Classroom Walkthroughs, Teacher Evaluation & Feedback FAQ

Why is it so important for instructional leaders to get into classrooms?

It's not mainly about feedback. Teachers don't want random suggestions and tips. They want to be known -- to have their practice seen regularly so that when a formal observation happens, there's context for it. Visiting three classrooms a day gets you around to every teacher about 18 times a year, which makes everything else more effective and more trustworthy. Watch the video ->

Every year I tell myself I'll get into classrooms more. Why doesn't it happen?

Because our days fill up with the urgent, and walkthroughs keep getting put off till tomorrow. You don't need a goal -- you need a habit. Without a system that makes classroom visits routine rather than aspirational, daily fires and meetings will crowd them out every single time. Watch the video ->

How long should a classroom walkthrough last?

Brief visits of 5-10 minutes are enough to see something worth discussing. You don't need to see a whole lesson. The key is frequency -- get on a two-week rotation so you're seeing every classroom about 15-18 times a year. That's where the real picture emerges. Watch the video ->

What's the main purpose of classroom walkthroughs?

Most people think the purpose is to provide corrective feedback and lead to immediate improvement. I disagree. The main value is decisional information and relationships. When you get into classrooms, you develop better relationships with teachers and you gain firsthand insight into what your school needs. That's far more valuable than any tip you could give. Watch the video ->

I don't have time for walkthroughs because of email and other demands. What do I do?

Trust your inbox. Nothing in your email is more important than being in classrooms. Messages will still be there after a 20-minute classroom visit. The most important thing a principal can do is be visible in classrooms, not responsive to email. Watch the video ->

How do I make sure I'm getting to all teachers, not just the ones I'm comfortable with?

This is a real trap, and I fell into it myself. I had a wonderful kindergarten teacher whose room was right across from the office — always a delight to visit, always giving me positive evidence that the school was doing well. Whenever I carved out time for walkthroughs, I'd start there. And because time is limited and interruptions are inevitable, I often didn't get much further. There were teachers I almost never saw. I was using walkthroughs to reassure myself, not to learn.

The fix is a strict rotation with no decisions. Keep a stack of index cards — one per teacher — and visit whoever is on top. After you visit, the card goes to the bottom. If you didn't make it, it stays on top. That's it. You're not deciding who needs a visit or who deserves one. You're just working through the deck.

This matters for trust as much as it matters for knowledge. Teachers talk to each other. They notice who gets visited and who doesn't. A principal who only ever shows up in certain rooms — even with genuinely good intentions — will be seen as playing favorites. A rotation removes that perception entirely and gives you a complete, honest picture of your school.

Should I use a walkthrough form or checklist?

I think we should abolish walkthrough forms. They turn a professional visit into something that feels like a speeding ticket. Forms encourage observability bias -- focusing on what's easiest to check off rather than what really matters. Ditch the form and focus on having a professional conversation. If you give teachers anything, it should be a handwritten note or a copy of your observation notes, not a scored checklist. Watch the video ->

Should I bring a clipboard or laptop into the classroom?

No. Especially during your first couple of walkthrough cycles, don't write anything down at all. Just go in, smile, pay attention, and leave. Starting in your third cycle, you can begin taking notes to have a basis for conversation -- but never a form with fields to fill out. Watch the video ->

Is it okay to give teachers gold coins, stickers, or other rewards during walkthroughs?

No. Just no. Teachers are adults and professionals. When we infantilize them with cute incentive systems attached to dystopian instructional leadership activities, it goes badly. Respect teachers as the professionals they are instead of gamifying walkthroughs. Watch the video ->

Should I require all teachers to write the learning objective on the board?

I'm skeptical. It often becomes compliance theater -- something that makes administrators look good rather than something that genuinely helps students learn. It doesn't fit every subject equally well. A thematic English unit or a multi-day science lab doesn't have a new objective every period. One-size-fits-all mandates miss the point. Watch the video ->

Can I ding teachers for things I don't see during a brief walkthrough?

