Throughout the year, Chets Creek hosts hundreds of visitors. Educators and business people alike come from near and far to capture a glimpse inside our magical kingdom. These go-getters spend the day with us in hopes of capturing the essence of what we do and replicating best practices in their own schools.
The day consists of a focus walk, lesson observations, and debriefing. We also spend time sharing artifacts and showing blog posts or video clips in the conference room. Visitors walk away enthusiastic to implement some of their new ideas, and we benefit when they bring suggestions to the table for how best to improve our own practice. Another benefit to us comes from the reflective nature of explaining our work to others and clarifying when they ask specific questions. At the end of the day, when we bid goodbye to the visitors, you can commonly find the host team chatting away in the conference room about the day's experience.
If you are a Chets Creek teacher that would like a bird's eye view, drop me a comment, and I'll be sure to invite you to help host a visiting group. If you are an educator that would like to visit our magical kingdom, drop me a comment, and we'd be delighted to have you Be Our Guest.
I highly recommend that any teacher who is interested do at least one visitor tour. Suzanne is a pro and has it down to a science seeing to every detail, but it is an eye opening experience. I always walk away learning something more about CCE by listening to the thoughts of the visitors and I most certainly appreciated my wonderful school more when I hear about the situations other educators face. It's gratifying to know the time is well spent when it can move forward instruction in other schools.
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