Impactful Administrator Classroom Walk-Throughs: How I Got Started

After 15 years of experience in public high schools, I had my first opportunity to serve in an elementary setting as an assistant principal. I had an uphill battle convincing the teachers that I had credibility, especially coming with no experience in their world. I was in classrooms often in the first semester, trying to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could about K-5 curriculum and instruction. 

Using the Right Tools

I attended a fantastic workshop on summative and formative teacher evaluation that gave me many great ideas about how to conduct short classroom visits. These visits were followed-up with a quick note that would open communication with teachers as well as build trust. One of the organizational tools that I used faithfully was a simple spreadsheet to keep track of the classrooms I visited each week. I recorded what I saw and what question or comment I left with the teacher. The other tool was a note template (four to a page) that I copied on bright paper that I either left on the teachers’ desk or in their mailbox right after the walkthrough. 

There were two sentence stems on this note that I completed after each visit:

• When I was in your classroom today, I saw your students…
• I wonder…

This gave me enough latitude to customize for a wide variety of activities and teacher practice. My sole purpose was to acknowledge how the students were engaged and ask a question designed to prompt the teacher to begin a conversation with me about their lesson. In the beginning, it was hard to think of questions or comments, but It got easier as I visited more classrooms. 

Asking the Right Question

Some of the most common questions that elicited the greatest amount of follow up had to do with asking the teacher to invite me to their classroom when students would be practicing a skill they learned, what the students would be doing to demonstrate their learning, or sharing student work with me related to the lesson. The comments definitely were nuanced to open a dialogue with the teacher about their instructional craft. For those who were being formally evaluated, having a follow-up conversation was sort of built-in. For those who were off cycle, it allowed me to establish a learning-focused relationship where many of our interactions were about our collective interest in their classroom practice.  

What I found was that I used less of a casual register when talking with the teachers throughout the school day and more of an academic one. I continued to have interactions with teachers about their concerns around student behavior, bus duty, rainy day schedule, and classroom supplies (side note: of the biggest differences between the 9-12 and K-5 settings being the amount of laminate that needed to be ordered for the elementary teachers, especially around open house season ;).

 Final Reflections

What was most rewarding about the experiences at this school were the conversations with teachers who tended to have a developing practice and were given the opportunity to reflect on what they were doing well and what they might adjust to better meet the needs of their students. One teacher, in particular, stands out in my mind as someone with whom I had the strongest learning-focused relationship. Mr. E. had been at the school for a very long time and was well-liked by staff, parents, and students. He was quite the practical joker and being new, I was on the receiving end of some of his greatest hits. We developed a friendship around our common sense of humor. The first time I visited him, his students were working independently on a math worksheet. I left a note with a question about what he found to be the most effective way to support the wide variety of math ability within his classroom.

Mr. E. anxiously showed up at my office at the beginning of lunch to explain why his students were completing a worksheet. He opened the door for me to ask self-reflective questions about his lesson not for the purpose of justifying anything to me, but to begin to think about what he might do as a follow-up to this activity. The next time I saw him, I was able to ask about how the students were doing the particular math concept instead of talking about who would be the next victim of his whoopee cushion. It did not mean that we never have casual conversations again. It meant that I now had the ability to lead with a dialogue about his practice and the progress of his students.