Absolutely not. A brief visit captures a snapshot, not the whole picture. A lot of teaching is invisible -- behind-the-scenes thinking, planning, and decision-making that you can't see in five minutes. Use walkthroughs to learn and ask questions, not to penalize teachers for not performing a specific practice on cue. Watch the video ->

Why is most administrator feedback so bad?

It's an information problem. Administrators who rarely visit classrooms don't have enough context to say anything meaningful. They don't know where things are in the unit, what happened yesterday, or what's going on with particular kids. You can't give good feedback based on inadequate information. Watch the video ->

What's wrong with the feedback sandwich (compliment-suggestion-compliment)?

It doesn't come from anywhere -- there's no research behind it. Everyone knows the formula, so the compliments feel fake and the suggestion feels like an obligation. I'm convinced that if there is no authentic conversation, the whole thing is mostly a waste of time. Drop the formula and just talk. Watch the video ->

What are the conditions for feedback to actually work?

Three things have to go right. First, the feedback has to be accurate and based on good evidence. Second, it has to be welcomed by the recipient. Third -- and this is where most feedback falls flat -- it has to be enough to actually enable a change in practice. You can give someone great advice they agree with, but if they lack the underlying capacity to implement it, nothing changes. Watch the video ->

What should feedback look like instead?

A genuine professional conversation. No fixed number of compliments and suggestions. Sometimes there are no suggestions needed. Sometimes you need to talk about the curriculum or how student learning works rather than what the teacher did. Hearing teachers think out loud is one of the most important forms of evidence available to instructional leaders. Watch the video ->

Is face-to-face feedback better than written feedback?

Vastly. People change their practice by talking about their practice, not by reading written suggestions. A focused 5-minute conversation is more likely to change practice than a detailed written report. Written suggestions can actually go wrong in many ways -- and teachers frequently just file them away without engaging. Watch the video ->

What's wrong with "barbed facts" in observation notes?

Statements like "three of six groups are on task" written in a neutral tone but obviously intended as criticism are passive-aggressive. If you have a concern, say it directly. Hiding criticism behind supposedly objective notes erodes trust. Real curiosity beats veiled judgment every time. Watch the video ->

How should I ask questions after a walkthrough without putting teachers on the defensive?

Ask "how" instead of "why." Asking "Why did you group students that way?" triggers defensiveness and gets you a justification. Asking "How did you decide to group students for that activity?" opens a genuine conversation. Better questions produce better conversations. Watch the video ->

What about the "fake feedback game" -- where both sides just go through the motions?

You know the game. The administrator comes up with something to say because they feel they're supposed to. The teacher smiles and nods and says "I'll try that." The administrator never follows up. Nobody's practice changes. We play this game because we think it's our role. I say just have an authentic conversation and let teachers do most of the talking. Watch the video ->

Does micromanaging feedback help teachers improve?

No. Teaching is professional work that requires professional judgment. You can't expect someone to be a professional and then take away all their autonomy. The two extremes are blind neglect (ignoring teachers completely) and micromanagement (criticizing every decision). Both fail. Respectful attention to teaching without dictating every move is the goal. Watch the video ->

Why are teacher evaluations so bad?

Scope is a big problem. You have 30+ people to evaluate across different subjects and grade levels, and you can't possibly have expertise in all of them. Everyone gets marked satisfactory, it's a ton of paperwork, and the process fails at both improving instruction and removing underperformers. We need to rethink the whole approach. Watch the video ->

Can you outsource teacher evaluation to someone who's never been in the classroom?

This is borderline evil. You cannot take everything teaching is, condense it into observation notes, and send it to an outside vendor who's never met the teacher, never seen the students, and never visited the classroom. Formal observations are already a narrow slice of practice. Outsourcing that evaluation to a stranger -- or to ChatGPT -- is a deep misunderstanding of what teaching is. Watch the video ->

What should teachers actually be evaluated on?

