Stop Giving Teachers Extra Work to Make Administrators Look Good

Principals, we have got to stop giving teachers extra work to make ourselves look good.

And I get it because I know supervisors come and want to visit classrooms, want to tour the school with the principal, and often they bring all of the other principals that they supervise with them so everybody gets a tour of your school.

And there's a big pressure to show off, to show your best, to try to put your best foot forward.

But I'm hearing so many things that principals are asking teachers to do to show off and to basically help them show off in these visits.

that are just such a huge waste of time.

And one of those I heard today was not only requiring teachers to turn in lesson plans and post data on a data wall, but to actually post the lesson plans in the hallway so that everybody could see the learning that was taking place.

When I read that, I thought, well, that sounds like a lot of extra work that's probably going to be outdated very quickly.

And if you want to see the learning that's taking place, why wouldn't you just go get into the classroom?

It's right there on the other side of the wall.

I'm a big fan of getting administrators into classrooms to talk with teachers about their practice.

I'm a big fan of visiting classrooms in other people's schools.

But I think it's essential that we not try to get ourselves off the hook for actually going into the classroom by just asking teachers for stuff in a way that wastes their time.

We don't need people to type up lesson plans that are just for us.

The teacher doesn't need it typed up in that way.

They've got their own ways of planning.

And I think if we want to see what's happening in the lesson, just go visit the classroom.

It's a lot of fun.

It's not that hard.

If you're looking for guidance, I've got a book called Now We're Talking, 21 Days to High Performance Instructional Leadership.

And that is, I believe, the number one book on classroom walkthroughs.

You can find that on Amazon or Solution Tree's website.

And I would encourage you to actually look at Chapter 2 of the book.

You can read Chapter 2 completely free on the Solution Tree website.

See the little pyramid there?

It's a Solution Tree book.

And they have on the website Chapter 2, which has the full model, the seven steps.

keys to sustainable impact as an instructional leader.

And you'll find that a lot of the time-wasting stuff that administrators tend to ask teachers for is not in this model.

All you have to do is get into classrooms, talk with teachers.

If it feels like a chore, if it feels like pulling teeth, you're doing it wrong.

This should be one of the most fun things you get to do as an instructional leader.

And as a teacher, this should feel professionally rewarding and validating.

Like if you feel like you're on the grill, if you feel like you're on the hot seat, something is wrong.

Like we want this to be an opportunity for us to talk about practice as professionals.

And that's why the book is called Now We're Talking because it's all about conversation.

Charlotte Danielson has a great book called Talk About Teaching that really informed a lot of my thinking about professional conversation.

So check out that book.

You can find it at principalcenter.com slash nwt, Now We're Talking.

and I hope that we can stop doing all these time-wasting things like data walls and posting lesson plans and requiring teachers to turn in lesson plans because this is a hard enough job as it is, and if you want to supervise that work better, get into classrooms.

Let me know what you think.