... can form critical Friends Groups - each group can be up to a dozen educators - who can meet monthly to examine both student work and the teacher work that prompted it. Such meetings can help a teacher to look more deeply at both his/her assignments and the students' response to them. The teacher learns not to blame the weather, the full moon, or his/her students' hormones when a lesson fails to produce its intended results. Instead, the teacher can take the work to his/her Critical Friends Group and ask his/her colleagues what they see, what they question, and, most important, what they see missing in his/her teaching approach. The feedback protocols could then be shared with the students. There are several examples where Critical Friends Groups have been the driving force for changes in the teaching, learning, culture, and climate of learning communities in a variety of schools.2 In ...

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