Week 1: How daily classroom visits can build trust with faculty
Instructional Walks: The First Four Weeks
This is the first of four emails to help you get started with instructional walks. More information is available at the bottom of this post if you are interested in continuing your journey as a literacy leader, including an “open house” for the Reading by Example community this Thursday. Take care, -Matt
This week, we will learn how to get into classrooms daily in order to:
develop a sense of trust with teachers, which helps
create confidence within teachers and ourselves, in order to
build our collective knowledge in literacy to support all learners.
The larger goal is a school culture that offers an excellent learning experience for readers and writers that is sustainable over time.
Trust: A Means to an End
The purpose of trust, defined as how well once can depend on and predict the actions of another, is sometimes treated as a goal in itself.
It's not.
Trust is better viewed as a first step toward everything else we strive for as school leaders.
A primary way to start building schoolwide trust is by getting into classrooms on a daily basis. These visits are intentional, referred to as "instructional walks" (Routman, 2014). There are informal, nonevaluative observations of instruction, with the initial goal of learning in order to notice and name the strengths and efforts that teachers demonstrate.
Here is a visualization of this practice.
While this figure depicts the entire process, we are going to start these first couple of weeks by simply visiting classrooms without taking notes or communicating feedback.
The goal is:
3 classrooms a day
15 minutes in each classroom
1 kind public comment
1 key takeaway after each visit
Even by starting small here, this new practice may feel daunting. As a school leader myself, I know:
How busy our days can get
How the to-do list can feel endless
The anxiety we think we might create in teachers during our visits
I wouldn't recommend instructional walks unless I believe them to be essential to your school's success. In fact, it's become the core practice of my work. After ten years of conducting instructional walks, it went from an obligation I felt I must do to the most enjoyable part of my day.
To help make instructional walks a priority, consider the following three benefits as they relate to building trust with teachers.
Benefit #1: Simply showing up in classrooms builds trust.
Seeing your face and observing your positive presence in classrooms says so much to your teachers and students, for instance:
"Even though we know you are busy, you care enough to be here."
"When you show up, you demonstrate that our work is important."
"I appreciate it when you recognize our efforts."
And every time you show up, you deepen these feelings of being appreciated and noticed.
If you will…consider regular instructional walks sort of like dating: you are making an effort to get to know someone else. Trust increases after each visit.
Where the comparison fails (beyond the obvious :-) is, unlike dating in which it may or may not work out, every classroom must become your future partner! As leaders, we may have influence but only through the impact teachers have with their students. That's why it's imperative to form relationships from the beginning.
Benefit #2: Your literacy learning is accelerated with frequent visits, which improves everyone's confidence in having conversations about instruction.
When I first began instructional walks over ten years ago, I had little to no experience in the grade levels I was visiting.
Yet in a rare form of wisdom from my earlier days as an administrator, I took the initial stance as a learner while observing teaching and learning.
I shared simple observations about the what the teacher was doing, such as including students in the organization of the classroom library.
I asked questions from a source of genuine curiosity, for example, "What benefits are you seeing from including students in managing the classroom library?"
If the teacher shared a challenge they were experiencing, I tried to be a thought partner through engaged listening instead of offering advice.
If every leader did just these three things - observed, wondered, and explored next steps with teachers - school improvement would occur nationwide.
Why? Because through our language, we are documenting strengths and supporting teachers’ capacity to self-direct their own learning. We convey through our words: "I trust in your ability to teach our students and believe in your potential to grow."
Plus, what we share from our observations is evidence of a teacher's success, which over time builds competence, which leads to confidence: in themselves, in our students, and with each other.
Benefit #3: Appreciated and confident teachers are more likely to innovate and improve.
The word "innovation" gets thrown out a lot in educational circles, and too often before ensuring a base level of competence is seen over time.
What I mean by innovation in the context of teaching and learning is simply being attentive to what's working and what isn't in the classroom, and then responding to students' needs in new or novel ways.
For example, a veteran teacher during my first year as principal in one school was frustrated with the current literacy curriculum at the time. "My kids just aren't engaged as I think they should be." She shared this with me after several instructional walks; I was not surprised by her comment after observing her own lack of engagement in the resource.