Professional judgment. Did they make the right call given the circumstances? That's what we do for doctors -- we don't fire the doctor if the patient dies. We evaluate whether they made the right decision. Teachers' situations vary enormously, and what matters is their judgment in those situations, not outcomes they can't control. Watch the video ->

Why shouldn't we evaluate teachers based on student test scores?

Value-Added Measurement failed for a fundamental reason: teacher performance is not a stable, measurable construct you can derive from student test scores. Students aren't randomly assigned to teachers or schools, so you can't attribute test results to individual teachers. There were even cases of PE teachers being evaluated on their students' language arts scores. Watch the video ->

Should we stop evaluating teachers on things outside their control?

Yes. Student demographics, home environment, chronic absenteeism, and prior learning all affect outcomes. If we hold teachers accountable for things they can't control, we create incentives to avoid working with the neediest students. Evaluate teachers on their own actions and professional judgment given their circumstances. Watch the video ->

How do we resolve the paradox of "leave me alone but judge me fairly"?

Frequent, low-stakes classroom visits. When administrators avoid classrooms to "leave people alone," they end up making evaluation decisions based on one or two high-stakes observations -- which is stressful for everyone and produces poor-quality evidence. The solution is getting into classrooms often but in a low-stakes way. That builds the awareness you need to evaluate fairly without making every visit feel like a gotcha. Watch the video ->

Was the Danielson Framework designed to be an observation tool?

No. Charlotte Danielson originally designed her framework for reflection and professional growth. A good half of it isn't directly observable -- it's teacher thinking, decision-making, relationship-building, and work that happens outside of class. Using it as an observation checklist misrepresents what teaching actually is. The framework is valuable for talking about practice, but if you just use it to score, something goes very wrong. Watch the video ->

Should experienced teachers be evaluated differently than new teachers?

There's no magic to experience. A streamlined process with fewer steps for veterans is fine, but you can't assume past performance guarantees current performance. People burn out, populations change, and approaches that worked before may stop working. The key is being in classrooms regularly so you always have a sense of what's going on -- then formal evaluations become a natural extension of what you already know. Watch the video ->

What's Charlotte Danielson's best book?

It's not the evaluation framework. It's *Talk About Teaching: Leading Professional Conversations*. That book is about how professional conversations help teachers grow -- and it's really at the heart of everything I teach about classroom walkthroughs. Growth comes through conversation, not through forms and ratings. Watch the video ->

Do I need deep teaching experience to be a good instructional leader?

No. Humility and curiosity matter far more than experience. I've seen 30-year veterans who are terrible instructional leaders because they walk in already knowing what needs to change. And I've seen leaders from non-core subject backgrounds who are outstanding because they listen and learn. When I became an elementary principal without elementary experience, teachers taught me -- because I was willing to learn. Watch the video ->

Should I require teachers to turn in lesson plans?

No. If you have 30 teachers teaching five classes five days a week, that's 750 plans a week. You're not reading them, and teachers know it. Stop burdening everyone with paperwork to deal with a few individual problems. If you want to know what's happening in classrooms, visit them. Five minutes in a classroom tells you more than any document. Watch the video ->

How should teachers in dysfunctional schools be evaluated?

Individual performance is heavily influenced by organizational conditions. If you're in an ineffective school environment, everything you do is hampered by that. We need to evaluate teachers on professional judgment -- did they do the right thing given the circumstances? -- not on outcomes that reflect systemic failures leaders are responsible for. Watch the video ->

Is it fair to expect teachers to keep improving throughout their careers?

The learning curve is steepest in the first seven years. After that, individual improvement starts to taper off -- and that's normal. Most improvement opportunities beyond that point belong to the system, not the individual. We should stop expecting continuous personal improvement from people who are already competent and start looking at what the school as a system needs to change. Watch the video ->

How do I write teacher evaluations that are both fair and efficient?

