![]() In the first year of the Fellowship, Fellows read an article about critical friends, and discuss together what it means to serve as a critical friend as well as learn from critical friends. One goal that we work on from the start of the Fellowship is supporting Fellows to understand what it means to be a critical friend, by reading and discussing articles and teachers’ stories about what a critical friend is and does, engaging in multiple opportunities to practice being critical friends, and reflecting on those experiences. In this blog, we want to share with you our goals and strategies for how we envision Fellows developing the skills and disposition to be a critical friend. Fellows build their capacity to engage as a critical friend in various ways across the five years of the Fellowship. Acting as a good critical friend involves identifying and focusing on one another’s needs, asking probing questions that provoke thought, raising new perspectives, and resisting the temptation to offer easy solutions when challenges arise. We believe that engaging as critical friends (one of the seven inquiry practices introduced in our first blog, “ Introduction to Inquiry Practices and Habits of Mind”) requires teachers to recognize their responsibility and investment in others’ inquiry, and we view that investment as an opportunity both to help colleagues and for teachers to come to new understanding about their practice. This work is grounded in critical friendships that challenge them to closely examine their teaching practice, to reject easy answers rooted in unchecked assumptions, and to expand perspectives and understandings of what it means to learn. At KSTF, Teaching Fellows engage in practitioner inquiry work throughout all five years of the Fellowship. ![]()
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January 2023
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