I responded:
"I am glad you shared that with me. I've noticed similar things during my visits. Are you thinking about trying something different?"
She looked at me, a little startled, and then laughed. "Okay, that was easy!" I later learned that previous concerns shared about the literacy curriculum were met with resistance from colleagues and leadership, likely concerned that they might have to change their practice too if this teacher's new approach was more effective.
If I hadn't made a consistent effort to get into classrooms and understand the context of day-to-day instruction, I would not have understood the real challenges teachers face in their work. But because I built trust by simply showing up and engaging in regular conversations about this teacher’s work, she felt confident enough to speak up and share her concerns.
Try it and Apply it: 3 Classrooms a Day
The objective for this first month of engaging an instructional walks is to visit every classroom in your school twice. Stay long enough to get a sense of the learning experience. If you are assigned to multiple buildings, lower the objective to what feels doable for you.
The goal is not to make 60 classroom visits; the goal is to start building trust with faculty on your journey toward schoolwide literacy excellence. Instructional walks are simply the vehicle in which to help make this happen.
Still unsure about instructional walks? I was in the beginning. With that, consider the following three tips to help remove any obstacles and support a successful start.
Tip #1: Tell the faculty what you will be doing ahead of time and why.
By giving teachers a heads up, they will have time to mentally prepare for your visits and ask any questions if they have concerns.
A simple email or announcement at a staff meeting will suffice. Communicate your intentions as wanting to learn and to get to know each classroom so you can better support everyone's work.
Tip #2: If concerns persist, empathize and clarify.
For example, some teachers may have had a poor experience with previous administration.
If we don't attempt to learn more about their history and why the negative experience has them worried, we may perpetuate this anxiety just by our presence. You can ask, "What about these informal classroom visits have you most worried?" They might share that a previous principal gave them a less-than-effective performance rating during a one-time unannounced formal observation.
You can respond first with empathy and relate a similar negative experience you might have had as a teacher. Then seek to clarify your intentions. For example, differentiate instructional walks from formal observations, especially the nonevaluative nature of the former.
Tip #3: Visit every classroom before doing a 2nd instructional walk for the same teacher.
We tend to go where we are welcome.
But for instructional walks to have a schoolwide impact, we need a comprehensive understanding of the organization as a whole. That requires a commitment to seeing and appreciating each classroom, regardless of how welcoming a teacher might be with your presence.
To keep track of where I've been, I maintain a documentation form for my visits.
Below are links to templates that you can copy and use:
I've also started writing down what resonated with me after each visit - what I liked, what surprised me, or what I felt was important during the instructional walk. I keep these takeaways short - a phrase or a sentence. This brevity helps me with reflection and next steps when I review them after my first round of instructional walks.
Here’s a sample of what I wrote for our first days back at school (we started early).
Documenting what resonates through an appreciative lens is the first step in building your knowledge of teacher instruction, overall strengths, and schoolwide trust.
🙌 During this first week, share your successes in the comments - no celebration is too small!
In the next session, you will learn how to take the information you documented from your instructional walks to develop a better understanding of your school.
Instructional Walks Email Course Checklist
Week 1: How daily classroom visits can build trust with facultyWeek 2: How to see literacy instruction through a learning (vs. judgment) lens
Week 3: How to affirm promising literacy practices
Week 4: How to communicate feedback teachers find respectful and useful
“I don't have confidence in myself, I have evidence.”
― Ryan Holliday
Reading by Example Community “Open House”
Want to continue your journey as a literacy leader? I’m hosting my first class, “How Leaders Can Know Literacy”, within the new Reading by Example community this fall. The goal is to give you the strategies, tools, and confidence to building a thriving school culture where all students are readers and writers.
Benefits include being able to connect with members (including me) directly in this private space, plus have access to more templates, live video conversations, curated resource lists, a book study, and short courses similar to this one. For more information, join our Open House via Zoom this Thursday, 9/8 at 4:15 P.M. CST by registering below.
Celebration Zoom Call with Regie Routman
Join me on Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 6 P.M. CST for a live video conversation with Regie Routman, author of Read, Write, Lead: Breakthrough Strategies for Schoolwide Literacy Success and many other books. We want to celebrate your first four weeks of instructional walks! I will also be asking Regie to share her wisdom on becoming a literacy leader.