Scott Wisniewski created a new tradition when he became the principal of Pompton Lakes High School in northern New Jersey. Every day, he posts a picture he’s taken in school on Instagram, accompanied by an uplifting message, with the goal of keeping students engaged in school.
But lately, he’s found another group to celebrate online: teachers.
Just last week, as Wisniewski did informal observations with three math teachers, he posted pictures from their classrooms, along with a short note about what they were teaching, and how these teachers contributed to the school.
“It gives me an opportunity to highlight the teachers, … and just let them know I appreciate all that they do,” he said. “I’m putting it out there for our community. It’s not just contained to an email between two people.”
The Instagram posts are part of a larger effort by Wisniewski to make formal observations and informal pop-ins easier on his teachers. Wisniewski said he and his instructional leadership team—which consists of six subject-area coaches—do more than 300, five- to 10-minute classroom walkthroughs for his 90 teachers over the course of a school year. Members of the team try to drop into a teacher’s classroom at least four different times.
The broader canvas gives Wisniewski a more representative picture of a teacher’s style, rather than pinning it on one formal observation a year. It helps stave off the impression that he, as a principal, isn’t clued in to classroom goings-on.
Teachers, by and large, tend to find classroom walkthroughs—both formal observations and informal pop-ins—disruptive and unhelpful. Some say administrators don’t spend sufficient time in classes, are too rigid with their observational checklists, and often don’t engage with students in class, making the experience awkward and anxiety-inducing for the teacher.
Walkthroughs, though, are an essential tool for an instructional leader to track whether students are engaged in learning, and what instructional fixes or changes might be needed.
Eric Fox, the assistant principal of Jenks High School in Jenks, Okla., believes administrators have to strike the right balance between “being seen” enough by teachers, without being overbearing.
“A lot of it has to do with not feeling chained to your desk or phone,” said Fox, who often brings his rolling desk out to meet students and teachers in the hallways.
How to strike the visibility balance
Fox tries to catch up with his teachers and students outside of the classroom, as much as possible. It’s a tall order for Fox, given that his school has 900-odd students and 144 teachers. He spends the lunch hour with different groups of teachers, which gives him an informal opportunity to check in. A world history teacher, for instance, visited Egypt recently and spoke with Fox about how he might integrate his experiences into his world history lessons.
Fox can also smooth over budding problems when he meets teachers one-on-one or in small groups. A too-cold classroom or a malfunctioning projector are easy problems to fix, which makes teachers feel more comfortable and supported, he said.
For Wisniewski, too, it’s important to be seen by teachers and students. With him, his assistant principal, and the subject-area coaches visiting classrooms often, students and teachers are “desensitized” to an observer coming in, he said. This helps keep the class on track during an observation.
Teachers can often feel anxious about how their students might react to an observer who pops in unannounced. They told Education Week they’d rather their administrators get to know students and talk with them instead of just standing silently at the back of a class.
Fox tries to address this every opportunity he gets. While walking between buildings on his school’s campus, Fox stops to speak with students instead of checking his phone or answering emails. He said this pays dividends when he’s in a classroom.
“If students are working independently, or in a group, [and] if I want to look and see what they’re doing then, then I can, if I have that relationship with them. They’re not fearful to show me what they’re doing,” Fox said.
How principals can pace their observations
Wisniewski’s staggered walkthroughs—at least four informal pop-ins and one formal observation—give him the opportunity to sit in on a class where a teacher’s asked for help, for instance, with disruptive student behavior. It’s also a good way for him to check whether a teacher is missing some key tactics in their lessons, without basing his observations on a single visit.
For instance, Wisniewski said, if in all four visits, a teacher is just using a PowerPoint presentation, that would indicate to him that the teacher isn’t engaging the class enough.
He might intervene in the form of a friendly chat in the hallway or through a follow-up email to the teacher. He would also have a better sense of what kind of professional development that teacher needs.
Not all these observations need to be done by the principal. At Muscatine High School in Muscatine, Iowa, teachers, instructional coaches, and department heads often informally visit their colleagues’ classrooms. Andy Werling, assistant principal, said the school’s 100 teachers tend to get about five informal classroom visits, plus a formal observation, each year. In both types of walkthroughs, the observers pay attention to “what the students are being asked to do” and “what can they show they’ve learned from a lesson,” Werling said.
“When we collect these bits of data, we do not include the teacher names. It’s not individualized,” he said. “We do collect that data based on departments, and so we ask those departments to collaborate and refine what’s being observed.”
The broad trends in data help the administrators track changes in indicators like student engagement. Last term, Werling said, student engagement improved across subject areas thanks to teacher-to-teacher feedback after the observations.
Set the tone for a culture of feedback during the hiring process
The road to a healthy culture around feedback and observations can start with a school’s hiring decisions, said Susan Moore Johnson, an education professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Johnson, who studies teacher effectiveness, said it’s important for new teachers to get a sense of how observations and feedback work during the hiring process. She recommends that applicants do a “demo day” of teaching, which gives administrators and other teachers a chance to see their style. In turn, potential hires can experience what observations and feedback are like at the school.
“The goal of good hiring is to establish a match between the person who’s coming in, either as a transfer from another school or as a new hire, and the expectations of people in that school,” Johnson said.
The hiring problem is compounded if the new teacher feels isolated without any support and is then put through an observation, said Johnson. Schools can avoid this by creating a diverse hiring panel, which can include teachers from the department, who then have a responsibility to help the new hire.
“Some principals ... see themselves as heading up teams of people who are working together based on strong professional norms and a sense of accountability to families and kids, rather than simply to an assessment system,” said Johnson.
Fox, from Oklahoma, invites teachers to join the hiring panel for someone in their department. This way, when a new teacher struggles with student discipline or an instructional method, they can rely on the veteran teacher next door, who helped interview them, to show them the ropes.
“I can’t always have day-to-day interactions to deploy the culture throughout our new staff,” he said. “The teacher-to-teacher level is where the culture is really going to be.”
