Leadership Learning Walk Journal

My experience with Executive Leadership Coaching was a great way to have a thought partner to refine my plans for this year. Christine was a fantastic sounding board to challenge and elevate our practices. By the end of the coaching cycle, we had developed a digital Journal that our principals can use to capture and reflect on our Leadership Learning Walks this year.

Note: ELCO is a small district with 5 school buildings K-12.

The Leadership Learning Walks will be conducted monthly with all building principals visiting a different school each month. The host principal will provide a list of "look fors" to guide the visits. The look fors are aligned with our Instructional Focus which is a list of research-based instructional practices (based on the work of Hattie and Marzano). The guidance provided by the host principal will help set the stage and provide a focus for the Learning Walks.

As principals observe in the classrooms (15 min each), they are asked to document four things in their journals based on the look fors provided by the school's principal:

• What are learners doing?
• What are teachers doing?
• What questions do you have about what you saw?
• Add photos to a gallery of best practices

After the principals rotate through 4 classrooms they will convene to debrief what they saw. They will provide feedback to the host principal on the look fors and discuss implications for K-12 and their own schools.

Each principal will collect their reflections in their own Learning Walk Journal throughout the year. Their journal will include:

1. The feedback they receive when they are the host principal
2. Any ideas or suggestions they have for implementation of the Instructional Focus in their own building
3. Needs for future professional learning
4. A reflection on the Leadership Learning Walk process

I have included a few of the pages from the journal as an example. The Executive Leadership Coaching pushed me out of my comfort zone to learn how to design in Pages and it will help model the use of technology with administration and teachers. 

Cover of the Learning Walk Journal

Description of the Look Fors

Example of Look Fors provided by host principal

Learning Walk notes page with gallery

Learning Walk Reflection

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