Visiting Classrooms: The Why and the How

There’s really just one way to figure out the answer to all of these questions. And that is: visit classrooms.

You can sit, locked in your office or meetings with admin, teachers, and students all day, and still not really know what’s happening at your school. Because honestly, we all speak slightly different languages.

We view instruction through the lens of our own experience. So, when a teacher tells you, “I differentiate my math instruction,” that can mean 8,000 different things – almost definitely not what you’re envisioning.

In order to make sure that the coaching support you’re providing is actually making an impact (and being relevant to teachers), you need to visit those rooms. You can read about four reasons coaches visit classrooms here.

So how do you set yourself up for successful visits, and what do you do once you’re there? Read on, dear coach for some tips to get you rolling!

1. Talk to your principal.
If your principal isn’t on board, you’re sort of asking for trouble. There are several reasons that you’ll want to talk to your principal before you begin visiting any classrooms. They may not consider this to be part of your roles and/or responsibilities. They may want you to debrief only verbally with teachers, and not provide written feedback. They may want you to look for something specific, such as something your campus is currently working on, in order to help you figure out what to do next. They also may want you to turn around and tell them every little thing you saw, which is not a good idea and not going to make you a trustworthy coach. So make sure you’re on the same page first.

2. Give teachers a heads-up.

If teachers haven’t had anyone visit their classroom for instructional purposes before, you popping in is definitely going to stress somebody out. Instead of just bursting in without any warning, send teachers an email (I’d recommend sending it out to grade levels or the whole school. If you send it individually, teachers may think they’re being singled out.) Just tell them the truth: you’re going to be visiting classrooms to see the great things that are going on on your campus and to figure out how you can best support teachers. 

Give a time frame for the visits to start, such as “next week”, “the week of the 18th”, or “after Labor Day”, for example. If you’re looking for something specific, you can say, “I’m going to pop in and see how Reader’s Workshop is going”, or “I can’t wait to see how your kids are utilizing their Writer’s Notebooks!”

3. Put it on your calendar.

If “visiting classrooms” isn’t on your calendar, you’re probably not ever going to actually do it. I recommend, when you’re starting out, that you visit every single classroom on your campus. This is going to take some time, so make sure it’s marked off with a nice block  of time.

Consider PE, lunch schedules, library, computer lab, art class, etc. All of those things interrupt the day and require some travel time for kids and teachers, too, so give yourself a wide berth in order to avoid visiting empty rooms.

I actually kept a little log of the dates I’d visited teachers’ rooms, in order to avoid getting mixed up and visiting the same rooms over and over. If you always visit rooms when fourth grade is at PE, you might miss visiting fourth grade and have no clue what you need to do to support them!