Most educators are skilled at planning instruction and determining what they will do during the course of a lesson. However, to truly engage students in worthwhile, rigorous cognition, a profound shift is necessary: a shift in emphasis from teaching to learning. Put another way, we know that whoever is doing the work is also doing the learning and in most classrooms, teachers are working much too hard.

Authors John V. Antonetti and James R. Garver are the designers of the Look 2 Learning model of classroom walkthroughs. They've visited more than 17,000 classrooms examining a variety of...