Fixing Education Initiatives In Crisis: 24 Go-To Strategies

[00:01] SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm deeply honored to be joined today by my guest, Kim Marshall. Kim is the author of The Marshall Memo, which is read by thousands of school administrators around the country and around the world every week and recently celebrated his 600th issue of The Memo, which summarizes key research and articles from the education world and broader news of relevance to school leaders. And Kim was an administrator with Boston Public Schools as well as a teacher there for 32 years and is currently consulting with new leaders in New York City.

[00:50] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:53] SPEAKER_02:

Mr. Marshall, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:55] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you.

[00:56] SPEAKER_02:

So let's talk about your book, Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation, because I think that and the Marshall Memo are probably the way that the largest number of people interact with your work. Why did you choose to write Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation, which is now in its second edition?

[01:12] SPEAKER_00:

When I was a principal, I stumbled upon a better way of supervising teachers, short, frequent, unannounced visits with face-to-face feedback. It seemed to work well in our school. Our pretty aggressive union folks liked it, and all teachers seemed to get into it and seemed to produce good results. I did a lot of thinking in the nine years that I did that as a principal and began to write about it. from your audience and principles were frustrated with the traditional method uh... when i got finished being a principal and in two thousand two had more time to write more time to think and as i work with principles mostly in new york city if they were eager also to to shift gears on this

[01:54]

Then the articles that I wrote about it became a book that went into a second edition. It seems like there's such frustration and I would say also cynicism about the old method, the pre-observation conference, the full lesson, the detailed write-up, the post-observation conference, or doing nothing at all, just letting teachers be alone. There seemed to be a lot of interest in the subject.

[02:16] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. If we could make broad categories of walkthroughs or informal observations versus formal observations with the write-up and the pre-conference and the advanced warning and the whole kind of dog and pony show, what do you recommend as kind of the center point that we not do in that process that you came to prefer? What are some of the things that you removed from your process that made it work so much better?

[02:38] SPEAKER_00:

Well, certainly the announced Dog and Pony show, which is very nervous-making for teachers, the long write-up, which is time-consuming and almost entirely unproductive for principals, the lag time of getting the feedback. My son had to wait for almost a month for his feedback from one of his supervisors a couple of years ago. And the whole sort of formality, and I sort of think now in terms of a fork in the road. The left fork is documentation, evaluation, and compliance, and the right fork is improving teaching and learning. And I think most people, most teachers and administrators are eager to take the right fork, but so much of the school department's protocols pulls them off to the left, so it's more a formalistic and pretty empty exercise.

[03:22] SPEAKER_02:

What was your situation as a principal? And you're the principal of, I have to highlight this, this is the oldest school in the United States, is that right? The Mather School?

[03:32] SPEAKER_00:

Oldest continuously operating public school in America, yeah, 1639. The Boston Latin School was 1635, but they closed down for a year during the American Revolution. So our claim to fame was continuously operating.

[03:46] SPEAKER_02:

But you're within Boston Public Schools, right?

[03:48] SPEAKER_00:

Correct.

[03:49] SPEAKER_02:

So I assume there were some structures in place, some requirements around formal evaluations. What latitude did you have to modify that process and say, hey, this dog and pony show is not working. Let's make it a little more unannounced, a little more conversational. What constraints were you operating within?

[04:05] SPEAKER_00:

well there were there were definitely constraints uh... but having one over the trust of teachers that this was a fair process in fact much fairer much safer than the the other process uh... we got formal union permission we went through a process every year of people signing off i know this is not always possible i mean for example new york city has this but uh... chicago does not have it and so

[04:27]

In districts where I've worked, in some cases, people can get permission. In other cases, they're stuck with the other process. In some cases, they have no choice but to either do it or become creatively insubordinate, which of course we know is one of the great correlates of good principles.

[04:41] SPEAKER_02:

I love it. Creative insubordination. But in the service of better student learning. Right. Let's talk about that modified process so that rather than go in pre-announced, having had a pre-conference and having to do a long write-up afterward based on a lot of notes, a lot of narrative, what do you do when you visit a classroom unannounced? What does the process look like?

[05:05] SPEAKER_00:

This is a slight modification from what I did as a principal, but I think rather than go over that history, I'll just say what my recommendation is now. I am for doing this frequently, at least 10 times per teacher per year, so roughly once a month. I'm for keeping the visits to around 10 minutes, which seems to be just about the amount of time necessary to get your arms around what's going on in the classroom. I recommend that principals walk around, look over kids' shoulders, just check out the instructional task that they're involved in. Of course, watch the teacher, look at what's on the walls. And then when the teacher is not addressing the class, when it is an all-class instruction, checking in with a couple of kids with an open-ended question like, what are you working on?

