The first part (chapters 1 through 5), which you may read over five school days, will address high-performance instructional leadership fundamentals. It will discuss why instructional leaders belong in classrooms, introduce the high-performance instructional leadership model, and compare this model to several other classroom walkthrough models with which you may already be familiar. You will also plan and complete your first day of classroom visits.
This introductory section also describes the first three cycles of visits, which will gradually increase in intensity as you develop your skills in high-performance instructional leadership. Although you will not participate in the third and most complex stage of visits at this point, I describe the third cycle (in chapter 5, page 43) so you have a complete picture of the model and an eye to what you will work toward as you improve your instructional leadership skills. You may revisit these fundamental aspects at any time throughout the twenty-one-day process.
The second part (chapters 6 through 10) delves into high-performance habits. Many of these administrative habits, such as making time to visit classrooms, keeping interruptions under control, and organizing your to-do lists, will assist you in your efforts to get into classrooms daily.
The third part (chapters 11 through 15) emphasizes the crux of the high-performance instructional leadership model—learning how to have high-impact instructional conversations with teachers. These chapters discuss going beyond data collection and learning the skills required to have productive, evidence-based conversations with teachers.
The fourth part (chapters 16 through 21) builds on the results of your classroom visits. It discusses improving your feedback repertoire, balancing formal with informal evaluation responsibilities, identifying improvements to make, and scaling high-impact instructional visits across your school and district.
I’ve arranged the chapters and action items in a sequence that will help you adopt a bias toward action, because—while it will take the entire book to fully share this instructional leadership model and its many benefits—I don’t want you to postpone taking action. Take small steps daily to implement the systems and strategies I describe in the following chapters, and in about a month’s time, you’ll develop powerful new instructional leadership habits that will increase your impact on student learning, reduce your stress level, and strengthen your professional relationships.
WEEK 1
High-Performance Instructional Leadership Fundamentals
In this part, we explore the fundamentals of the high-performance instructional leadership model. You’ll learn why and how to make a habit of classroom visits that are frequent, brief, substantive, open ended, evidence based, criterion referenced, and conversation oriented. We look at each of these features in detail and contrast the model with other supervision and instructional leadership approaches so you can get started right away with integrating the high-performance instructional leadership model into your existing practices.
1
Understanding Why Instructional Leaders Belong in Classrooms
“Genchi genbutsu—Go to the real place.” This Japanese phrase suggests that wise leaders should spend significant time in the spaces where the core work of their organization takes place, because that’s where the challenges and opportunities become clear. If school administrators are to be leaders of learning, we must get into classrooms on a daily basis. Yet this imperative to “go to the real place” is taken most seriously not in schools, but in Toyota factories, where it is a key principle (Liker, 2004). The Toyota manufacturing system expects managers and supervisors to regularly visit the shop floors where the workers are doing their jobs instead of managing them from the comfort of their offices. Without talking with their front-line employees, solving problems together, and gaining perspective on what the work truly entails, leaders simply cannot lead. If this is true for leaders in highly routinized environments like Toyota factories, it’s even more crucial in dynamic, human-centric organizations like schools, where decisions are more complex and relationships are key. If we aspire to be highperformance instructional leaders, I believe we must spend substantial time in classrooms, where the core work of teaching and learning takes place. For only through classroom visits, as you will learn in this chapter, can we gain decisional information, build strong professional relationships, and enhance professional development.
Gain Decisional Information
Let’s return for a moment to our definition of instructional leadership: the practice of making and implementing operational and improvement decisions. One of the most valuable benefits of spending time in classrooms is what Mintzberg (1973) terms decisional information—information that directly informs the decisions leaders must make. For principals and other administrators who must make high-stakes decisions on behalf of their organizations, information about what’s actually taking place in classrooms is a priceless asset. Which teachers are ready to take on new professional challenges, and which are at risk for nonrenewal? Among students, who is struggling, who is thriving, and why? What impact is professional development having on teaching practice? Did we choose the right curriculum? How can we best deploy our coaching resources for maximum impact? As effective managers, we must seek the answers to these questions—and they’re answers that we can only find in classrooms.
For principals and other administrators who must make high-stakes decisions on behalf of their organizations, information about what’s actually taking place in classrooms is a priceless asset.
In my work with school and district leaders, I’ve rarely encountered anyone who wants to be known as a manager rather than a leader, perhaps because the term management has taken on a stigma through its association with maintaining the status quo. Certainly, there are many aspects of the status quo that should make us uncomfortable and that should prompt us to pursue change. Yet the status quo also produces all of the good results we’re currently getting—a fact we often overlook in our earnest efforts to lead change. For this reason, effective management is at the heart of my definition of instructional leadership—the practice of making and implementing operational and improvement decisions. It’s important to understand your school’s current practices—good and bad—in order to make sound decisions about what to sustain by managing well, and what to change. For example, a principal who wants to introduce new literacy strategies will have a hard time persuading and helping teachers to adopt new practices without an understanding of their current practices in literacy instruction. Abraham Zaleznik (2004) frames management as problem-solving work, and solving problems requires current, firsthand information about the problems. Effective instructional leaders need decisional information, and that means we need to be in classrooms.
Build Strong Professional Relationships
To lead the changes our students need us to make on their behalf,