How To Get Into Classrooms 500 Times This School Year

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:14] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I thought to kick off the new school year, we would do something special. So it's just you and me today, and I've entitled this episode, How to Get into Classrooms 500 Times Today. this school year. Now, if you've listened to Principal Center Radio for a while, you've heard me speak to many brilliant guests, and I'm sorry to not have a brilliant guest for you today, but I am going to share with you some of my best strategies from my book, Now We're Talking, 21 Days to High Performance Instructional Leadership, And that is my primary book on classroom walkthroughs. And I'm going to share some additional resources with you that will help you get into classrooms 500 times a year if you make that commitment. And I'm newly energized in thinking about this work because I just got back a few weeks ago from a trip to Canada where I had the opportunity to work with two different fabulous groups of educators in New Brunswick.

[01:04]

So a big shout out to all of the New Brunswick and Atlantic provinces students. educators that I got to work with this summer. Thank you so much for your engagement and just the incredible questions and discussions that we had over those four days just have, again, have really energized me. So I'm excited to talk with you about classroom walkthroughs. I'm going to give you all of my best strategies and tools and some links for you to check out to help get you into classrooms 500 times this year.

[01:33] Announcer:

And now our feature presentation.

[01:35] SPEAKER_00:

So one of the starting points of getting into classrooms, I believe, is having the right model. It does not work to simply say, I'm going to get into classrooms more and then try really hard and then succeed. Because for most people, the problem is not a lack of desire, it is not a lack of effort. For most people, the reason they're not getting into classrooms consistently is the lack of a good model. They're trying to do things that just don't work, that just are not compatible. For example, one thing a lot of people commit to doing and don't realize is not really sustainable, is they try to have a really, really good feedback conversation every time they get into a classroom.

[02:12]

They try to do a really thorough write-up with really good written suggestions and questions for the teacher every single time. And I have to tell you, that is not a good plan. It is not a sustainable plan because most of the time when you get into classrooms, you're going to have something to talk about. You're going to have something to say. You're going to see some things that are maybe noteworthy, but it is not going to be earth shattering every single time you get into classrooms. We have to have modest expectations and we have to have a good model.

[02:41]

And in chapter two of Now We're Talking, 21 Days to High Performance Instructional Leadership, I identify seven keys to sustainable impact through classroom walkthroughs. And the first of those is all about frequency. We do need to get into classrooms frequently if this whole effort is going to be worthwhile and if we are going to have an impact. And most administrators, frankly, are not doing classroom walkthroughs at all. And those who are trying are typically getting into each classroom about once a year. One classroom walkthrough a year, I would say, is the mode, is the most common number of of classroom walkthroughs.

[03:16]

And I do not want you to be typical in any way. I want you to be successful beyond your wildest dreams when it comes to classroom walkthroughs. And all you have to do is visit three classrooms a day. And I say all you have to do like it's easy. It is easy to visit three classrooms a day in the short term or occasionally. It is quite difficult to visit three classrooms a day consistently for 180 days and get into classrooms 500 plus times a year.

[03:43]

That really is all it takes, three a day consistently. So how do we make sure that this is consistent enough that we can stick with it? Well, in addition to frequency, classroom walkthroughs need to be brief. So the second in our list of seven characteristics is that our classroom walkthroughs need to be brief. These need to be five, 10, 15 minutes at most. Because if they're not brief, they're not going to be sustainable.

[04:06]

We're simply not going to be able to keep up with a practice that takes 15, 20, 30, 40 minutes every time we get into classrooms. You simply do not have that much time in the day. And prioritizing does not actually create more time in the day. A lot of people say, well, you just need to prioritize getting into classrooms. And I don't think that is true. You don't just need to prioritize it.

[04:26]

You do need to give it some time, give it some degree of priority. But you also have to do the rest of your job, and I don't want to be naive about that. So give these five, 10, 15 minutes each, at most 45 minutes total per day, and you'll be in great shape. The third characteristic in our list is that these visits need to be substantive. We're not going to fill out a form or to check a box or to just smile and wave or to just give a feedback sandwich. These need to be actual, real, feedback conversations where we have a chance to see something meaningful in the classroom, hopefully, and then talk with the teacher about it.

