By Katie Parkinson

The administration recently brought in the consultant group, Associates for Learning and Leadership, to help train the department chairs and student/administration leadership team to conduct classroom walkthroughs September 19 – 20.

According to language department chair Alice Amick, a classroom walk-through is an observational technique designed to gather information as to how students are preforming.

“We are going to look for trends, develop questions based on those trends and come up with activities to help increase what we see,” Amick said.

For example, during the walkthroughs teachers noticed that students use all different types of equipment including cameras, video recorders, and other technological equipment. During the discussion afterwards it was suggested that a school-wide inventory for equipment be created so teachers and students would know where each piece was at all times.

According to Amick, although right now only department chairs are performing these walkthroughs, the goal is to have other faculty and leadership team members, composed of SCO officers and classroom representatives, doing them as well.

“We want to get our entire community to see what students do on a daily basis in their classrooms,” principal for academic affairs Barbara McCormick said.

According to McCormick, the administration met with the student leadership team to set up protocols and make a list of their concerns.

“[The student leadership team] was worried students would think the administration was watching them and they would get paranoid, but that’s definitely not going to be the case,” sophomore representative Katie Tampke said.

Walkthroughs are just one more way of getting the full picture of STA. They also allow teachers to see across the entire curriculum, not just their own departments, according to Amick.

“I am very rarely in a theology or science class, and it is very helpful for me to see what students are doing in those disciplines,” Amick said. “It is a way for [teachers] to have more information to see what we are doing as a school.”

According to McCormick, who has previously done walkthroughs, watching how students learn and what skills they use helps teachers pick up on methods which will be beneficial to them.

“I think [the walkthroughs] have jump-started my creativity about the types of things students can do and how we might apply this in the foreign language classrooms,” Amick said.

According to Amick, she hopes to use music teacher Michelle McIntire’s technique of visualization to help students speak French better.

“McIntire had her chorus students use this [technique] to come out with a braver sound,” Amick said. “There’s always a little hestiation to speak French, so I think this could help.”

According to McCormick, there will be walkthroughs at least once a week, with two to six classrooms being observed, and will help with decisions the administration needs to make road.

“Sometimes its the little things that improve what you’re doing in your classroom,” Amick said.