School-wide Lesson Study: John Muir Elementary School
John Muir Elementary School, in San Francisco Unified School District, began its school-wide lesson study journey in 2015. Muir School shows up as a “positive outlier” in district scans–a site that has been extraordinarily successful in supporting the achievement of underserved groups.
In School-wide Lesson Study, educators ask “What qualities do we want our students to have when they graduate?” Academic excellence, good character, and commitment to cultural and linguistic diversity have been central to the Muir vision since 2015. Each year teachers deepen their strategies for bringing these qualities to life in their school, using a shared, updateable theory of action that includes elements such as making students’ thinking visible and helping students engage deeply with each others’ thinking. The newsletters below highlight some of the knowledge that Lesson Study Teams developed, tested and shared. Teachers’ knowledge about how to build students’ academic agency and commitment to one another is what brings a mission statement to life.
Click on image to expand view.
Click on image to expand view.
At Muir, lesson study started with one team of teachers and gradually spread throughout the school, as shown below.
| Year | Number of Research Lessons (RL) and Background | Number of Staff Involved |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 – 2016 |
|
5 |
| 2016 – 2017 |
|
15 |
| 2017 – 2018 |
|
15 |
| 2018 – 2019 |
|
21 |
