Last week, educators and administrators from across the country participated in ‘Shadow A Student’ week as a professional development tool for school leaders.

At Burlington-Edison High School, principal Setterlund learned from his experience shadowing students that the long class periods make student engagement crucial.

Class periods at the school are 55-minutes but will move to 88-minutes next year, said goaskagit.com.

Setterlund also told goaskagit.com about how he experienced first-hand the role technology has in the classroom.

"Nearly 20 years after he graduated high school, Setterlund said he has noticed some differences: technology plays a big role in classes and in students’ everyday lives. Most of the classes now, he said, involve some sort of group work,” the article said.

Principals and educators at all levels found the experience to be insightful. Many described being thankful with the ways the activity helped them improve their respective functions in the school.

"The Shadow A Student Challenge is important because it gets leaders into student mode to see/feel/hear how students really experience school...This empathy opens them to see school in a different way and opens them up to design things into school that are more student-centric, more relevant to kids and their futures,” said Stanford University’s d.school’s K-12 lab network director Susie Wise to Education Dive.

“Some of the leaders who've done it have been surprised with how passive the student's day is, how much sitting there is, how many transitions there are that don't make much sense. You don't see that when you're looking at a master schedule and you're in your leader mode,” she said.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

3/7/2016