The biggest efficiency gain comes from a counterintuitive realization: you don't need to write every teacher's evaluation from scratch. Strong teachers tend to share common patterns of practice — careful planning, strong classroom management, responsive instruction. The specific evidence differs, but the narrative structures are similar. That means you can develop a library of well-written descriptions that you customize with specific evidence for each teacher.

This isn't cutting corners. It's recognizing that quality evaluation writing, like quality teaching, benefits from reusable structures. The customization comes from the evidence — the specific observations, quotes, and examples that make each evaluation unique to that teacher.

Where you invest your custom writing time is on the teachers who need it most: those who are struggling, new to the profession, or on a formal improvement path. That's where individualized, detailed narrative makes the biggest difference — for the teacher, for students, and for documentation.

How should I allocate my evaluation time across all my teachers?

Unequally, and on purpose. The Pareto principle applies: roughly 20% of your teachers will consume 80% of your evaluation effort. New teachers need detailed feedback and clear developmental guidance. Teachers on improvement plans need extensive documentation and support. These are your high-stakes evaluations, and they deserve the majority of your time.

For the other 80% — your solid, competent, experienced teachers — the evidence you've gathered from regular classroom visits gives you everything you need to write accurate evaluations efficiently. You know their practice well because you've seen it dozens of times. The evaluation should reflect that accumulated knowledge, not be based on one or two staged observations.

Planning for this asymmetry from the start prevents the late-spring panic of trying to write 30 equally detailed evaluations in two weeks.

What is the CEIJ model for writing evaluation narratives?

CEIJ stands for Claim, Evidence, Interpretation, Judgment — and it's a structure for writing evaluation narratives that are clear, defensible, and genuinely useful. You make a claim about the teacher's practice, support it with specific evidence from your observations, interpret what that evidence means in context, and connect it to a judgment based on your shared evaluation framework.

The value is that it eliminates vagueness. "Mrs. Johnson is a proficient teacher" doesn't help anyone. But when you can point to specific evidence, explain what it demonstrates about her practice, and connect it to a framework standard, the evaluation becomes both more meaningful to the teacher and more defensible if challenged.

CEIJ is especially important for high-stakes evaluations — teachers who may be non-renewed or placed on improvement plans. In those cases, every sentence needs to withstand scrutiny.

How do I handle a negative teacher evaluation?

With extensive evidence, clear communication, and no surprises. A negative evaluation should never be the first time a teacher hears about your concerns. If you've been in their classroom regularly and having honest conversations throughout the year, the evaluation is a summary of what you've already discussed — not a blindside.

The principle is simple: every teacher should know exactly where they stand before the final evaluation is written. If they'd be surprised by a negative rating, that's a failure of communication, not a failure of the teacher.

For teachers on a potential dismissal path, documentation is everything. Collect evidence consistently, communicate concerns clearly and in writing, provide specific support and timelines, and follow your district's process to the letter. You can't half-fire someone — ambiguous evaluations that hint at problems without naming them help no one and protect nothing.

Can teacher evaluations actually improve retention?

Yes — if you reframe them as relationship-building opportunities rather than compliance exercises. The final evaluation meeting is one of the only times in the year when a principal sits down with a teacher and discusses their practice in depth. That's a powerful moment, and most schools waste it on reading ratings and collecting signatures.

When you've been in classrooms regularly, you have genuine, specific things to say about what a teacher does well and where they're growing. That recognition — grounded in evidence, not platitudes — is exactly what keeps good teachers in the profession. They want to know that someone sees their work and values it.

For your strongest teachers, the evaluation meeting is also a chance to ask: "What would make next year even better for you? What support would help? What would make you want to stay?" Those questions almost never get asked, and the answers are often within your power to act on.

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What systems and tools help sustain a classroom visit habit long-term?

The simpler the system, the more sustainable it is. Early in the practice, many leaders create elaborate forms with checkboxes and rating scales for every visit. That approach burns out fast because it makes every visit feel like a formal observation.

