Short Observations Provide Plenty of Evidence — But Context Matters
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how brief, informal classroom visits can be highly informative when paired with conversations that provide context.
Key Takeaways
- Brief visits are valuable - Even 5-10 minutes in a classroom reveals useful information about instruction
- Context transforms observation - What you see matters less than understanding why you're seeing it — which requires conversation
- Don't over-interpret snapshots - Short visits should prompt questions and dialogue, not final judgments
Transcript
The challenge with classroom walkthroughs or mini observations or informal observations is that even though there's a lot to pay attention to, even in a short visit, there's not a lot of context.
There's not a lot of information about what's going on and what the context of what you're observing is.
So if you stop by for a brief visit, great.
There's plenty to talk about.
but we've got to put that into context we've got to understand where are we in the unit what's been happening with this class what's the teacher's instructional purpose for the activity that we're observing if we force ourselves as instructional leaders to give feedback on all of that without knowing the answers to those questions without having any of the teacher's perspective then that feedback is often going to be a lot less valuable so i think the most important thing that we can do is talk with the teacher get a sense of what the purpose was what's been going on what the context was what happened yesterday And when we know that, then we can have good feedback conversations.
But I think we've got to first seek to understand what we're seeing and then decide what we think about it.
When we force ourselves to like fill out a form or give suggestions or write something down that gives the teacher feedback before we've had a chance to talk with the teacher, then we are inevitably going to miss the biggest opportunities.
So if you want some feedback questions that can help you get at some of those essential contextual issues, go to principalcenter.com feedback and you'll see my 10 questions for evidence-driven feedback on teaching.
Let me know what you think.