Poughkeepsie City School District administrative leaders recently held their first of what are planned to be monthly walkthroughs of school buildings to check in on classrooms and identify best practices and strategies in alignment with its goal of ensuring students clearly understand the intention of each lesson.
The group, which was led by Assistant Superintendent of Schools Jessica Turner and included every school principal, among others in the Division of Instruction, was at Warring Elementary Monday and visited several classrooms. They then gathered in the school’s library to discuss what they noticed and potential next steps.
“This year’s focus is building collective efficacy around teacher clarity,” Turner said, “instructional moves that enhance outcomes in any classroom, any grade level, so that as a collective we cultivate high-yield impact strategies.”
It’s the first time in nearly a decade that the district has taken such a large group approach to visiting buildings and sharing strategies. The initiative is part of the district’s ongoing theme, “The Urgency of Now,” which stresses measurable goals and accountability. Leadership will conduct Focused Instructional Learning Walks, or FILWs, regularly, be it large groups or individual principals or assistant principals. The benchmark is for each building leader to complete at least 10 walkthroughs per week and to provide feedback after each.
In advance of the Monday visit, Turner held a meeting with all principals defining what teacher clarity means and how it would be reviewed, and issued a memo to staff detailing the goals, strategies and reasoning behind the initiative, which centers on the work of educational researcher John Hattie. Hattie identifies teacher clarity as an approach that can double the impact of a typical year of learning. The Division of Instruction circulated an essay from Hattie on the importance of providing student feedback and teacher clarity in a recent edition of its Curriculum and Instruction Weekly Newsletter. 
Among the positives in some classrooms, administrators would like to see happen across the district were:

• Teachers posting learning goals and intentions on a wall before a lesson.
• Teachers restating the goals during the lesson.
• Students who were able to explain their objective in the lesson.
• Reference materials posted for students to utilize.
• Past learning referenced and connected to the current lesson.
• Small group discussion.
• Students keeping math journals.
• Teachers issuing students “exit tickets,” which details what a student should be able to do at the end of a lesson.

The walk and subsequent discussion highlighted some areas in which the concepts of teacher clarity can be clarified to support teacher implementation. The group also compiled a list of “wonderings,” such as:

• Do students know the vocabulary that would be needed to follow a lesson?
• Are objectives being posted in student-friendly terms?
• Should learning criteria be posted in a permanent or temporary place?
• What is the best way to give positive feedback?
• How is the Ready curriculum being leveraged to support students?

Turner is leading district leadership through a book study focusing on teaching teacher clarity. Leadership will engage in monthly walkthroughs at different buildings with the goal of identifying power moves in classrooms that can be amplified across the system.
“We’re in ‘The Urgency of Now.’ We need to impact student outcomes,” Turner said. “We want to continue enhancing our instructional moves so that those power moves that are happening in some classrooms are happening in all classrooms. It’s really equity work, at its finest.”