Should We Abolish Walkthrough Forms?

I think we should abolish walkthrough forms.

And I say that as someone who has made a lot of walkthrough forms over the years, who's used a lot of walkthrough forms.

And having done all that, I feel like they get in the way.

In fact, the last time I used a form or actually received a form like this was when I bought a mattress.

And maybe you've received a form when you got a speeding ticket.

One of my first jobs in high school was working at the corporate office of a department store, typing in extended warranties that had been written out by hand on paper like this.

I think I got the third copy in a triplicate packet.

I had the pink copy and I type in all the different form fields that people had filled out into a computer database.

And I think that's what forms are good for, right?

If you have a database and you need certain information to go into that database, forms make a lot of sense, but that's not really our primary goal with classroom walkthroughs.

Let's talk about it.

So with classroom walkthroughs, what is our goal?

I think it should be to have a professional conversation with the teacher.

It's not to fill out a form.

It's not to put an entry in a database.

The purpose is to have a professional interaction that improves teaching and learning.

And from your perspective as an instructional leader, a conversation and interaction that informs you so that you can make better decisions as a leader.

In fact, my definition of instructional leadership is the practice of making and implementing operational and improvement decisions in the service of student learning.

So we're both benefiting from the conversation, the teacher benefits and the instructional leader benefits.

But I'm not convinced that those benefits are enhanced at all by forms.

I think we we've got to get rid of the forms, whether they're paper or electronic, they're mostly electronic these days.

And I think one of the big problems with electronic forms is that it's so easy to make them so complicated, right?

If you have nine different initiatives going on in your district, it's pretty easy to make a Google form that has a field for every single one of those initiatives or five fields for every initiative.

You could have a Google form that's almost infinitely long.

And of course, the longer it gets, the more impossible it becomes.

to fill out.

And what ends up happening is we let the perfect be the enemy, the good.

We think, I want all of these priorities to be accomplished through this one vehicle, this one process of doing walkthroughs and filling out this one form.

Well, that form becomes such a beast that the walkthroughs never happen.

Administrators simply don't get into classrooms when the task is so daunting.

And it's not just that it's daunting.

It's not like people are lacking in willpower or courage.

It's that a lot of what's on that field can't really even be observed, right?

It's either something that doesn't happen all the time.

It's something that happens outside of class time.

It's something that happens invisibly during class time, like teacher judgment, teacher thinking.

And those are things that we can get at through a combination of direct observation and conversation, but just putting them on a form doesn't make them observable.

And I call this tendency observability bias, the tendency to focus on what's easiest for us to observe rather than what really matters in an interaction.

And we never really know in advance what is going to matter most.

We have to show up and pay attention.

We have to go into classrooms with open eyes and be willing to talk with the teacher about whatever is most relevant at the time, not whatever happens to be on our form.

So I think we've got to get rid of the paper forms, of course, the electronic forms, and especially the overly complicated electronic forms.

and focus on what this interaction really needs to be, which is a person-to-person professional conversation.

And that professional conversation still needs to be based on evidence, it still needs to be based on evaluation criteria, but it doesn't need to be based around form fields.

So what should you write down in a classroom walkthrough?

Well, I think from the very beginning, nothing.

You don't need to write anything down at the beginning of your classroom walkthroughs.

That first cycle, that second cycle, you don't need to write anything down at all.

Starting in your third cycle, in what I call the three cycle startup plan, you do want to start taking notes and just documenting what you're seeing so that you have a common basis for conversation.

You have some specific evidence to talk about, to cite, to mention to the teacher, to start the conversation.

But you're not filling out a million form fields.

And certainly what you're giving to the teacher should not feel like a speeding ticket, should not feel like they just bought a mattress.

It should feel like they had a good conversation with an instructional leader who cares about teaching and learning and cares about them because that is the reality, right?

So we don't want forms to get in the way.

And that means we should not be giving forms to teachers.

If you give anything to the teacher, it should be a handwritten note or a typed up emailed copy of your notes that you took during the lesson.

Those could be timestamped.

Those could be, you know, low inference scripts.

scripting, whatever kind of notes you want to take, just give them to the teacher so they have a copy of what you have.

They're not worried that you're compiling some secret portfolio against them.

They are not feeling like they got a speeding ticket.

They're feeling like they had a good professional interaction.

So let me know what you think about this.

I think we need to abolish the forms and make walkthroughs a human interaction again.

Let me know what you think.