[05:50]

And just get a sense in 10 or 15 minutes of what is going on and how it fits into the broader picture, which, of course, ideally the principal walks in knowing the unit plan. And perhaps the lesson plan as well or glances at that on the teacher's desk. And knows the teacher's goals and knows the general situation personally with the teacher if they're under great personal stress because of a family illness or that sort of thing. And then catching the teacher, jotting a few notes during the class, but I don't recommend electronics at all. I think a pad of paper is the best means to stay low key, keep the threat level down. I'm not sending anything to the teacher electronically or in writing until there is a conversation, and ideally that conversation takes place within 24 hours, ideally the same day, and ideally if it can be swung in the teacher's classroom when kids are not there, so right on the teacher's turf and where all the stuff is there to be looked at.

[06:43]

Having a fairly short conversation focused on a couple of praise points and then perhaps one leverage point of some kind, something that could be improved, but it could be 100% praised. And then following that up with a very brief written narrative, no scoring, no rubric scoring or anything like that until much, much later. And there's a wonderful computer program called T-Eval that constrains the administrator to a thousand-character maximum message, which is sort of a long paragraph, and it's sent electronically. So the teacher gets prompt written follow-up with nothing new, just confirming the conversation.

[07:21] SPEAKER_02:

Okay, but that written follow-up is after that face-to-face conversation.

[07:25] SPEAKER_00:

Correct, and that's crucial. I just was involved in a back-and-forth with some folks in the New Jersey Department of Education yesterday where they misunderstood that or did not hear the critical point of talking face-to-face to the teacher before anything is committed to writing because there's so many times where the administrator gets it wrong, misunderstands, jumps on something that's the wrong thing to jump on. It's incredibly important, I believe, to talk first and to really get the teacher talking within the first 15 seconds and really sound out where they were going, what happened after the administrator left the short visits, of course, because they're only seeing the snapshot, what happened before, what the general context is, and just giving the teacher a chance to set the stage and clue the administrator into the stuff he doesn't know or she doesn't know.

[08:11] SPEAKER_02:

I think that that listening and that kind of Covey's idea of seeking first to understand and then to be understood, I think is so powerful. But I think too often we frame the accuracy of our perceptions as an issue of inter-rater reliability. You know, if I was just trained better as a principal, then I wouldn't have gotten it wrong. And what you're saying is it's much more about what the teacher is trying to accomplish and what's going on in their practice and in their life that creates that need for us to go in as a listener first.

[08:39] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's important, of course, with the traditional model of doing it once a year but at more length. But I think it's even more important with shorter visits because you're missing an awful lot. The trade-off is frequency for brevity. My model is keeping everything brief, the classroom visit, the conversation, and the write-up, squeezing that all into a half-hour window, basically 10 minutes for each. And the trade-off there is you're missing a lot, but the The upside of it is you build trust relationship, you get a broader picture in it, and also much more important, it's all much more authentic because you're seeing what's really happening rather than something that's put on for your benefit.

[09:17] SPEAKER_02:

Right, and that whole dog and pony show aspect is eliminated. I wonder if we could talk about one thing that stands out with me years after having read your book. This idea of kind of supervising the heck out of teachers. You familiar with what I'm referring to? I don't remember your exact phrasing.

[09:34] SPEAKER_00:

That was the title of one of my Kappen articles, I think.

[09:37] SPEAKER_02:

Maybe that was what I read. So I think we have this idea at the back of our minds that if we were kind of the super principal, Mike Copeland wrote an article in Kappen also about the myth of the super principal. He was my advisor for a long time at the University of Washington. If we were just super principals and we could just do five formal evaluations every single day, then we could just kind of supervise the heck out of our teachers and they would be perfect. Talk to us about that idea. What do you think of that?

[10:03] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think it's ridiculous. I think it's laughable. Administrators' feedback to teachers, the research is showing us, is a virtual zero in terms of impact on instruction. I mean, we know what really moves instruction. I ask people this question all the time with anonymous clickers. You know, it's colleagues.

[10:21]

It's, you know, well-run PLC meetings, professional learning community meetings. It's curriculum planning. It's just that that is, you know, comes up as an incredibly uninformative and unhelpful thing. So, you know, what's wrong with the picture, of course, is the, you know, a lot of time spent on something that is very unproductive instructionally and that left fork in the road of, you know, of, um, of compliance, evaluation, documentation, evidence, versus anything that really improves teaching. So I think this idea of supervising to improve is really not coming through at all.

