For some businesses and organizations, professional development can be more of a headache than a helpful tool.

It’s often hard to carve out enough time for all employees to participate and even harder to ensure the time is well spent.

But Southside High School has found a way to sidestep these problems with a new learning walk program.

Brittany Lane, an English teacher and instructional coach at Southside High, said this week marks the third time the school has had learning walks and the first time she has taken the lead with the program.

During a learning walk, teachers are divided into small groups and for 15 minutes of their planning period, they visit other classrooms to see how other teachers work and gain ideas for their own classrooms. In between visiting classrooms, the small groups briefly discuss what they saw while observing, and then each person completes a feedback form reflecting on the experience.

“It’s an opportunity for teachers to go into other teachers’ classrooms and steal ideas,” Lane said. “We tend to get so bogged down in all the stuff we have to get done.”

She said the school is trying to overcome the tendency for teachers to be put on guard or become uncomfortable when a coworker observes their classroom.

“It’s just go walk in, walk out…and then you go into the next room,” Lane said. “It is very strange to have people in your room. … Even if it’s not going great, that’s the point though. We need to see that.”

The learning walks are a way to build community among teachers, and it allows them to see how everyone else handles a particular situation, whether good or bad, she said.

“I wanted them to really just go out of their comfort zones,” Lane said.

Meredith Southworth, an English teacher at Southside, went on a learning walk with three other teachers on Tuesday morning.

She said she appreciated how little time out of her planning period it took, especially considering how much teachers have to do during that allotted time.

“I think it’s a really good experience for teachers to get out of their classrooms,” Southworth said. “It’s very easy to find yourself in a rut.”

She said she often sees feedback from other teachers via social media outlets, but it was more helpful to see different methods tried out in person.

As her group discussed their visit to construction teacher David Dixon’s room, the group members gave positive feedback on what they saw, including how he pushed the students to find an answer for themselves and how he related mathematics to real life.

“I like how he constantly prodded the kids,” Southworth said. “It’s better for them to just discover the answers themselves.”

She said the learning walks will take some getting used to, but she thinks it’s valuable for the teachers to participate.

“We’re trying to really build a culture here at Southside,” Lane said. “There’s so many free resources, and we’re the closest resources we have.”