Mirror Neurons

September 2018

Admitting that you are the one that needs to change the way you are doing things is challenging. No one likes to face the fact that they might be the problem. As hard as it is, as coaches, we had to face that exact reality.

Being frustrated that we weren’t seeing implementation of Professional Learning was more of an issue with ourselves than our teachers. When we really analyzed the situation, we realized that they were implementing exactly what we were doing in professional learning sessions. In a previous post, I stated that “Teachers mirror what they learn in PL. If we want to make changes to meet the needs of student learning in the classroom, we needed to change the way teachers were learning.”

Teachers were mirroring us. The way they were learning in PL is how they were implementing and teaching in their classrooms.

Because, people…Mirror Neurons are real.

Now we shift focus.

We still think about and survey teachers to discover what teachers need PL on. But the big question that we ask now is - what do we want teachers to mirror?

PL structures are created with this idea in mind. Learning structures are way more important.

Because - If we want to make changes to meet the needs of student learning in the classroom, we needed to change the way teachers were learning.

If teachers mirror how they learn in PL, then we need to look in the mirror and change what we are doing. And this is how we impact student learning.

- Ginny