At the end of every school year it is good practice to reflect on your eWalk templates and review if the data collected by these templates was relevant to your school and to your established purpose for conducting classroom observations. Be sure to do this soon after the school year ends so that everyone is still familiar with the template data: then ask yourself and your team the following questions:
1. Were our templates an effective tool for gathering the data that was important to our school and our initiatives?
2. If no, what were the problems encountered and how do we address those problems.
3. If yes, are there areas in the templates we can improve upon?
4. Are there new initiatives that need to be monitored through the templates?
Once you and your team have reflected upon your templates from the previous year, it is time to modify existing templates or build new ones for the new school year.
You and your team should work together to decide who is going to do the work on the templates and what the review process will be. This is to ensure that all observers agree upon the elements that will comprise the templates. You may want one person to do all the work and then solicit input from the team once the templates are completed. Alternatively, you may assign each person of the team a template to modify. In either case, be sure to involve your team and actively seek their input and participation so that they will have ownership in your observation process. It is also a good idea to have your team review the newly completed templates to make sure all of the agreed upon modifications have been made and each observer feels confident that they will be effective for gathering meaningful data from classroom observations.
Be reminded that you have probably had teachers leave your school and new teachers join your faculty. Don’t forget to go into the admin rights section of the platform and make the changes to members so that all of your teachers are attached to your templates. Nothing is more discouraging than to sit in a classroom ready to observe a teacher only to realize you forgot to add them to the subject list for the template.
Once all of this is done, go back and review your templates one more time to make sure they are everything you want them to be. Review the elements in the template and all of the features afforded to you by these elements. You want to do as much work now to prevent any unforeseen obstacles once you begin your walkthroughs.
If you find this information useful or if I can assist you with any other educational endeavors please leave a comment or contact me directly at sean.kelly@douglas.k12.ga.us