rounds
• Insights on creating a positive environment for honest feedback
• A wealth of examples from a high-performing school and across all grade levels and disciplines

Based on a whole-hearted commitment to the art and science of teaching, this book helps teachers take classroom instruction to new levels of excellence.

"Thoughtful and packed with insights, Teacher Rounds is a valuable addition to the growing literature on important initiatives to improve teaching and learning."
--Vivian Troen, Katherine C. Boles, authors of The Power of Teacher Teams

"Teacher Rounds is one of the best ways to get teachers out of their classrooms and into each other's classrooms for their own learning and for school improvement. This book provides the theory and background of rounds as well as concrete examples of how a school can implement them."
--Lois Easton, Educational Consultant and Author
LBE Learning, Tucson, AZ

"The protocol of Teacher Rounds has the potential to be a powerful tool for professional learning. The focused conversations that follow observation augment the learning for all involved."
--Sue Elliott, Education Consultant
Suechelt Consulting, Sechelt, BC

Author: Thomas A. del Prete
Publisher: Corwin Publishers
Published: 05/23/2013
Pages: 184
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.90h x 6.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781452268156

About the Author
Tom Del Prete has been Director of the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University since 1998 and Chair of the Education Department since 1996. A graduate of Brown University, and a former secondary teacher in History and English, he earned his doctorate from Harvard University, concentrating on teaching, learning, and curriculum.

Professor Del Prete founded and oversees continuing development of the Hiatt Center Partner School Collaborative, which includes the Goddard and Hiatt elementary schools and the Claremont Academy, South High and University Park Campus secondary schools. The Collaborative is dedicated to the joint development of learning environments and practices that serve the students in "Main South," a diverse and low income area of Worcester, MA. Likewise, the partnership is committed to developing exemplary models of urban teacher preparation, professional development and school reform, and to learning from the effort. Professor Del Prete developed the "rounds" model, a classroom-based collaborative learning model for teachers, as well as the curriculum team model that bridges and integrates arts and sciences and practitioner perspectives -- two signature Hiatt Center programs. He co-chairs the Hiatt Center History Curriculum Team.

In pursuing the partnership work, Professor Del Prete has been awarded grants from the federal Department of Education, the MA State Department of Education, the MA Board of Higher Education, and national and local private foundations. Most recently, he received a grant from the Greater Worcester Community Foundation to support development of the Main South Secondary School Collaborative. He is an original and continuing member of the steering committee for University Park Campus School. He received the Thomas Jefferson award from the Worcester Public Schools for his service to University Park Campus School in 1999, and the John W. Lund Community Achievement award at Clark in 2000.

Professor Del Prete′s interests include university-school partnership, models of urban teacher education, secondary school reform, history curriculum and learning, and spirituality and education.