What happens when professional learning moves from conference rooms into classrooms, with teachers, coaches, and principals learning together in real-time with actual students?

In this episode, Elham Kazemi from the University of Washington and Jessica Calabrese, a former principal and district leader, share how Learning Labs revolutionize professional development by embedding it directly into classroom practice. Unlike traditional PD that separates learning from teaching, their approach brings teams of educators into classrooms together to collaboratively plan, teach, observe, and reflect—all while working with real students on authentic problems of practice.

Drawing from their partnership that began in a federally-designated "persistently low-performing" school in South Seattle, Elham and Jessica reveal how this model shifts principals from evaluators to lead learners, transforms isolated teaching into collaborative inquiry, and positions students as the most important teachers of all. They discuss how focusing on student thinking rather than test scores creates the conditions for both academic growth and teacher retention.

Key Insights

• Beyond Training to Sensemaking: Why professional development must move from strategy delivery to collaborative meaning-making with real students
• The Classroom as Learning Lab: How making teaching practice public and collaborative transforms both instruction and school culture
• Principal as Lead Learner: Why effective instructional leadership requires flattening hierarchies and learning alongside teachers
• Students as Teachers: How becoming a student of your students' thinking becomes the pathway to responsive, equitable instruction
• Collective Problem-Solving: Why the unit of change must be the team, not individual teachers working in isolation
• Time as a Design Choice: How schools can restructure time to prioritize job-embedded collaboration over after-school workshops
• Test Scores Follow Purpose: Why focusing on student engagement and rigorous thinking naturally leads to improved outcomes

Other Resources:

• Most Teachers Don't Think PD Is Relevant. What Can Principals Do? (EdWeek article)
• Learning Together: Organizing Schools for Teacher and Student Learning (Harvard Education Press)
• TEDD Learning Lab Resources (Tools for getting started with Learning Labs)

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