Start with the data.

It starts with the data

Before Coach walks a single hallway, he looks at the numbers, the way a doctor orders blood work before deciding on a treatment. Usually that is a short Zoom with your leaders, reviewing your state test results or your NWEA MAP data, and sometimes your discipline referrals. It can also include a financial review of where your district is heavy and where it is light.

Most districts never look at two or three columns in their own data, and those are often where the answer is. Coach shows your leaders how a push in literacy shows up in science scores, how stronger math lifts writing, and which numbers point to the next step. The review starts the day you email him your data.

What he is looking for

Organization. Cleanliness. Promptness. And the thing that decides everything else: the love the staff has for each other and for the students. Do staff like staff? Do staff like students? Coach has walked hundreds of campuses and you can tell in seconds. He reads a building the way he reads your data, and he tells you what he sees.

How the day runs

For a single campus, he walks the building with the principal and the campus leadership team, room by room while students are in class, then sits down with that team to go over what he saw.

For a whole district, early in the morning he walks the district with the superintendent and every building principal. Then, once students are in the building, he does quick in-and-out visits at each campus, usually 25 to 30 minutes apiece, up to an hour for a large high school. Nine campuses in a day is not unusual.

Either way, alongside the walk he reviews your data, your formative assessment, and what your leaders tell him about their buildings.

What he usually finds

More often than not, a superintendent calls Coach because a campus is under accountability pressure and nobody is sure how to turn it. And more often than not, what he finds on the walk is a good school hiding in plain sight: teachers who love their kids, a community that supports them, and a curriculum that simply is not being covered. Money is rarely the missing piece. The fix starts with trust. Teachers have to know their leaders are not coming at them with a sledgehammer before they will change what happens in their rooms. Once that trust is there, structure and high expectations follow, and the scores follow them.

What you get at the end

A summative review of what he saw and what the next steps are, in plain language: where you are heavy, where you are light, where the holes are, and what instructional piece needs to be added. He hands your team a book to start the conversation, and if a district has no foundational curriculum or formative assessment in place, that is where the work begins.

What happens next

Almost always, the walkthrough turns into the real work: leadership team sessions on your evaluation instrument and your data, and a staff in-service that reaches every classroom. See how the three steps fit together.