What works long-term is a lightweight tracking system that answers two questions: Who have I visited? When did I visit them? A notecard rotation, a spreadsheet, or a purpose-built app all work — as long as the system ensures you're visiting every teacher on a regular rotation and not unconsciously gravitating toward classrooms that are easy or nearby. Repertoire, built by The Principal Center, is designed specifically for this: it tracks your visit history and stores reusable observation language so feedback gets sent rather than forgotten.

For capturing what you observe, low-inference notes — written after the visit, not during it — keep the practice conversational rather than clinical. The goal is building a running record of what you're seeing across classrooms, not generating a compliance document for each visit.

I've tried classroom walkthroughs before and stopped. How do I restart?

You're not alone — the most common experience is that leaders commit to walkthroughs, visit each teacher once, and then stop. The problem usually isn't motivation. It's the absence of a system that survives the first week of interruptions.

When you restart, lower your ambitions and raise your consistency. Visit one classroom per day for a week before trying to hit three. Build the habit loop first: a consistent cue (a specific time or trigger in your schedule), a simple routine (walk in, observe for five minutes, walk out), and a reward (the professional conversation afterward, or simply the satisfaction of maintaining your streak).

The other key is not waiting until you feel ready. The conditions will never be perfect. Your inbox will never be empty. There will always be something more urgent. Start tomorrow — and accept that some days you'll only get one visit in. One is infinitely more than zero.

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Why do teachers resent instructional feedback from their principal?

Almost always because they've experienced a bad version of it. Feedback delivered as drive-by suggestions after a three-minute visit. Feedback that reflects the principal's priorities rather than the teacher's goals. Feedback that sounds like a compliment but is obviously leading to a criticism. Feedback from someone who's clearly never read the curriculum guide for the teacher's subject.

When teachers resent feedback, the problem isn't that they don't want to improve — it's that the feedback they've received hasn't been worth receiving. The model they've experienced is one where an administrator watches a fragment of a lesson, forms an opinion, and delivers it as advice. That's not professionally useful, and teachers know it.

The solution isn't to stop giving feedback — it's to make feedback worth having. Evidence-based, connected to the teacher's goals, grounded in a shared framework, and delivered through genuine conversation rather than scripted pronouncements. When feedback actually helps teachers think better about their practice, resentment evaporates.

What are the three types of feedback conversations leaders should know?

Most leaders default to one type of conversation regardless of the situation. But there are at least three distinct modes, and choosing the right one matters.

Directive conversations are for setting expectations. When a teacher needs to hear "here's what I need you to do," a reflective question isn't the right tool. Be clear, be specific, be kind — but be direct. This mode is most appropriate for new teachers or teachers whose fundamentals aren't in place.

Reflective conversations are for surfacing teacher thinking. These are the conversations where you share evidence and ask genuine questions — not because you have an answer in mind, but because you want to understand how the teacher thinks about their practice. This mode is where most professional growth happens.

Reflexive conversations are for gathering input for your own leadership decisions. You're visiting classrooms not to give feedback but to learn — about the curriculum, about student needs, about how an initiative is landing. This mode is the least recognized, but it may be the most important for your development as a leader.

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What software do instructional leaders use to record classroom walkthrough notes?

The most common approach is still a notepad or phone — which means most of the follow-up never happens. You walk out of a classroom with mental notes, get pulled into the next thing, and the feedback never gets sent. The observation happened but left no trace.

Purpose-built apps solve the problem that generic tools don't: the reuse problem. After enough visits, every principal has a mental library of the same dozen observations — "students were not given think time," "transition took four minutes," "no evidence of checking for understanding." Typing those from scratch every time is friction. Repertoire, built by The Principal Center, lets you store that language as reusable snippets. Walk out of a classroom, pull from your library, personalize it, and send a feedback note in under a minute.

Generic tools — Google Docs, email drafts, Apple Notes — technically work but don't reduce friction enough to change behavior. The decisive factor in whether walkthroughs generate feedback isn't motivation; it's the gap between the visit and the follow-through. Tools that close that gap produce different outcomes than tools that don't.

See Tools We Recommend for a full overview.