[10:59] SPEAKER_02:

Well, let's talk about that then. What is the purpose, in your view, if we're not really the ultimate coach, if we're not really helping teachers improve their practice that much through the feedback that we're providing? Where do you see the key value in this process as lying? What's the point from then?

[11:17] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that the four things that supervision should do, and this is my sort of latest thinking on this, I think it may not have made it into the second edition of the book, is there are four things that ideally this process should accomplish, whichever way it's done. The first is quality assurance, that you really can look a parent in the eye and assure them with knowledge. that there is good instruction in every classroom, good instruction well-defined, for example, on a four-point scale, the top two levels. The second thing is that there is coaching to both affirm the good practices that are going on, and that's essential because we're losing some of our best teachers because we ignore them, and, of course, to coach and improve practices that aren't so effective. The third thing is to, frankly, keep teachers on their toes and to keep them reflecting about their practice and bringing their A game every day. And then the fourth person's purpose is to make good personnel decisions, to decide whether that struggling first-year teacher should have another chance or not, to decide whether that third-year teacher deserves tenure or not.

[12:19]

These are crucial, or if this person needs to be fired. So those are quality assurance, improvement, keeping people thinking and on their toes, and personnel decisions. That's what it should accomplish. And to do that, of course, you have to have an authentic sense of what's really happening in classrooms every day. And the only way to do that is short, frequent, unannounced visits. And to communicate constantly.

[12:42]

And then teacher supervision and evaluation have a chance of being significant. But only if it's done well. And each one of those components has to be done well. And that takes skill and it takes real supervision by superintendents and constant monitoring to make sure it doesn't become a meaningless process.

[13:00] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think that frequency that you mentioned plays such a role in the skill aspect because anything that we do a few times a year is going to be something that we don't necessarily get as good at as the things that we're doing on a daily or a weekly basis. And if I believe something is worth doing, I should probably do it. I'm not going to exercise once a month and act like that's going to really keep me healthy, right? Burgers 29 days a month and salad once a month And I feel like sometimes that's our paradigm for evaluations, that we can stay out of classrooms until we have to be in classrooms and then get them all done in kind of a crazy week or two right before they're due. And honestly, I think that's the norm, but I really appreciate the way you've set out a model for us that is much more effective.

[13:49] SPEAKER_00:

But a lot of principals do walk around their schools a lot. I mean, they pop into classrooms, every classroom. I know a principal in Brooklyn who's in every classroom twice a day. But there's no feedback associated with that. And there was even one kind of scary study that said that doing that actually depresses student achievement. Because teachers are wondering what you think.

[14:08]

A lot of what they're doing is not commented on and perhaps even reinforced, you know, mediocre practices. And so I think what I'm recommending, you know, I realize more and more as I talk to people about this, it's a fundamental shift in the principal's routines. from as you described it to know this once a year blitz up to the deadline uh... versus making this part of your daily routine and and i i'd have done the math and almost every school doing ten visits for teacher per year comes down to about two and three a day in almost all schools the ratios work out that way but that takes some real self-discipline to you know to do but if they're short it's ten minutes into feedback conversations are short around ten minutes if the write-ups are short and done perhaps later in the afternoon It is doable.

[14:53]

But it takes real self-discipline. It takes real belief that it's going to make a difference. And frankly, it takes some supervision from above. Superintendents who are in buildings frequently and monitoring this process and making sure and monitoring the quality of it. Because, of course, this can be done badly. It can be done...

[15:09]

jumping on people on superficial things. I've had numerous horror stories about that.

[15:16] SPEAKER_02:

In the course of hearing from people through the Instructional Leadership Challenge that we run at instructionalleadershipchallenge.com, we've had about 3,500 people go through that. One of the things that we hear pretty early on is that the process that we recommend as far as giving feedback without a checklist that gets filled out is very contrary to what most districts are requiring. And I agree with you that that director or superintendent level accountability for principals is really crucial. But often that accountability comes in the form of, hey, send me a copy of your walkthrough checklists. And I wonder what you think of walkthrough checklists and kind of what tools need to be in our repertoire.

[15:58]

You mentioned a pen and paper. What does that process look like? What does the accountability for the principal look like if it's not kind of a checklist of kind of unimportant things?

