Classroom Walkthroughs, Teacher Evaluation & Feedback FAQ
How to use classroom walkthroughs and teacher evaluation to improve instruction — without just checking boxes.
Getting Into Classrooms
How can I get into classrooms more often without falling behind on everything else?
Stop making walkthroughs harder than they need to be. If you get into classrooms three times a day, you'll hit about 500 visits a year, and that daily presence gives you better information and stronger trust with teachers than any report ever will. If paperwork is slowing you down, ditch the long form and start with something as simple as a smile-and-wave visit.
Watch the video →How can I get into classrooms more often without falling behind on everything else?
Stop making walkthroughs harder than they need to be. If you get into classrooms three times a day, you'll hit about 500 visits a year, and that daily presence gives you better relationships with teachers and information you can't get from reports or data. Drop the long form, start with simple smile-and-wave visits if needed, and build from there.
Watch the video →Evidence-Based Feedback
Why do teachers resent instructional feedback from their principal?
Almost always because they've experienced a bad version of it. Feedback delivered as drive-by suggestions after a three-minute visit. Feedback that reflects the principal's priorities rather than the teacher's goals. Feedback that sounds like a compliment but is obviously leading to a criticism. Feedback from someone who's clearly never read the curriculum guide for the teacher's subject.
When teachers resent feedback, the problem isn't that they don't want to improve — it's that the feedback they've received hasn't been worth receiving. The model they've experienced is one where an administrator watches a fragment of a lesson, forms an opinion, and delivers it as advice. That's not professionally useful, and teachers know it.
The solution isn't to stop giving feedback — it's to make feedback worth having. Evidence-based, connected to the teacher's goals, grounded in a shared framework, and delivered through genuine conversation rather than scripted pronouncements. When feedback actually helps teachers think better about their practice, resentment evaporates.
Read more -->What are the three types of feedback conversations leaders should know?
Most leaders default to one type of conversation regardless of the situation. But there are at least three distinct modes, and choosing the right one matters.
Directive conversations are for setting expectations. When a teacher needs to hear "here's what I need you to do," a reflective question isn't the right tool. Be clear, be specific, be kind — but be direct. This mode is most appropriate for new teachers or teachers whose fundamentals aren't in place.
Reflective conversations are for surfacing teacher thinking. These are the conversations where you share evidence and ask genuine questions — not because you have an answer in mind, but because you want to understand how the teacher thinks about their practice. This mode is where most professional growth happens.
Reflexive conversations are for gathering input for your own leadership decisions. You're visiting classrooms not to give feedback but to learn — about the curriculum, about student needs, about how an initiative is landing. This mode is the least recognized, but it may be the most important for your development as a leader.
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Read more -->Tools and Technology
What software do instructional leaders use to record classroom walkthrough notes?
The most common approach is still a notepad or phone — which means most of the follow-up never happens. You walk out of a classroom with mental notes, get pulled into the next thing, and the feedback never gets sent. The observation happened but left no trace.
Purpose-built apps solve the problem that generic tools don't: the reuse problem. After enough visits, every principal has a mental library of the same dozen observations — "students were not given think time," "transition took four minutes," "no evidence of checking for understanding." Typing those from scratch every time is friction. Repertoire, built by The Principal Center, lets you store that language as reusable snippets. Walk out of a classroom, pull from your library, personalize it, and send a feedback note in under a minute.
Generic tools — Google Docs, email drafts, Apple Notes — technically work but don't reduce friction enough to change behavior. The decisive factor in whether walkthroughs generate feedback isn't motivation; it's the gap between the visit and the follow-through. Tools that close that gap produce different outcomes than tools that don't.
See Tools We Recommend for a full overview.