A Flashlight and a Compass: A Collection of Tools to Promote Instructional Coherence

Teachers are bombarded with a growing list of "must do's" that add to their responsibilities, including curricular directives, instructional mandates, safety procedures, and accountability policies. The ever-increasing array of daily compliance and reporting tasks often leaves teachers no time to think deeply about their students and their practice. Unfortunately, the impact on students can be catastrophic. The student's educational experience becomes a hodgepodge of differing policies, styles, and requirements, even within the same school.

A Flashlight and a Compass is a professional development toolkit based on award-winning school and district models, and the toolkit contains the following sections: Introduction, Coherence, Learning, Dialogue, Reflection, and Improved Student Learning. This collection of activities, tools, and resources was designed to assist educators in reflecting about their work, meeting with other educators to share ideas and strategies, and thinking carefully about what their students know and need.

The collection originally included these additional resources which are now either online or available for purchase from the publisher:

• The papers "Restoring Meaning to Teaching," "The Changing Role of the Teacher," and "Understanding Teachers' Perspectives on Teaching and Learning"
• The videos "Restoring Meaning to Teaching," "Promoting Teacher Inquiry: A Study Group Approach," and "A Private Universe"
• The books The Courage to Teach and Teachers Who Learn, Kids Who Achieve
• A campus administrator's brief, Using Reflection to Promote Instructional Coherence
• The report Professional Development and Teachers' Construction of Coherent Instructional Practices: A Synthesis of Experiences in Five Sites.