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Boost Teacher Learning With Video Clubs

By Michele Repass

When my husband asks me how my day was, I rarely leave it at "fine." Usually I wind up telling a never-ending story about a struggling reader who finally understood how to put letters together to make words … or gushing about a new strategy I used to teach students to count coins. (He's a good listener, my husband.)

He often asks me about what happens in other teachers' classrooms. For years, I didn't take his question seriously. I'd say, how should I know? After all, I spend most of the day in my room with my students.

But one day last year, I really thought about my husband's question—and realized my colleagues and I were missing out on opportunities to improve our practice together. I would love the chance to visit my colleagues' classrooms, to observe firsthand how they managed stations or how they taught writing. But how, when school schedules...