[16:11] SPEAKER_00:

well i think first of all i don't like your walk through uh... because from a teacher's point of view it's kind of insulting that you're walking through my classroom uh... and i think uh... there are actually serve for ways of getting into classes briefly walkers being one of them which is more of a superficial thing uh... but but more to the point the checklist uh... right away if you have a checklist to check in boxes you're not doing a qualitative smell the roses kind of uh... their appreciation and understanding and also alerting of what's what's not been a classroom

[16:40]

uh... i i really am against those i understand why people do it but that's the left fork in the road that's the compliance evidence uh... you know evaluation business so clear that it's unproductive uh... you gotta get in there watch i don't think there is short that's in the kit people were saying there are no shortcuts there no shortcuts with the distribution checklist so

[17:00]

And all that stuff is just, I think, really very unproductive. And also there are all these clever electronic products like ECOV and some of the other, which are very clever. but which I really don't think get to the kind of observation that needs to be done to move mediocre practices. Let's be honest here. What's really hurting kids is mediocrity in classrooms. There are very few horrible teachers.

[17:27]

I think that's a real myth. There are a lot of wonderful teachers and there are a lot of solid teachers, but it's those mediocre practices that I see a lot of in my visits with principals. which need to be worked with me for example uh... you know calling up only on the kids who raise their hands you know it's a profoundly mediocre practice but is very very widespread changing a habit like that after the person has been doing that for seven eight or nine years changing them to cold calling or to uh... using response devices of some kind of clickers or something is a real project it takes more than one visit it takes a coaching it takes a pd it takes a persuasion

[18:03]

It takes some looking at data. It's a real project, and I think you can't do that with a checklist.

[18:08] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I appreciate your clarification for me of the sequence there. So administrators are taking notes, maybe on paper, just so they have something to refer to later.

[18:18] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you want to capture those quotes. I mean, quotes are hard to remember. you know, specific things in a classroom, I think you got to jot down. And I didn't do that when I was a principal. But I've really become persuaded that the jotting is important because you lose important stuff.

[18:33] SPEAKER_02:

And then that informs the conversation. And then it's that conversation that informs the write-up later in the day and kind of the documentation side of it.

[18:40] SPEAKER_00:

Correct. And as a superintendent, I would, looking at a checklist, I would know nothing about whether it was valid or not. But reading a narrative, reading one of these 1,000 character narratives, would tell me an awful lot about, first of all, what's going on, and secondly, the principal's skill at communicating ideas, what was talked about in these brief conversations. That's really interesting stuff. And for example, for a principal's meeting, to have a couple of principals read one or two of those out loud and get feedback on the quality of them, You know, that's really good stuff. The Hamilton County schools in Chattanooga and the suburbs there in Hamilton County, Tennessee, have been using this process for the last five years with this software, this TVL software with these narrative things.

[19:24]

And they've had terrific success in getting the event to teachers and moving teachers, improving teachers, and also moving out teachers who are not making it. uh... very very few grievances reunion problems and sort of a it's that's my poster child district along with the house in new york that that's really done this very thoughtfully very well uh... you know the only downside in chattanooga has been uh... that some principles are not very good at doing these write-ups these thousand character write-ups

[19:50]

And they're working with them. But there you're getting an alert to where issues are versus looking at rubrics and checklists where you really have no idea other than perhaps is there a curve. And then you get this whole thing of grading on a curve and all that nonsense, which again is... blind alley there.

[20:09] SPEAKER_02:

Right. So as a superintendent, as a supervisor of principals, you get much more information about the supervisory skill of the principals and the principals' understanding of the evaluation framework.

[20:22] SPEAKER_00:

Right. And it all does have to get scored on the rubric at the end, but I'm for using the rubrics primarily as an end-of-the-year documentation of and and really reification in really getting into detail of all these semi my rubric of sixty things on a daniel says a seventy-six and marzano says about four thousand you have to get it down to into rubric scores at some point but that's not appropriate for classroom visits i'm for using rubrics at three points in the school year to have a teacher self-assess and set goals at the beginning to have a mid-year check-in with the principal to see, are we in the same ballpark here? Teacher self-assesses, principal self-assesses, you know, does a tentative assessment and they compare page by page and just discuss the differences and then repeating that process at the end of the year with a sense of, you know, okay, where are we at?

[21:12]

And that's the official document. But always listening to the teacher's input, of course.

