Teachers of MoHS were on the move this past week on Thursday, September 12th and Friday, September 13th armed with clipboards and pens. If you caught them during a walk, they’d tell you they were out on a “STAR Walk”, soaking up inspiration and sharing insight to shine even brighter in their own classrooms.
STAR Walks are ways for teachers to look at each other’s teaching practices. The whole process includes visiting and observing a variety of classrooms, talking about observations with colleagues, reflecting on professional practices, and then applying their reflections to their own classroom. The STAR in Star Walks stands for Skills, Thinking, Application, and Reflection. To further explain the abbreviation of STAR , it also means to See something different, Talk about what you saw, Apply your observations, Reflect on the teaching and learning in your classroom and integrate these reflections into your lessons. Teachers see how different styles of teaching and learning occur around campus by participating in these STAR Learning Walks. The purpose is for educators to learn the language of the STAR protocol and ultimately become better teachers. STAR Learning Walks are not typical walk-throughs in which school administrators might critique the strategies they see and then offer feedback. The group that created STAR learning walks, BERC, interviewed teachers and found that in most cases, teachers perceive typical walk-throughs as “evaluative, intrusive, and intimidating”. STAR walks at Moanalua High School are supposed to “move educators beyond obligatory compliance to voluntary commitment” and help teachers gain ideas from colleagues in other classrooms.
“STAR walks are a way for teachers to look at other teaching practices,” Mrs. Travers, the teacher who manages the library and is part of our school’s professional development team explains. “The purpose of STAR Walks is to collaborate, share strategies, get ideas from other teachers, and see how other teachers are when it comes to good teaching habits. Sharing and collaborating is always a possible thing because if you are in a bubble, you don’t know how things could be done. If you get exposed to other people who are doing awesome things in your classroom, why not take from other teachers and build self-capability? We can help each other be good teachers and constantly grow and improve.”
Although mandatory here, many MoHS teachers seem to enjoy seeing what happens in other classrooms.
“I love seeing how different the students I have in my class act compared to their other classes,” Mrs. Sheets, an art teacher, says, “I realize that I’m not the only teacher they have and it’s fun to see their different perspectives in each class.”
STAR Walks are helpful to every teacher looking to expand their teaching habits and improve themselves. Maybe students can begin to think of ways to learn from each other’s habits and practices in the same way teachers do.
