Focusing on Learning

Principals can help shift the focus from teaching to learning if they insist that certain critical questions be considered and principals are in a key position to pose those questions. How can we continue to reduce student misbehavior and increase time on task? Is the redirect process working? What do we want our students to know and be able to do? Teachers are not teaching if students are not learning.

The focus of high performing schools are not on are you teaching but what are the students learning. How will you know if the students are learning? How will we respond when students are not learning? What criteria will we use to evaluate student progress. How can we more effectively use the time and resources available to help students learn? How can we engage parents in helping their students learn? Have we established systemic collaboration as the norm in our school?

Some say more testing to have a better understanding of the student's learning. But do we want to spend all of our time testing? What tests do we use to gather this data? These are questions that the administration, faculty, school board and parents need to be asking.

--
Dr. Les Potter
Assistant to the Superintendent
The American International School West
Cairo Egypt
[email protected]

Some sections of this article came from: Enhancing a High-Performing School Culture and Climate, Bulach, Lunenburg and Potter