In my third year as a full-time professor of education, I can’t exactly say I’m stuck. But I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that I sometimes wonder whether my instructional habits have started defaulting to what’s comfortable rather than what’s most effective. That feeling is the nudge that pushed me to try something this year that I hadn’t done since my days as a K–8 teacher and instructional coach, which was to pull up a chair in the back of a colleague’s classroom and simply observe.
