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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, we must form strong professional relationships with the teachers we instruct, because it’s only through relationships that we can inspire the necessary level of commitment to produce change (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). There’s no better way to strengthen professional relationships than to have substantive instructional conversations on a regular basis, as Charlotte Danielson (2015), author of the most widely used teacher evaluation framework, notes in her book Talk About Teaching! Leading Professional Conversations. Danielson (2015) writes that “informal conversations are critical to the culture in a school; they help convey respect and build trust across the hierarchy” (p. 20), and argues that when “conducted in an environment of trust and respect, they offer important opportunities for professional learning” (p. 25).

Yet if these conversations are to be more than mere philosophizing, they must stem from firsthand experience with teaching and learning—experience that teachers and leaders gain together in the classroom, where the core work of teaching and learning takes place. If spending time in classrooms is essential for effective management, it’s even more essential for high-performance instructional leadership and for building strong professional relationships.

Enhance Professional Development

When you visit classrooms, you can see for yourself what teachers and students are doing on a daily basis. This information is valuable in its own right, but it becomes dramatically more valuable when put into context through a conversation with the teacher. These conversations can provide some of the best professional development available anywhere, for both the instructional leader and the teacher (Danielson, 2015). Discussing evidence from the lesson, relating it to shared expectations, and talking about next steps is an incredibly powerful process. It gives the teacher information about his or her own practice, and it gives you information about both what teachers are doing and how they’re thinking about their work.

For instructional leaders who are also organizational leaders, the value of this information is even greater. Consider the huge range of decisions school administrators must make or advise on: strategic planning, scheduling, professional development, teacher evaluation, and so on. The list is nearly endless. Every one of these decisions—and your overall leadership—will be better if you are equipped with current, thorough knowledge of what teachers are doing and how they think about teaching and learning.

Discussing evidence from the lesson, relating it to shared expectations, and talking about next steps is an incredibly powerful process.

Day 1 Action Challenge: Determine Your Baseline for Classroom Visits

If high-performance instructional leadership is to fulfill its potential, you can’t limit it to special occasions, specific projects, or year-end teacher evaluations. Every school leader visits classrooms from time to time, but occasional visits aren’t enough. You need both a clear model to follow and a disciplined habit to put classroom visits into practice consistently.

The first step is to take an honest look at your current practice. Review your records, such as walkthrough logs or your calendar, and determine how much time you typically spend in classrooms. The following questions may help you in your assessment.

How many times per year do you visit each teacher on an informal basis?

On average, how much time elapses between two visits to a given teacher’s classroom?

How many total classroom visits do you make in a year?

On how many days per month do you visit no classrooms at all (such as days you’re at district meetings)?

How many teachers have gone a month or more without seeing you in their classroom?

If you don’t have access to clear records, it’s perfectly fine to estimate, but be honest with yourself and answer as many of these questions as possible. Because we tend to overestimate our time in classrooms and underestimate our tendency to avoid certain teachers, I’ve worded the questions in several different ways to help you determine your baseline accurately. We tend to recall our best days and extrapolate them to the rest of the year, so if you visited five classrooms one day in October, good for you—but is this typical behavior comparable to other days of the year? Ensure that you are honest in your responses.

Acknowledging your current practice is the first step. Don’t exaggerate, but don’t berate yourself, either. If your baseline is zero, you’ve no doubt been doing other important work to lead your school. And you’ve come to the right place to help you improve your instructional leadership.