Some of you may remember the TV show ER about a fictitious teaching hospital in Chicago. I was always particularly captivated by the depiction of medical rounds, when teams of interns, guided by their teacher, gathered around a patient’s bed, discussing and analyzing the most appropriate next treatments.

Television drama aside, collaborative medical rounds are actually routine occurrences in U.S. hospitals everywhere, and offer skilled physicians the opportunity to further develop best professional practices, improving the level of care for sick and injured patients.

In some American schools, educators are drawing on this medical model, not because they want to act more like doctors, but because the medical rounds model is arguably the most powerful social practice for analyzing and understanding one’s own work.

The notion of instructional rounds being implemented in a professional learning community is rather new to the education scene. In fact, many teachers and leaders have never been given opportunities to regularly and systematically consider instruction as a collective practice.

Traditionally, professional development has been offered through occasional in-services, occurring throughout the school year, during which experts share their knowledge of a specific topic of interest to teachers. Rarely are teachers given opportunities to share their learning within the school day, in classrooms, as they observe new instructional practices.

In addition to in-services, however, research indicates that measurable and systematic improvement in teaching and learning occurs most comprehensively when it is delivered through an ongoing, job-embedded, and collaborative approach.

In our effort to improve student thinking, we in Whitefish are including the creation of professional learning communities which employ a variety of techniques, including instructional rounds.

So what do “instructional rounds” look like?

During a series of days each month, a number of teachers and leaders voluntarily make time to immerse themselves in these rounds, participating in professional learning communities in our schools. Their efforts are guided by an instructional coach who leads the conversation and exploration of teaching and learning practices.

The groups meet once a month to reflect on their practice, spend time in one another’s classrooms, and develop strategies that help kids learn more effectively. Teachers and administrators in these groups observe, analyze, and work to improve instructional practice and leadership.

The actual work of these professional learning communities is difficult. Teachers and leaders spend long days learning new methods focused on the development of high-level thinking strategies in students. They design lessons that employ these methods, observe as the instructional coach models the strategies with our students, and then try them in their own classrooms.

Professional learning participants work as a team to take collective responsibility for the continual improvement of teaching and learning in one another’s classrooms. This investment of time and resources on the part of our teachers and administrators directly supports the Montana Common Core Standards for learning.

The challenges inherent in this sort of professional development are demanding. However, when we ask ourselves how we can develop a culture of thoughtful and engaged student learners, we begin the answer by choosing to invest in our own deeper professional learning, demonstrating the culture we envision for our students.

— Kate Orozco is the superintendent of Whitefish schools