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Teachers tell Brooke County Schools board about teacher‑led PDSA cycles to boost math engagement
Summary
Jamie Packer and colleagues described a teacher‑led continuous improvement effort using PDSA cycles, surveys and peer observations to target classroom problems such as student listening and question‑asking; presenters said the work produced measurable changes and was shared at regional conferences.
At a Brooke County Schools board meeting, Jamie Packer and other teachers described a teacher‑led continuous improvement program that uses Plan‑Do‑Study‑Act (PDSA) cycles to address specific classroom problems and improve student mathematical thinking. "We believe that small changes are most likely to make big differences and can be implemented and sustained successfully," Packer said.
The presenters said they begin each year with classroom surveys to identify a single "bug" — a focused problem such as students not listening to classmates or not asking content‑driven questions. In one middle‑school example, teachers gave short exit slips that asked students to rephrase a peer's idea; at the high school level, teams coached students on asking questions that reveal where an error originated rather than asking only "How do I do this?" Packer said one teacher reported a new school record in cross country of 20 minutes, 12 seconds while presenting other classroom and extracurricular results.
The teachers described a cycle of observing peer lessons, testing small changes in multiple classrooms, collecting quick measures (exit slips, Google Docs reflections) and iterating on the practice. "We do what are called PDSA cycles, where we plan something that we're gonna test out in our classrooms. We try it a few times. We come back. We share what our experiences were. We adapt that," Packer said. Presenters said they have shared their work at the East Coast Improvement and Education Summit in Nashville and at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in Atlanta.
Board members asked for clarification on how peer observations are conducted and how results are scaled across buildings; the presenters said fellows spend full days observing in colleagues' classrooms, provide constructive feedback and bring successful change ideas back to their local improvement teams. The presenters emphasized that the approach is teacher‑led and focused on sustainable, measurable shifts in classroom practice.
The board expressed support for the work and thanked the teachers for presenting. No formal action was required; the presentation was followed by routine agenda items and approvals.