[05:05]

And if we don't see something meaningful, if the teacher's just passing back papers, or if we come at just kind of an awkward time, that's okay too. We don't always need to have the perfect walkthrough because we're going to do 500 of these, and it's okay if some are just kind of duds. We have to accept that as the price of getting serious about this. So frequent, brief, substantive. Fourth, our visits need to be open-ended. This is not a closed, again, fill out the form, feedback sandwich kind of process.

[05:33]

We want to get into classrooms so that we can talk with teachers about their practice, whatever that practice may be, whatever is relevant for that day. And I think that means we need to pay attention to the teacher's instructional purpose and not just second guess what we saw and say, hey, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? But actually have a good conversation about what the teacher did do and what the teacher was intending. what their takeaways were, what their sense of how things went was. Fifth, we need to have evidence-based conversations.

[06:01]

And when we're observing, we shouldn't be filling out rating scales or checklists. We should be, if we are taking notes of any kind, we should be capturing evidence of what actually took place. And I love timestamps. I love verbatim notes. I love quotes from the teacher and quotes from students. I love photographs of student work and what's on the board.

[06:21]

I think the more evidence-based we can make our conversations, the better. sixth we want our classroom walkthroughs to be criterion referenced linked to a shared set of expectations typically those are your teacher evaluation criteria and you may use the danielson framework you may use t-tests you may use one of marzano's frameworks you may use kim marshall's framework or james strong's framework or you may have developed your own or your state or district may have developed your own but whatever you use it is critical to use that language that shared set of expectations not only in your final evaluations not only in your feedback conversations but as you are observing because those criteria will focus your attention if you have your teacher evaluation criteria in mind as you observe you will pay better attention and you will pay attention to different things

[07:13]

than if you don't. So keep those criteria close at hand throughout every stage of the instructional leadership work that you do. Seventh and finally in our classroom walkthrough model, and again, this is from chapter two of Now We're Talking, we want this whole process to be conversation oriented. The conversation is the point. Filling out a form, checking a box is not the So you'll see throughout the book, throughout this podcast, there is no room for forms at all in any of this. We're not gonna fill out a Google form.

[07:44]

We're not gonna fill out a paper form. This is all about having a good conversation with the teacher. And if we need to, documenting some of what we saw in writing so that is it those are the seven keys to sustainable impact and if you'd like to actually read that entire chapter you can go to solutiontree.com slash 21 days the number two the number one days and that will allow you to preview right there on the solution tree website that entire chapter you can read the entire thing and get a sense of the model so that is what i'm challenging you to do if you get serious about that if you get consistent about that and if you put the right strategies in place you can get into classrooms 500 times a year and if you do two big things will happen first you will have completely different professional relationships with your staff you will know them like you've never known them before they will know you they will trust you and you will have a very clear sense of

[08:39]

what you need to do as an instructional leader so relationships are the first big benefit and decisional information is the second big benefit you will have insight into what you need to do as a leader to move your school forward and to move each individual staff member forward see a lot of people think the opportunity that's presented by classroom walkthroughs is an opportunity to give feedback that immediately directly changes the teacher's practice and that can happen you absolutely can change teacher practice in feedback conversations but sometimes we need to do things other than talk to the teacher to help the teacher grow sometimes we need to arrange professional development Sometimes we need to arrange peer observations. Sometimes we need to buy stuff. Sometimes we need to bring in outside expertise. Whatever it may be that a teacher needs, we're going to have to figure out how to provide that.

[09:34]

And we have to recognize that often that is going to be more than us talking. I wish it were as simple as simply talking and just telling teachers what to do differently. That would be easier, frankly, but that's not the reality. Teaching is complex professional work and teachers need a lot of different things that we can't provide in a straightforward feedback conversation, at least not every time. So relationships and decisional information are what we can expect to be the big outcomes of getting into classrooms consistently. Now, one question I get from administrative teams especially, if you have multiple administrators in your school, who should you visit?