[21:17] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think that's a really critical distinction that in going from kind of a checklist-oriented supervision model to a more rubric-oriented model, I see a lot of people taking these gigantic rubrics on classroom visits with them. And it's overwhelming. And you can't pay attention to 76 criteria at four different levels in a 10-minute visit. And Those rubrics, my take on Danielson, on your rubrics, on Marzano, to a lesser extent Marzano, but they are not necessarily observation rubrics. They're practice rubrics. And if you go looking for things to check off, my take is that you're kind of missing the boat.

[21:57] SPEAKER_00:

uh... i mean i i've been at this for you know twenty years now and i'm i'm pretty good classroom observer i cannot cognitively handle taking in what's going on in a complicated classroom in every class was complicated and checking boxes on the rubric it's it's simply not possible anyone is doing that is faking i mean it's you know they're doing it because somebody is making them do it not because they as an educator think that's the right thing to do But again, if you're under pressure, I mean, for example, in New York City, they're using the Danielson rubric, and they're, well, they trimmed it down a lot, but they're trying to use that right after every classroom visit, scoring and uploading to an elaborate computer system. And it's just, to me, that corrupts the entire process, the entire dialogue, potential dialogue with the teacher. It becomes judgmental.

[22:43]

It's a score. That's all the teacher remembers. They're nitpicking and arguing about, should I get this or should I get that? Because in New York State, again, at the state level, they're collecting data and pushing teachers. I mean, a teacher can come into a conference in New York City and actually say something like, I need six more points. This is not a productive educational dialogue.

[23:03]

This is nonsense.

[23:05] SPEAKER_02:

I think that rethinking and reframing of what are we trying to accomplish here and what's the most efficient and direct and respectful way to accomplish that is something that continues to stand out to me about your book. One resource that I want to highlight at the back of the book, you have your own rubrics.

[23:23] SPEAKER_00:

Right. There's the teacher rubric and the principal rubric, which are also available free on my website. I'm not charging for these, which is a source of some disagreement in my household. But they're not being monetized at this point. And I think that also, by the way, in the appendix of my book are also 20 samples of these short 1,000-character write-ups from two administrators in New York City who have been using them for a while. And they really give a flavor of what a short narrative is.

[23:52]

feedback uh... email to a principal looks like it's uh... it's it's a real it's not it's not not that difficult to do and i think it's a little bit of an art form but on that issue of difficulty that there are people who think that this whole business of going into a classroom and smelling the roses is just too hard that we got a we got a principal proof this process by giving a checklist of electronic uh... ipad documents and so forth and i i really think that's an insult to principles so i i think that

[24:19]

eighty eighty five percent of principles can do this right now uh... you know with some support and and coaching others so they can't and that's a big issue in in some of the big cities in particular work for people in particular union people are just do not trust their their administrators and don't think they're capable of this sort of work and just one of them erect barriers and uh... to to sort of proof the whole process

[24:43]

You know, we've heard of teacher-proofing. This is principal-proofing so that, you know, they'll be protected from idiots. But I think, again, I think that's a real insult to principals. I think this is doable, is more productive, is more fun, frankly, you know, more enriching. This is a process where both teachers and principals are informed. You know, all these conversations, every one of these conversations is really a PD session.

[25:05] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And for the principal especially.

[25:07] SPEAKER_00:

Sure. You learn about that third grade guided reading thing. You learn about that math class. You learn about something, for example, one of the things I've been most intrigued with in the memo in the last year has been this finding that when we teach fractions in elementary school, If we're using pizza slices as the instructional sort of paradigm, beyond third grade, we're doing a great disservice to kids. Third and fourth grade, we have to shift to using number lines to teach fractions. That's the kind of point that a principal should be intrigued with, should be into, should be watching for, should be talking to teachers about.

[25:44]

They might hear about it first from teachers or maybe from the Marshall Memo. But that's the kind of things you've got to have your eye on. What's the best way to teach writing? What's the best way to deal with bullying? What's all these intriguing classroom questions that just don't come up on a checklist?

[26:01] SPEAKER_02:

Right, and that dialogue with teachers can take those inquiries at the school level so much deeper. If people want to find out more about the Marshall Memo and find your rubrics, where can they find you online?

