ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the interactions that occurred between teachers and students as they enacted the reform inside the classrooms of the SDCS district. This intersection encounter, which lies at the heart of the overall system (see Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1), is arguably the reform's most fundamental and important site. Meeting the overarching goal of improving student learning rests on the quality and consistency of classroom interactions. The intersection encounter between teachers and students, however, is also the one that is positioned farthest from district leadership. Leaders' reform policy messages reach teachers and their students indirectly; the messages are passed down through all the other layers of the system. In this chapter, we focus on teachers' and students' responses to the reform directives. In Chapters 6 and 7, we take up the responses of the principals and instructional leaders in the layers above them. In Chapter 10, we look across all of these layers of interactions and begin to trace how, when, and why the reform messages may have changed, been diluted, or become distorted as they traveled through the system.
