As the national school reform narrative zeros in on rewarding the best teachers and sorting out the bad apples, a quieter effort to shore up the teaching practice has taken root in some Bay Area schools.
It's called "lesson study," a Japanese-inspired teaching model in which groups of teachers plan, observe and refine -- and sometimes, reteach -- a lesson, based on how the children respond to it.
Rather than observing the teacher, research team members (consisting mostly of classroom teachers) train their focus on the students, recording moments of confusion, clarity and enthusiasm before reconvening to dissect the