[10:12]

And usually there's one person on the team who thinks, you know what, I really wanna visit everybody. Maybe I'm the most academically inclined person on our team. Maybe that's the principal, maybe it's not. Maybe it's an assistant principal or an academic dean. There's often one person who just wants to visit everybody. But if you have an administrative team, that tells me that you probably have too many people to visit consistently and frequently and if you have much more than 30 people you should really be dividing it up so if you have multiple administrators here's how i recommend dividing up your classroom walkthroughs divide them up the same way you divide up formal evaluations now sometimes people will say well i do all the formal evaluations too it's 97 teachers and i have to say that is way too many for one person a good number is about 30 If you have fewer than that, great.

[10:59]

If you have many more than that, I would really look at ways to divide that up. Because if you get into 30 teachers' classrooms every two weeks, you can get around to everybody with just three a day. And I think that's about where we need to be. But much beyond that, and it gets kind of unsustainable. And we really want to see every teacher frequently. Another thing to keep in mind is the type of questions that we ask.

[11:23]

And a lot of people have told me that they like to write questions for teachers. I'm going to recommend that when you get into classrooms and you have questions for the teacher, that you not put those in writing, and that you instead try to have a face-to-face conversation with the teacher where you can ask that question. And if it is a real question, it is probably worth asking. If it is a leading question, I just wrote a new article that you can find at principalcenter.com slash articles on how to avoid leading questions and what some of the problems with leading questions are. We instead want to ask, evidence-based questions.

[11:59]

And an evidence-based question works like this. You share something that you noticed. You say, hey, I noticed that students were doing this, doing that. Here's what I saw. Talk to me about how... And then you ask a question.

[12:12]

Or in some cases, you can ask a broken question and just trail off. I have 10 of these questions that can serve as samples or as templates for you. You can get those at principlecenter.com slash feedback. I'll read just a couple of them here for you. This is the interpretation question number three.

[12:28]

At one point in the lesson, it seemed like blank. And then you share your impression of what was going on then. And then you ask, what was your take? What was your take about what was happening at that point? Because sometimes we need to clarify, sometimes we need to see if we're on the same page. Another question you could ask is, hey, I noticed that blank.

[12:46]

How did you feel about how that went? That's number eight, the intuition question. All 10 of these questions have a place where you put in something specific that you observed. So these are evidence-driven questions. Evidence is at the heart of them. These are not just opinion questions.

[13:02]

These are not philosophy questions. These are evidence-driven questions. but they're questions that you don't know the answer to. They're not rhetorical questions. They're not leading questions. They are open-ended questions that get the teacher talking.

[13:14]

And it follows that if we're going to ask questions that get the teacher talking, a big part of our responsibility is to listen. And as we listen, we can get a sense of what the teacher needs from us. What role might we need to play for this teacher to improve? What do I need to do as an instructional leader to help this teacher grow? Now, sometimes we need to wear the boss hat. We'll talk about three hats, and the first is the boss hat.

[13:40]

When we're playing the boss, we're giving directive feedback, and we're saying, you know, you really need to do X. Often we play the boss role with our newer teachers, with people who are struggling, maybe people who are new to the profession or new to the school, and... not aware of the expectations, not doing some of the basics. Sometimes we have to be directive and say, look, I need you to do this.

[14:03]

I need you to act in such and such way. We're really directly trying to influence behavior when we play the boss and give directive feedback. So if we need to do that, we need to, and we must not shy away from it, even though it's uncomfortable, it's unpleasant. But we typically prefer to play the second role and to wear the coach hat. With the coach role, we're trying to change teacher thinking through reflective feedback questions. And this is the typical kind of question that we like to ask.

[14:33]

And the evidence-driven questions can lead right into a coaching conversation. And many of our best conversations with most of our teachers are going to be coaching style conversations. And then the third role is a little bit unfamiliar to us in feedback conversations. The third role is the leader role. And when we play the leader role, when we wear that hat, it's our goal mostly to listen and try to figure out what conditions can I put in place? What resources can I put in place so that this person has what they need to be successful?

[15:07]

So we're not trying to change the teacher in that case. We're trying to figure out how we can change the conditions under which the teacher is working and make sure they have what they need so they can succeed. So if you'd like to learn more about the three roles, you can go to principalcenter.com slash the number three and then the word roles, three R-O-L-E-S to find an article on the three roles instructional leaders play in changing teacher practice. Next, let's talk about what we write down. I recommend that in your first cycle of classroom walkthroughs, you visit everyone very quickly and you don't actually write anything down.

