Reflections on the First Week of Classroom Observations This year, classroom visits are framed by a Looking for Learning approach. The premise is simple: rather than focusing on what the teacher is doing, a small set of questions is used to gain a deeper understanding of the students' learning experience. Over the course of the year, the lens is through these four guiding questions: What are you learning today? Why do you think you are learning this, and how does it connect to what you have done before? How is your thinking shifting? How will you know you have been successful in your learning? These questions are deceptively simple, but they open windows into clarity, purpose, metacognition , and self-assessment. For this first phase, however, I deliberately chose to begin with just one: What are you learning today? At the start of a new academic year, it did not feel appropriate to press students yet about how their thinking was shifting or how they would evalua...