Better Conversations for Better Feedback on Teaching

Repertoire is a web-based walkthrough app from Justin Baeder, creator of The Instructional Leadership Challenge and author of Now We're Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership.

Repertoire is available exclusively to members of the Instructional Leadership Association, our main program at The Principal Center.

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Repertoire is designed to help you:

Build your repertoire of "the language of learning"
Capture evidence-rich notes in the classroom—with dramatically less typing
Have conversations with teachers that lead to better decisions

Repertoire is a different kind of teacher observation and walkthrough feedback app.

Based on the leadership principles in The Instructional Leadership Challenge, Repertoire helps you take notes and send written feedback to teachers in dramatically less time—while helping you build your repertoire of helpful feedback phrases.

How Repertoire Works:

You can start an observation from a template, or from scratch
You type your notes and feedback into the "snippets" box, and Repertoire will suggest matching snippets that you've already typed
New snippets are automatically saved to your personal database, and can be deleted with one click
Each snippet you type or select is added to your message
Make additional edits to your message as needed
Send the email to yourself, to the teacher you're observing, and up to two additional email accounts
Copy and paste into any other apps you use for feedback and documentation

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Next Up: Get To Every Teacher

Repertoire's "Next Up" button automatically finds the teacher you need to observe next, so you never miss anyone.

Simply enter your staff roster and the app will pick teachers at random for your first cycle of observations.

Then, once you've visited everyone once, Repertoire will select the teacher you haven't observed in the longest time.

That way, you won't miss anyone, and you won't avoid anyone. And if someone is absent or isn't teaching at the moment, you can hit "Next Up" again to jump to the next teacher—and the teacher you skipped will be selected next time you hit the button.

Snippets: Better Writing with Less Typing

Snippets are saved chunks of text—of any length—that you might use again. They can be:

Single words or short phrases
Complete sentences
Entire paragraphs or even multi-paragraph outlines

When you type something in the Snippet box and hit enter, Repertoire remembers it and suggests it next time you start typing the same thing.

There are no extra steps, no settings to configure—and you don't even have to decide to save a snippet. It happens for you, effortlessly, as you write.

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How Snippets Work, And How They Help

Repertoire's Snippet feature increases your capacity for instructional leadership in three ways:

Reduced typing time—instead of typing an entire phrase or sentence all over again, you can simply tap or click to select it, then hit enter to add it to the message you're writing. The time savings are even greater when you're on a smartphone or tablet.
Reduced cognitive load—instead of coming up with just the right turn of phrase from scratch, you can draw on—and expand on—your previous thinking to provide better-quality descriptions of teacher practice and start better conversations about teaching and learning
External memory—instead of relying on your brain's memory for the exact wording of dozens or hundreds of standards, criteria, and practices, you can extend your brain's repertoire using technology. By accessing and using this repertoire more frequently, you'll rapidly expand your expertise and skill in providing instructional leadership across a vast range of issues and domains.

You can keep just about any kind of text in Repertoire Snippets:

Long or hard-to-type single words
Carefully-wordsmithed phrases to convey nuanced meaning
Boilerplate phrases such as salutations and requests
Reference information, such as your evaluation criteria, that you may want to find via keyword, even if you don't include the criteria in your message.

You can copy and paste whatever text you'd like into the Snippet box, or you can upload a spreadsheet to bulk-import an entire library of words, phrases, standards, criteria, or anything else.

For example, if you type "1c3" you can pull up the Danielson Framework's Domain 1, Component C, Level 3 descriptor so you know what "proficient" practice for "setting instructional outcomes" looks like.

Or if you type "clauses" you can pull up "L.7.1c. Place phrases and clauses within a sentence, recognizing and correcting misplaced and dangling modifiers." if you've added the Common Core State Standards Language Progressive Skills to your library.

It's entirely up to you. There's no clutter, because your Snippet library only contains snippets that you've actually typed, or that you've imported to enhance your repertoire.

And if you want to delete a Snippet, just click the red X when it appears in your search results.

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Templates: Providing Consistent Communication

Repertoire's Templates feature allows you to create a re-usable template for any situation:

Message structure—If you want to use a similar salutation and signature for each message you send, you can save it as a template, and add unique content to the middle.

Thinking structures—If you want to structure your thinking with sentence-starters such as "Students were..." and "I noticed..." you can include them in a template.

Activity-specific templates—If you enter a classroom and group work is in progress, you can give yourself sentence-starters to provide high-quality feedback on the teacher's approach to facilitation. Or, if direct instruction is taking place, you can pull up your template for feedback on direct instruction—whatever the situation demands.

Strategy-specific feedback—If you're focusing your feedback on a particular instructional strategy or initiative, you can use the same structure for your feedback to each teacher.

Non-observation emails—If you want to provide feedback on each teacher's weekly lesson plans, you can create a message template and re-use it for each teacher—with the teacher's name, date, and other information pre-filled with easy-to-add variables.

Repertoire supports a number of template variables to save you even more time: First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Date (several formats), Day of week, and Time of Day (Morning/Afternoon).

Scripting: Better Documentation for Better Conversation

If you like to "script" a running record of what you're seeing and hearing in the classroom, Repertoire makes it fast and easy:

Timestamps help you effortlessly track the duration of each event in the lesson.
Snippets save valuable typing time for routine words and phrases such as "Teacher is circulating to check on students as they work independently."
Our auto-save feature makes it easy to work from your mobile device—even if you get interrupted.

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Repertoire & The High Performance Triangle

High-performance systems have three features in common:

The right strategy, which is what makes us effective
The right tools, which allow us to be efficient
The right habits, which allow us to be consistent

Repertoire will make you dramatically more efficient in documenting classroom observations and providing written feedback, using specific evidence and the language of your instructional framework.

It requires no preprogramming, and will automatically remember the teachers, templates, and phrases you enter as you use the app.

Next time you start to type a name, template, or phrase, the app will suggest it, so all you have to do is hit "enter"—saving you valuable time, effort, and cognitive bandwidth.

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Justin Baeder, PhD

Director, The Principal Center

I believe that instructional leadership is one of the most rewarding and challenging roles in the world. We have the opportunity to impact students' lives forever—but so much can get in the way.

There's too much information to manage, too many staff to supervise, and too many ideas to keep in your head.

We've created Repertoire to expand your capacity to use the "language of learning" in all of your written communication and documentation as an instructional leader. I hope you like it!

Sincerely,

—Justin Baeder, PhD