“Walk - throughs are being used in many schools throughout the nation and can take various forms. Often walk-throughs involve using an observation guide that has general components of quality teaching.” (Cordeiro & Cunningham, 2013, p. 203)
Cordeiro, P. A.& Cunningham, W. G., & (2013). Educational leadership: a bridge to improved practice. Boston: Pearson.
School leaders must be able to direct and put resources in place for the school to address instructional challenges. As leaders going into classrooms, observing, and providing feedback, this is essential to understand. It is the leaders in a building that orchestrate these opportunities for teachers. It is the responsibility of the leader to help guide, and provide resources for teachers to learn and reflect on teaching practices. Instructional walkthroughs give one option for leadership a place to look at a problem of practice and involve teachers in solving that problem, thus building their capacity.
As a teacher, I had the opportunity to participate in instructional rounds. Having a focus while completing observations helps teachers and leadership look for evidence that supports or is missing about that focus. I firmly believe that teachers need structured time to investigate and reflect on their practice. Instructional rounds give teachers that time to hone their craft. Additionally, they should be part of the problem-solving practice. In addition to taking part of instructional walk-throughs as a teacher, I recently had the opportunity to walk with teachers as an instructional coach. The debrief conversations I had with teachers in my group were powerful and encouraging. It was great to see many teachers reflect on their own practice and think of how to improve it just based on observing another teacher in action.
As a teacher, we always want to do our best. I would say in most cases we know what we need to do better on, but there might be something holding us back. This could be time, money for supplies, access to information, etc. Sometimes when we voice what we see ourselves doing well and what we need to work on, it validates the process of teaching and allows us to have honest conversations. This then gives others our perspective, and then conversations can happen that might help that teacher in their area of growth.
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