[15:43]

And you can do this on day one of the new school year. You can do this on the first day back after any break. Simply visit every teacher back to back just for a minute or two. You don't need to stay five minutes. You don't need to stay 10 minutes. Just go around to every classroom, smile and wave, be present and pleasant.

[16:02]

And that can be your very first cycle. And by doing that, you're going to get yourself going. You're going to break the ice and you're going to break the habit of staying in the office, dealing with office stuff all the time. And you're going to start off on the right foot. Then as soon as you finish that first cycle, keep on going start visiting every classroom a second time but this time in your second cycle visit three classrooms a day and in the second cycle i still don't want you to take any notes just be present and pleasant stay a little bit longer maybe five ten minutes pay a little bit closer attention maybe chat with the teacher in that second cycle but still no written notes Then in your third cycle, that's when you want to start taking notes. And the type of notes, as I said earlier, that I like to take is low inference, timestamped, detailed notes with lots of quotes.

[16:53]

And if you're using Repertoire, the professional writing app for instructional leaders, you will see there is a timestamp feature. I've been showing that to a lot of people this week and they love it. They love the timestamp feature. because down to the second, you can capture exactly when every statement was made, when everything took place, and that really allows you to richly kind of reconstruct the lesson when you're talking with the teacher. So timestamped notes are a great feature in repertoire, but of course you can do those manually as well. If you like to take notes on paper, One thing you can do is simply take a picture of your notes and then leave the original notes with the teacher.

[17:27]

If you like to type your notes, what I recommend that you do is email them to the teacher right away. You could take your notes directly in your email app, or if you're using repertoire, there's a one-click send as email feature. And I love doing that because it puts the notes in the teacher's hands right away so that they are not worried. So they are not wondering, what did they write down? What did she write down? Is he compiling a secret dossier of evidence against me?

[17:52]

Teachers worry when we go into their classrooms and we write things down and we don't show them. So a huge trust builder is to simply share your notes with the teacher right away. Starting in that third cycle, you can start to take notes, give them to the teacher right away. Don't wait till the post-conference. Either leave them in the room or send them via email. and when you have a chance to talk with the teacher later you can refer to those notes when you are writing your evaluations later you can look back on those notes to get a sense of what you've seen in the classroom hopefully those notes are quote unquote admissible in the evaluation process you know you may have to ask the teacher if they're okay with that it may be that only formal observations officially count toward the final evaluation but you know look into what your contractual rules are and look into what your teachers expectations are typically teachers want surprise good evidence to be used in their evaluations.

[18:42]

They don't want surprise bad evidence to be used. And I think that's fair to some extent that if we were making unannounced visits to the classroom, you know, those shouldn't be gotchas. We shouldn't be trying to catch people at their worst, but we should be willing to recognize good practice and count that if we can make that work. So I'll share a detailed document with you. If you go to principalcenter.com slash FAQ, that will take you to my classroom walkthrough FAQ for instructional leaders.

[19:11]

Again, principalcenter.com slash FAQ. And that will recap a lot of what we've talked about here. It'll include links to a lot of what we've talked about, including the feedback questions. One more resource that I want to make sure everyone knows about is our classroom visit index cards. This is a template that has been downloaded at least 10,000 times, probably close to 20,000 times now by administrators around the world who are getting into classrooms.

[19:36]

And it's simply a note card template. And what you do with this note card template, again, this is principalcenter.com slash note cards, or you can download it from the FAQ. You'll see it along with all the other resources listed there. What you do is you write out one note card per teacher. And on that note card, you put the teacher's name, their room number, their prep time, their lunch time, and their schedule of what they teach throughout the day.

[19:59]

Then when you visit a class taught by that teacher, you mark the date by the appropriate subject. You keep all of these note cards in a stack in order, whatever order you want to visit teachers in. And every day you take the top three note cards off of that stack. and those are your three teachers to visit for that day. So take those cards, visit the teacher, record the date, and then you put the note cards on the bottom of the stack. And if you miss somebody, if they were absent or for whatever reason you didn't get to them, put their note card on top of the stack and try again tomorrow.

