The Art of The Walk-Through

Adeyemi Stembridge wrote that a classroom observation during the right fifteen minutes can make you look like a gifted talent, but the wrong fifteen minutes could have someone strategizing about how to counsel you out of the profession. We have built an entire system of observation and feedback grounded in the idea that you can assess a classroom, a lesson, and a teacher's instructional weaknesses in a brief window of time. In this model, you are taught that if you step in, observe closely, and know what to look for, you should be able to give the teacher a high-leverage feedback email that will push their practice by EOD. 

That assumption works in instructional settings where the structure of a lesson is linear and visible. In a dance class, it falls apart quickly. Fifteen minutes in my room could mean only catching the warm-up. Things might look basic and routine. Or it could be the middle of a creative process where everything is unfinished and messy, or it might be post-show, and no dance is happening at all. The number one thing leaders say to me about arts observations is “I have no idea what’s going on in there, but the kids are happy and safe.” 

But happy and safe are not on the 4-page, Phase-6 rubric on the principal’s clipboard. That being said, neither is guided improvisation nor choreographic choice. In a typical K-8 academic classroom, the lesson follows a predictable sequence. Do Now, Launch, Model, Task/Independent Practice, Debrief, Exit Ticket

We call this gradual release (The GRR Model). The responsibility for the thinking shifts from the teacher to the student in a single, linear arc. The phases are visually distinct. When the teacher is at the front, or kids are on the rug, you know it’s the launch. When students are in groups, you know it’s collaborative learning. When students are working silently, it's independent practice. When exit tickets are being collected, the lesson is over. An observer can walk in at minute 25 and locate themselves in the sequence without asking a single question. That is by design. The structure was built to be legible to anyone watching.

In an arts classroom, the progression is less linear. It starts and stops and repeats. It spirals and builds across classes and across units. In strong programs, it builds across years. Students develop fluency in an art form by engaging with the artistic process repeatedly over time. The artistic process is the journey that bridges an idea with a culminating product. And although that might sound too vulnerable to interpretation, there are 4 well-defined aspects to this process in K-8 Arts instruction. They are: creating | performing, presenting, producing | responding | connecting. The National Arts Standards use these four key aspects to organize standards across the disciplines of dance, theater, music, media, and visual arts. Teachers design units of exploration that guide students through a creative process where they are creating, performing, responding, and connecting in relation to ideas inspired by the unit. Students may engage with one or two aspects in a class or may even touch on all 4 depending on the demands of the unit. 

So as the Principal walks in with his clipboard, he is acutely aware that whatever he observes won’t be on the rubric. And it’s in this defining moment that a leader chooses a pathway. Will he choose the most generic, transferable criteria on the rubric and write up some generic, transferable feedback, or will he think to himself, “the kids are safe and happy” and walk away?

I have been a leader with a clipboard and an academic rubric, walking into a theater class. I have chosen option A and will spare you the story, but deliver the message. An arbitrary walk-through rubric will not move practice in an arts classroom. Yes, it checks the box, but you are fake coaching.

There is a myriad of more balanced approaches between the extremes of fake coaching and hoping for the best. The one I want to talk through today is a specific professional development technique called narrated co-observation. In this model, a school leader walks through classrooms with a collaborator who has expertise in arts instruction. This is an ideal ask of your district-level arts, enrichment, or specials lead. A trusted mentor teacher in the specific discipline you are observing can also serve well in this capacity. As you walk through classrooms together, the collaborating observer narrates what they are seeing and thinking as it connects to the National Arts Standards and best practices within the art form.

Here’s what that looks like in action.

Third grade. The teacher has been working on a unit where students are creating short dances inspired by a picture book the class read earlier in the week. Today is day three of the unit. The teacher opens with a warm-up, briefly reminds the class where they left off, and puts students in groups of three or four. The task: take the ideas you worked on last class and shape them into a phrase with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

The room gets loud. Music is playing. One group is repeating the same four counts over and over, but changing the ending each time. Another group has one student standing aside, watching her group dance. A third group is sitting on the floor, talking and occasionally gesturing with their hands, but not dancing. A fourth group looks off-task, playing, laughing, and pushing each other's arms into shapes.

The principal sees all of this. Without narration, what gets written on the clipboard is probably something about student engagement, noise level, or unclear expectations. With narration, the visit becomes something else entirely.

The arts lead, walking alongside the principal, speaking quietly: "Right now we're in the creating process. These students are experimenting with choreographic devices to build simple dance phrases. The teacher gave them an ABA structure to work with. That means their dance needs a beginning section, a contrasting middle, and a return to the beginning. That's a compositional form, the same way a short response has a claim, supporting evidence, and a closing."

"That group over there repeating the same four counts, they're not stuck. They're in the planning phase. They created a beginning for their phrase last class, and now they're trying different endings to see what works as their contrasting section. Each time they restart, that's editing and revision in real time."

"The student standing apart from her group is watching so she can give feedback on whether the phrase communicates what the group intended. The teacher set that role up on day one of this unit. They call it the outside eye."

"The group on the floor is debating whether their piece should start with stillness or with a canon. That's a choreographic choice. They're making decisions about how the structure of their dance affects what the audience feels first. The conversation is the work."

"The group that looks like they’re playing is experimenting with contact. One student is molding another student's arms into a shape and then copying it. The laughing is because it's new and it feels weird. But they're generating material. If the teacher checks in with them in a few minutes and asks them to choose their three strongest shapes, that becomes the beginning of a phrase."

To an untrained eye, all four of those groups looked loud and unproductive. But with narration, the principal leaves with a completely different understanding of what was happening. They heard the standards being connected to real student behavior. They heard the creative process described as it was happening, not summarized after the fact. And they began to build a vocabulary for what quality looks like in a dance classroom.

A leader who has done three or four narrated co-observations starts to recognize the patterns on their own. They stop defaulting to generic feedback about transitions or engagement and start asking about choreographic structure, student agency in the creative process, and how the lesson connects to the standards the teacher is building toward. They begin to see when students are generating ideas, when they are refining structure, and when they are making compositional decisions in real time. The narration becomes less necessary because the lens has been built.

This also broadens the capacity of those in arts leadership. Rather than being a random fourth clipboard with a largely irrelevant checklist, the arts lead becomes the person driving the communication and collaboration necessary to actually move teacher practice. That is a fundamentally different use of the role.

What does it feel like for the teacher?

It feels like being seen rather than observed. Observed is someone checking boxes while you teach. Seen is someone understanding what you were building and asking you a question about it that makes you think harder about your own work. Most arts educators have spent their entire careers receiving feedback that has nothing to do with their content. When a leader finally asks about choreographic structure instead of transitions, or about how students are making creative decisions instead of whether the room was quiet, something shifts. The teacher stops performing competence for the clipboard and starts having a real conversation about their craft.