What should I look for during a classroom visit?
This might sound counterintuitive, but I'd encourage you to resist the urge to "look for" anything specific — at least at first. The moment you walk in with a checklist or a narrow focus, you start missing everything that isn't on it.
Instead, pay attention to what's actually happening. What is the teacher doing? What are students doing? What does the learning environment feel like? Take low-inference notes — meaning you describe what you see and hear without interpreting or judging it. "Students are working in pairs on a worksheet" is low-inference. "Students are engaged" is a judgment.
Over time, your school's shared instructional framework gives you a vocabulary for making sense of what you observe. But the framework should sharpen your noticing, not narrow it.
I go deeper into what to pay attention to — and what to deliberately avoid — in Now We're Talking!, Days 2 and 5.
From the Book
Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership
About the Author
Justin Baeder, PhD
Justin Baeder, PhD is Director of The Principal Center, where he helps senior leaders in K–12 organizations build capacity for instructional leadership. A former principal in Seattle Public Schools, he is the creator of the Instructional Leadership Challenge, which has helped more than 10,000 school leaders in 50 countries around the world:
- Confidently get into classrooms every day
- Have feedback conversations that change teacher practice
- Discover their best opportunities for school improvement
Dr. Baeder directs the Instructional Leadership Association, the premiere professional membership for school leaders, and is the author of three Solution Tree books on instructional leadership:
- Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership
- Mapping Professional Practice: How to Develop Instructional Frameworks to Support Teacher Growth (with Heather Bell-Williams)
- Cultivate and Activate: Building Teacher Capacity for Instructional Leadership (with Keith Fickel)
Justin is the host of Principal Center Radio, a long-running audio podcast featuring more than 400 education thought leaders and more than 500 books, as well as The Teaching Show and The Eduleadership Show. A prolific education commentator, he has more than 250,000 followers and 30,000,000 annual impressions on social media, and is frequently consulted by major media outlets on issues of education research, policy, and practice.
As a consultant, trainer, and speaker, Dr. Baeder has worked onsite with groups across the US, Canada, and Central America, and virtually with groups across the Middle East, Australia, and around the world. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, and regularly provides administrator professional development on classroom walkthroughs, teacher evaluation, and instructional leadership.
He holds a PhD in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies from the University of Washington and an MEd in Curriculum & Instruction from Seattle University, and is a graduate of the Danforth Program for Educational Leadership at UW.