I spent one day in a classroom. I will forever be a better principal because of it!

education
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I was not prepared for the learning I experienced!

As I walked back to my office, having sat at the back of a single classroom for an entire school day, I was stunned. I had disappeared into the classroom environment and had witnessed teaching and learning in its most raw form. Eight teachers had entered the room and taught their lessons. Twenty-one students had sat and learned, attempted to learn, participated, attempted to participate, contributed incessantly, remained silent. Eight teachers entered the room, began their lessons, took attendance, and froze. Their principal was sitting in the back row and they hadn't noticed. I thought I knew what was going on in the classrooms. I thought I knew how teachers taught. I thought our teachers were experts. I was wrong. So wrong. I didn't know!

Teaching is one of the most challenging professions anyone can choose to practice. Of this I am convinced!

Knowing a subject is easy. Managing a room full of learners, ensuring they are all engaged in struggling with the new understandings is not! Not by a long shot! And this, the art of developing understanding in others is what teaching is all about. There is nothing else!

I sat, tabulated, noted, observed, pondered, wondered, marveled, lamented, rejoiced, and shuddered. I was not the only one! Sitting in any faculty lounge or staffroom in any school in any country it is common to overhear the comment, "they are a difficult class". There is always a class or a particular group of students that teachers consider with trepidation. The tough class. The loud class. The unruly class. When you have the privilege of observing that class respond to eight different teachers in a single day you get to unpack that label. It is deconstructed in a most revelatory way.

The tough class in lesson one becomes the model class in lesson two. In lesson three they become the unsettled class. Lesson four, the silent class. Lesson five, the class from hell! And so on. The same students, in the same room, sitting in the same seats, writing in the same books. Tough, to model, to unsettled, to silent, to Hades and beyond.

My observation was not that the class was tough. My observation, my epiphany, was that the way in which the teacher spoke to, guided, expected, encouraged, chastised, and supported the students was the determining factor in "how the class was”. The students, in the hands of one teacher, were unruly and loud. In the hands of another, engaged and collaborative. The same students. Different teachers. Different students!

In this school, I believe I am the first adult to have ever had this experience. I am the only adult to have experienced a day in the life of a student in the history of our school. Shocking!

I was a classroom teacher for sixteen years. Elementary. Middle. High. University. I've been a school leader for eight years. Elementary, middle, and now high school. I thought I knew. I didn't. Now I do. And because I now do, I will be spending one day of every month, camped in the back row of a classroom in my school, watching and learning.

I spent one day in a classroom. I will forever be a better principal because of it.

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