Great School Leaders Prioritize Instruction (Leadership Matters Part 2)

The best school leaders are instructional leaders.

Every leader has unique strengths, leadership styles, and interests, but at the end of the day, you must make an impact on the most fundamental function of the school: educating students.

Instruction is vital, yet some school leaders spend more time on other aspects of school leadership than on instruction. When the leader’s focus is not on instruction, the students suffer.

Great school leaders work hard to grow their teachers by providing feedback and resources; they check lesson plans and have a good idea of what they will see whenever they enter the classroom; they have picked out what they are looking for in lessons, whether it be a whole school initiative or something specific to that teacher.

The more time that school leaders invest in leading their teachers to provide excellent instruction, the more successful their schools will be.

Here are three ways to ensure that instruction is the top priority in your school.

Set clear expectations for instruction.

Most teachers strive to meet the expectations that are set for them.

Building leaders must set clear expectations for teachers, and then they should check in often to make sure that those expectations are being met.

However, there is a balance between teacher autonomy and administrator oversight. Teachers are professionals, and no one wants to be micromanaged.

Determine your “look-fors”--actions that are specific and easily observable. Some of the easiest to implement are proximity to students, questioning technique, or do-nows at the beginning of the lesson.

If you are part of a professional learning community, do your part to make PLC meetings about instruction. Use PLCs to discuss implementation of whole-school initiatives.

Teachers love to share successes. It’s even better when what they’re sharing is aligned with the whole school’s focus.

I have learned about a lot of EdTech just by listening to teachers in PLC meetings. I’ve asked teachers to share what they use in their classrooms with other teachers one on one or in whole-staff professional development sessions.

Teachers who aren’t encouraged to improve every day often revert to teaching what they like or what they’re comfortable with, which may not always be aligned with the students’ or the schools’ goals. Some teachers may move towards lecture and notes and away from more engaging student activities.

I like to meet early in the year with each teacher or team member to set clear goals. I make sure those goals are aligned to the standards in the Mississippi Teacher Growth Rubric. This resource provides nine essential components of teaching. Throughout the year, I give informal feedback specific to those goals.

I also have a mid-year meeting with each teacher to check up on progress toward those goals. Talking about goals and expectations throughout the year helps move the needle for whole-school growth.

Make coaching, not evaluating, the goal of your observations.

In most schools, the minimum requirements for teacher evaluation are for there to be a number of informal observations prior to one big formal evaluation in the spring.

But if teacher evaluation is the extent of instructional leadership in a school, you can bet that the school is not going to be successful.

If you focus more on evaluation than coaching, teachers are more likely to pay attention to the rating they receive and ignore the feedback you provide (unless there is a glaring deficiency that you point out, and then they may get defensive).

Your goal is to lead a great school, so don’t settle for the bare minimum in evaluating teachers. Instead, offer encouraging support for instruction throughout the school year.

When observing teachers, give bite-sized chunks of positive feedback. People will do more of what you praise, so give more positive than negative feedback.

I once gave positive feedback to a teacher about using Blooket, a fun online learning game that is good for drilling content. Within just a few days, several teachers down the hall were using Blooket as well. It’s the same phenomenon as when a teacher says, “I like how Michael is sitting up ready to work” and the whole class sits up a little straighter.

If you notice a key area of improvement, give feedback about that, too, but be careful not to overwhelm the teacher.

Whenever you observe a bad lesson, there are likely many reasons that you notice. The teacher can only work on one or two issues at a time, though, so choose the most impactful items to use to coach your teacher.

I once gave fifteen bullet points of feedback to a mentee. Fifteen–that was a very bad idea!

Not only did the feedback fall on deaf ears, but I also harmed the relationship by pointing out so many negatives at one time. While I intended to help the young teacher, I actually wasted both of our time and hurt that teacher’s feelings.

Remember that your teachers are all different and will need different kinds of support.

• You may have new teachers who have lots of enthusiasm but lack classroom management.

• You may have a veteran teacher who performs well but is resistant to trying out a new online tool.

• You may have a teacher with excellent content knowledge but who struggles to engage students.

The more that you observe and interact with your teachers, the more you will gain insights into what support you can provide.

Make sure to spend more time with teachers who are struggling and who care to get better. More often than not, these teachers need you to seek them out because they are nervous about asking for the help they need.

Whether you are a district leader, principal, or teacher leader, always look for opportunities to mentor others. By establishing mentorships in your school, you also set up great teachers for leadership opportunities.

Involve students.

Great school leaders talk to students about their goals–the students need to know what they’re aiming for. I like to mention the students’ growth goals at least weekly on the morning announcements, and I make it a point to ask students what their goals are when I meet them in the hallway.

Students who recognize that what they do matters for the whole school are more likely to work harder in the classroom.

When you talk to students, make data a topic of conversation as much as possible. The students at my school are supposed to know the numeric score they need to achieve growth on their next state assessment, and they are happy to tell me their goal and what they’ve been doing in class to work towards that goal.

This year, our leadership team decided to make the ACT an area of focus for our school. The more that teachers talked about the ACT, the more students signed up for it. After every ACT’s scores were released, students were excited to share how they improved on their composite scores.

Great schools incentivize results that are tied to instructional goals, both for teachers and for students. Make a big deal about celebrating wins, and you will have a much easier time leading instruction at your school.

Whatever your role, think about ways to prioritize instruction this month. Make sure that teachers and students who reach their instructional goals are recognized and rewarded.

What about you? What are some ways you can help to prioritize instruction in your school?

Let me know in the comments below!