Foster Instructional Best Practices: Add Learning Walks to Your School’s Evaluation Toolkit
As a team, the leaders and teachers understand that the student’s work is a mirror of the teacher’s work, the teacher’s work is a mirror of the principal’s work, and the principal’s work is a mirror of the superintendent’s work.
– Institute for Learning
INTRO
The Learning Walk routine is a proven and powerful tool for getting smarter about teaching and learning. For almost 25 years, this research-backed practice has been used to understand core instructional work across classrooms in schools and districts.
OBJECTIVES
- Determine effectiveness of practices being implemented in a school or district
- Examine best practices across all classrooms in a school or district
- Illuminate successes and challenges, revealing high-impact opportunities to improve instruction
ACTIVITY
The Learning Walk routine reflects the instructional core: how teachers teach, how students learn, and what gets taught to whom. The Learning Walk sits within existing instruction and typically centers on inquiries identified by teachers themselves.
The Routine works across different observational conditions:
- Virtual classes in live-time
- Short video segments of lessons uploaded by teachers
- Live lessons inside the classroom
The Learning Walk is frequently used after professional development has been provided in order to identify effective practices. It helps schools and districts respond to questions like:
1. How are effective practices being implemented in a school or district?
2. What texts and tasks engage students?
3. How can instruction be used to support student voice and agency?
4. What does student talk sound like? How do teachers promote productive talk?
5. How are classrooms exhibiting equitable practice?
6. What professional development activities benefit teachers and students?
Preparing for the Learning Walk
- Determine schedule
- A lens, or focus, for the walk is determined by the administrators and teachers.
- See “Before Using the Routine” in the Tips section below.
Viewing Classrooms
- Walkers view the classrooms for 12-15 minutes.
- Walkers keep track of their observations and questions.
Observations should be recorded immediately. Each walker fills out the observation form that relates to the focus provided by the teachers. Walkers make observations that are not evaluative or for auditing. The notes should be rooted in the teacher’s focus and evidence from the classroom, and be void of praise or correction.
Debriefing and Planning Next Steps
- The team facilitates the sharing of observations garnered from the walkers.
- The group notes trends and commonalities across classrooms.
- Next steps are discussed.
Next steps apply to everyone up and down the line of educator stakeholders, from teacher to superintendent.
There is little to gain from classroom visits unless they are followed by coaching and professional development. The goal of the Learning Walk routine is to provide feedback to the teacher that will move their practice forward. This means the feedback provided should come from a coaching stance, the feedback process should be interactive, and the teacher should participate in designing the next steps.
TIPS
Before Using the Routine
Establish, at minimum, the beginnings of a robust learning community.
- Ensure that your school, plus those involved in using the Cloud Learning Walk routine are all versed in:
- Effort-based learning and intelligence
- The Cloud Learning Walk routine and norms for collaborative study
- The requirements of the platform used in schools to allow non-district participants into the virtual classrooms
- Ensure that teachers have engaged in professional development before the Cloud Learning Walk routine is implemented at a school, and that classroom visits are related to that professional development.
Observing From Virtual Spaces
Know the platform being used for instruction beforehand (Zoom, Google Classroom etc.) to prevent unnecessary disruptions and delays.
- Ensure you have the appropriate permission (from the teacher) to enter the virtual classroom ahead of time.
- Identify a timekeeper so you can move on to the next classroom every 10-15 minutes.
- Walkers should enter virtual lessons with microphones and cameras off to limit disruption to lessons. Teachers and students should not be distracted.
Focus on Equitable Instruction
The move to online instruction made salient the need to sharpen focus on equitable practice.
- Walkers who specialize in services for designated student populations, such as emergent multilingual students or special education students, should be active participants in the walk. During the walk, those specialists observe through their unique lens of understanding. The intent is to help teachers and school leaders highlight how instruction invites every student into the content and learning at a high level.
- The more diverse the perspective of the walkers, the more likely they are to find evidence of and frame observations around what constitutes equitable (or more equitable) instructional practice.
Responses