Walk throughs offer new way to view schools

By Joan Richardson

Tools for Schools, Oct/Nov. 2001

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2001

In 1998, educators at Haas Middle School in Corpus Christi knew they needed to change: 47 percent of the students were being retained in their grade each year and some children were spending three or four years in the same grade.

"We knew we had to do something to change what was going on in the classroom. No one had given any instructional guidance to the faculty in years,’’ said Deborah Scates who arrived that year as principal.

The strategy that has had the greatest impact on changing teacher behavior and improving Haas has been Instructionally-focused Walk Throughs, she said.

"The relationships in the building have changed. Everything now is focused on staff development and improvement of teaching. It’s all about learning here,’’ Scates said. Student achievement on Texas’ statewide reading assessment has also improved, she said.

Although many educators are familiar with walk throughs, the walk through is a new twist on an old idea.

In more traditional walk throughs, someone – usually a principal or an outside observer – goes through the school with a checklist and notes a variety of activities or materials in the classroom. "Sometimes, they stop in a classroom for a long period of time. Sometimes, they just stick their head in the door. What they want out of it is not really well-defined so they don’t get much out of it,’’ said George Perry, a consultant who works with several Corpus Christi, Texas, schools under a grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.

Whether known as "instructional walks,’’ "learning walks,’’ or "data in a day,’’ the pattern of walk throughs is roughly the same: A team of observers is dispatched to numerous classrooms where they spend about 10 minutes looking for very specific things. At the conclusion, the observers assemble their information and share what they have learned with the teachers whose rooms have been observed.

Unlike a classroom observation which provides a view of a single classroom, a walk through creates a schoolwide picture made up of many small snapshots, Perry said. It’s a strategy for providing a school, not an individual teacher, with feedback about what it’s doing or not doing, he said.

"You can gather a lot of really good information in a short period of time if you’re very focused on what you’re doing. The more narrow the focus, the easier it is to talk with someone about what they’re doing,’’ Perry said.

At Haas, a team walks through about once a week, Scates said. Sometimes, the observers are from other Corpus Christ middle schools whose principals work closely with Scates. She then reciprocates by doing walk throughs of their schools. But, nearly every week, a Haas team walks through the building. The school-based team includes Scates, an assistant principal, and three or four teachers. Teachers rotate on and off the walk through team. So far, about half of the Haas teachers have participated in a walk through as a team member. The rest will get their chance this year, she said.

As with any school improvement process, a school that wants to do walk throughs needs to be familiar with its data about student achievement and to have deep conversations about what teachers will do to improve student achievement. In those discussions, teachers must be clear about what is expected to happen in each classroom and principals need to ensure that teachers are provided with professional learning opportunities to help them make the necessary changes.

Walk throughs are a way of collecting data about the school’s success in achieving its goals, Perry said. They provide a way for the principal to determine what additional support teachers need in order to achieve the school’s goals.

At Haas, for example, the overarching focus is on literacy and one of its goals is to increase the amount of student writing.

Preparing for a walk through to gauge the school’s progress on that goal, the visitors would assemble in the principal’s office for about 30 minutes and discuss what they would expect to find in a middle school classroom:

• Visitors would see students writing.
• Visitors would see evidence of past student writing such as piles of written work in the classroom and examples of student writing posted on classroom walls.
• Students would maintain writing journals.
• Students would be able to explain the writing process.
• Exemplary student writing would be highlighted so students know the standard for good writing.
• Prompts for journal writing would be on the chalkboard.

Before going into the classroom, visitors would be assigned a specific task. For example, one visitor might be assigned to note whether and what types of student writing are displayed in the room, another to write down what is written on the chalkboard, and another to pull aside one or two students to learn what they understand about the writing process.

In most walk throughs, the teaching continues and the visitors sit in the back or walk quietly around the classroom looking for evidence, Perry said. If visitors are going to talk with students, teachers need to be aware of that ahead of time. The visitors do not speak to each other while they are in a classroom.

Visitors spend only 10 to 15 minutes in each room. The visitors repeat the same pattern in each classroom they visit.

After leaving each classroom, the team of visitors goes down the hall a short way and spends about five minutes comparing notes.

After visiting all of the classrooms for that day, the visitors assemble and spend about 45 minutes going over the evidence they have collected.

At Haas, Scates prepares two reports. The first is a general report about what the team observed; the second is an individual report for each teacher.

She takes that a step further by having a private conversation with each teacher within a day of the walk through. "I think the worst thing you could do is put the form in a box and not talk with them,’’ she said.

Typically, her conversations sound like this: "I saw you were doing this. Can you explain why you were doing that? I noticed that you didn’t do this. Can you explain why?"

"When the teachers answer the questions, that’s where the learning comes in,’’ she said.

Perry believes the walk throughs also produce information in bite-sized pieces that are easier for teachers to digest. "Talking to a teacher or to a faculty about a whole laundry list of things confuses the issue. That allows teachers to pick and choose what they hear and what they respond to. It’s easier to attend to a shorter list of things than a longer list of things."

Learning for teachers also occurs when they have a chance to get inside another teacher’s classroom. "That really opens their eyes to the need for improvement and for consistency. They assume everyone else is doing what they’re doing. They find that’s not the case,’’ Scates said.

Perry agrees. "Not until teachers get into each other’s classrooms and see practices are they actually able to understand what’s going on and why there’s a need for change and for ideas about how to do that.’’

"By the numbers," by Margery Ginsberg, Journal of Staff Development, Spring 2001. Describes the Data in a Day process as it has been used to collect information about classroom practices that support student motivation. Available online at www.nsdc.org/library/jsd/ginsberg222.html.

Data in a Day. Concept developed by Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory to gather data about issues considered important by staff and students. NWREL’s web site offers information to get a school started on this process. www.nwrel.org/scpd/scc/studentvoices/diad.shtml.

"Data analysis by walking around," by Francis Barnes and Marilyn Miller, The School Administrator, April 2001. Article describing the walk throughs practiced at the Palisades School District in Pennsylvania. Available online at www.aasa.org/publications/sa/2001_04/barnes_april2001.htm

"Face to face," by Francis Barnes, Marilyn Miller, and Roger Dennis, Journal of Staff Development, Fall 2001 (Vol. 22, No. 4). Article describing how the Palisades School District in Pennsylvania using walk throughs as a school improvement strategy. Available online at www.nsdc.org/library/jsd/barnes224.html.