Most for profit companies make it a point to gain input from their customers so as to improve their product or service. It just makes sense to listen your customers. They will tell you what works, what doesn't and provide information that can help the company improve the experience.
So, who are the customers in our public schools? We often talk about stakeholders, but that doesn't quite sound like a true customer. I think a customer is someone with first hand knowledge of the product or service they used. If you use this notion, it's easy to define the customers - they're the kids! Who better to let us know how we are doing? Who better to give us the honest answers about our practices than those directly affected?
Recently a school conducted focus group interviews on a variety of topics. The responses were put together into some common themes and school leadership started to look at the data. The school then looked at the themes that came from prompts about instructional practices, and an interesting thing came to light. The things the kids said made classrooms effective was the same as you would find in current educational research.
My bet is those kids never read the research; how could they possibly know what makes an effective classroom - they have no expertise in pedagogy? They know because they're the customers and understand what works for them. We don't know a lot about many of the products we use - but we know if they work. This is the same for kids - they don't know brain research, but can tell us what practices are effective and which aren't.
So here's the aha: if you can find out what the kids think, most likely you can attach it to an area of improvement, and provide professional development or support that is targeted to a defined need. We can take their input and put it into the professional jargon, attach it to research, or define needs based on educational lingo. But first, we have to ask.
The beauty is that if you use this process you will be directly addressing the needs of your kids - the customers.
Toby
