Learning from Student Work remains one of the most powerful practices for understanding student engagement and strengthening instruction. Student work provides more than evidence of completion or performance. It offers insight into how students make meaning, where curriculum implementation succeeds and where instructional improvement may be needed. Student artifacts help educators move beyond assumptions and ground improvement in what students actually produce, as classroom data.
Many educators engaging in collaborative learning spaces spend significant time discussing dilemmas and problem-solving. Those conversations matter, but learning from student work together can provide more proximity and context for school improvement rather than only examining an educator’s dilemma. This year’s Fall Meeting will intentionally reconnect participants to that core practice by strengthening the habit of closely examining student work together as a source of inquiry, reflection and instructional learning.
CLEE is excited to continue the long history of this work through the School Reform Initiative, the Looking at Student Work Collaborative and Harvard: Project Zero. That lineage established student work as serious intellectual and instructional inquiry. It positioned student artifacts as windows into thinking, not just products to evaluate. It also reinforced the importance of collaborative protocols, an inquiry stance and sustained dialogue as conditions for instructional improvement.
We will reconnect with the habit and practice of learning from student work at Fall Meeting this year. Participants will share student work in special workshops for structured collaborative dialogue. Some will bring work they wonder about. Others will bring assignments or units they want to revise because student outcomes did not align with expectations. Others will frame dilemmas rooted in their own practice. Across these entry points, student work remains the central text for learning and improvement.
Join educators and leaders in Massachusetts on October 8-9, 2026 for the CLEE Fall Meeting. Participants will reconnect to Learning from Student Work as a core practice together while examining the relationship among teacher moves, student engagement and curriculum implementation.