[26:12] SPEAKER_00:

so uh... marshall dot com is my website uh... which also has all of my writing uh... except for the cap and articles which have to be a subscriber to get to this if there's a firewall there but but everything else is under kim publications so there's this course of articles the rubrics of their uh... might might curriculum calendar which is sort of the unique horizontal format

[26:30]

that we worked out a bunch of us worked out in new york city is there so on all that is there we just want to say one more thing uh... the thing that's counterintuitive about this approach but this qualitative approach going inside the roses talking the teacher johnny if you know it's uh... people say well okay so let's say the ten of us in the course of the year right they say you've had ten major coaching points and you talk to you have these ten conversations with teachers and you said these ten little qualitative things

[26:57]

How on earth can you put that together into a rubric that has 60 things on it, for example? And that does seem sort of improbable to a lot of people. It actually is very doable. The beauty of a rubric, well, first of all, in those 10 conversations, you're seeing many, many things that are going into your head as principle, in addition to, of course, your You're dropping in on team meetings and looking at unit plans and lesson plans and watching PLC meetings and watching teachers in action with parents. All that's going into your brain. But the beauty of a rubric is that it pulls it out of your brain.

[27:30]

As you look at each line of a rubric and look, for example, at the effective level, you're reminded of things that you might have thought you forgot. And I find that principals can fill out a rubric in about 20 minutes. It is not a complicated process. And then if you check in with the teacher, have the teacher fill it out and compare and learn more from the teacher, any gaps in your knowledge, and there will be gaps, get filled in. So it's an extremely effective and efficient process, and it doesn't require carrying checklists in the classrooms.

[28:00] SPEAKER_02:

Well, you can find out more in Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation, and again at marshallmemo.com. Kim, it has been an honor and a pleasure to speak with you today. Thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[28:13] SPEAKER_00:

You're most welcome. I wish you well.

[28:16] SPEAKER_01:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[28:20] SPEAKER_02:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Kim Marshall? I hope you could tell this was one of my favorite interviews ever because Kim's book, Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation, was so formative to me in my own practice as a principal and in putting together the 21 day instructional leadership challenge and the high performance instructional leadership network. I really appreciate his ideas about, you know, stopping to smell the roses when we're in the classroom and paying attention to to what the teacher is trying to accomplish and really of making it a conversation about practice and how we can improve that practice rather than simply making it a matter of going through a checklist or a matter of providing a rating. I can't recommend the book highly enough, Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation, now in its second edition. And I also wanna let you know how we're taking these practices that are working for school leaders around the country and around the world, how we're taking that research seriously in the development of our Repertoire app.

[29:22]

And Repertoire is our new feedback app for not managing the evaluation process, but for providing specific written feedback about what you see in the classroom and what you've talked about with the teacher. And one change that we made after Kim and I had this conversation was to actually allow the user to send that feedback later in the day after you've had that face-to-face conversation. Cause that was one thing I took away from the conversation myself was that there does need to be a face-to-face component whenever possible that we're talking in person and then making the written feedback a supplement to that. I do think we have to document. I do think we have to have a good record of what happened in the classroom. And if you want to do that on paper, that's great.

[30:07]

In Repertoire, we've also built a scripting feature so that it's timestamped. You can quickly jot down what the teacher is doing, what the students are doing, and your thoughts about it. And it's all driven by... your repertoire of words and phrases.

[30:22]

So if you would like to say something new and unique that you've never said before, you can type that right in and it'll get added to your message. And then next time you need to say something similar, just like when you do a Google search, it will be suggested to you and you won't have to type the whole thing. But of course, if you do want to type something unique or modify it for that individual teacher, you can do so. Now, the best source of that repertoire of language that you use to provide feedback to your staff is not only your own voice, but also the language of your instructional framework. This is what we call the language of learning. And if you use one of Kim Marshall's rubrics or if you use Charlotte Danielson's rubrics, you know there's a ton of language in there.

[31:03]

that matters that can make a difference that can kind of serve as the third party in that feedback conversation with the teacher and can really help advance practice in a way that really is not possible without that external reference with if it's just between me and the teacher and it's a matter of opinions and expertise we're not going to be able to get as far as we can when we have that third party in the conversation saying this is what level four practice looks like this is what level three practice looks like and really breaking that down into specific domains and components. And the challenge that we're addressing with the Repertoire app is becoming proficient with that language, because honestly it's too much to memorize, it's too much to keep in your head, and it's too much to pay attention to. But if you can quickly review it, if you can type a few words or phrases and pull up just the components that are relevant to what you've seen and what you want to talk about, that can be an enormous time saver.

[31:57]

So I want to welcome you to check out a little video at principalcenter.com slash repertoire that will give you a visual idea of how that works. And if you're interested in learning more about that app, you can set up a demo and find out how you can get repertoire for yourself, for your school, or for your district.

[32:17] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.