[20:31]

And keep moving those cards to the bottom of the stack as you visit each teacher. And you will keep yourself in a consistent rotation throughout the year. And every time a card comes up, you can see, okay, which subjects have I already seen? Which times of day have I visited this classroom? You can intentionally mix it up a bit. Make sure you see all the different periods or all the different subjects that that teacher teaches, all the different classes, all the different sections, and just record the date by the appropriate period or subject.

[20:58]

each time you visit. And that is going to get you so far down the road, and it's going to also solve the problem of, when do I talk with the teacher? If you can simply look at their schedule and say, okay, when is this teacher free? I'll just make sure to observe before their prep period, or observe right before I know their students have recess. You know, just figure out a time that's going to work when you can spend a few minutes talking with the teacher. Now, if you don't have the opportunity to talk with the teacher, that is okay.

[21:24]

It is not the end of the world. And don't let that keep you from getting into classrooms in the first place. Just be a little bit intentional about it. Try to talk with the teacher. If you do take notes, send them on to the teacher and you'll be in great shape. Now, one thing that you may not be aware of, because this is brand new, is we're offering a free, no credit card required trial for Repertoire.

[21:49]

This is the first time since we first launched the app in 2015 that we have ever offered a completely free trial, so it does not automatically start charging you. No credit card is required. You can go to principalcenter.com slash repertoire. That's R-E-P-E-R-T-O-I-R-E. You'll also find it on the main page.

[22:06]

Just click on the Repertoire app. and you can get a free 14-day trial. I will personally help you set up your account, answer all your questions, and make it work for you. One of the first things you can do is turn on your teacher evaluation criteria in Repertoire so that those are at your fingertips as you observe. And we can also help you get your staff roster set up so that you can keep track of everyone and record all of your visits to each teacher. So feel free to check that out.

[22:34]

And if you are interested in getting serious about it this year, in making it happen, in using repertoire, and in getting into classrooms 500 times this year, we have a new account. accountability program called 1000 Conversations. And the way this works is you get access to all of our Instructional Leadership Association resources. So this is our full membership. You get full access to repertoire for the entire year. And you get a weekly check-in where you report back and say, here's how many classrooms I got into this week.

[23:04]

I got into 15 classrooms or 14 classrooms this week. 15 a week is what we're going for. Three a day times five days. If it's a five-day school week, then that should be our target. And we're keeping a scoreboard. We're keeping a public leaderboard where you can record how many visits you have done to classrooms that week, and we'll just update the cumulative total for everyone every week.

[23:28]

And we will cheer you along to 500 classroom walkthroughs for the year. And we're calling it 1,000 conversations because you may want to continue this beyond one school year, or you may have multiple conversations throughout the day. per classroom walkthrough sometimes there are things to talk with that individual teacher but sometimes we gain insights that we can talk about with other people maybe that we talk about with our admin team or with our instructional coach or you know perhaps with your supervisor or with people who lead professional development for your teachers you're having conversations that can move teacher practice forward as a result of getting into classrooms So you can learn more about 1000 Conversations, our accountability program, and membership at principalcenter.com slash thousand. I have good news for you. If you are already a member, if you're already an Instructional Leadership Association member, you can participate at no additional cost.

[24:20]

So if you have recently signed up for the Instructional Leadership Challenge, if you have an active membership, you don't have to do anything extra to sign up. You can simply let me know. that you want to receive the Sunday check-in email. And every Sunday, just get back to me, or get back to me Monday morning and let me know how many classrooms you got into the previous week, and we will put you on the scoreboard. That is what I have for you today. Again, you can find the links to everything we talked about today at PrincipalCenter.com, and especially in our FAQ article, PrincipalCenter.com slash FAQ.

[24:51]

i'm justin bader and i want to thank you so much for listening to principal center radio send me an email or reply to my email if you've listened to this and let me know what your thoughts are and let me know also where you listen to the podcast we have it now in itunes we have it on spotify we have it on youtube we have it just about everywhere that you can think to get podcasts but i'd love to know where you listen to principal center radio and if you have guest suggestions for me. I know we did something a little bit different today with not having a guest and this has been fun, but I really enjoy having high quality guests. Our main requirement for guests is that they be authors. If you have a book that you would like to hear from the author about, let us know and we will invite the author on Principal Center Radio. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great day.

[25:37] Announcer:

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