What Are We Learning?

Reflections on the First Week of Classroom Observations

This year, classroom visits are framed by a Looking for Learning approach. The premise is simple: rather than focusing on what the teacher is doing, a small set of questions is used to gain a deeper understanding of the students' learning experience. Over the course of the year, the lens is through these four guiding questions:

1. What are you learning today?

2. Why do you think you are learning this, and how does it connect to what you have done before?

3. How is your thinking shifting?

4. How will you know you have been successful in your learning?

These questions are deceptively simple, but they open windows into clarity, purpose, metacognition, and self-assessment.

For this first phase, however, I deliberately chose to begin with just one: What are you learning today? At the start of a new academic year, it did not feel appropriate to press students yet about how their thinking was shifting or how they would evaluate their success. Clarity of purpose is the foundation, and so it felt right to begin there.

Even then, I often preface with another, even more straightforward question: What are you doing? Even as I know we need to move away from this, I choose to make this distinction intentionally, as the difference between doing and learning is both subtle and profound. Many students—and, truthfully, many adults—still equate activity with learning. People can tell you what they are doing (“writing sentences,” “making a presentation,” “building a model”), but when asked what they are learning, there is often a pause. The deliberate act of asking both questions, first about doing, which gets the 'task' out of the way, and then about learning, helps create a distinction and a pause. And in the pause lies the opportunity for reflection. As a profession, I am not sure we are yet fully fluent in separating product and process. Naming that tension feels like part of the work.

What I found, even in only the second week back to school, was encouraging. Many students could indeed explain not only what they were doing, but also what they were learning. In several language lessons, they made explicit connections between new content and prior topics, such as homes, school days, or everyday routines. Their answers suggested clarity not only about the task but also about its purpose. This clarity is a reminder that the way we think about impact matters more than the act itself: when learners know what and why, they are engaging at a deeper level.

I was also struck by the range of entry points teachers offered: call-and-response, station rotations, poetry analysis, design projects, and oral presentations. Instructional leadership is most potent when it stays close to the instructional core - the interaction of teacher, student, and content (City et al, 2009). Watching students grapple with material in multiple modalities showed me that these classrooms are alive with varied opportunities to engage.

At the same time, I found myself wondering. In some cases, confident students were quick to respond while quieter peers stayed silent. This raises the question of equity: how do we continue to be intentional in designing structures that help every learner demonstrate understanding, not only the most assertive, extrovert, or confident? Presentations raised a question of authenticity to me, too; learners showed strong preparation, but what about more spontaneous communication, the kind that reveals fluency in dialogue rather than performance? Many of us use notes when giving professional presentations, and we need to stop making excuses when we refer to them, as I have noticed we often do. In conversation, we rely on something else entirely. That distinction, between formal presentation and authentic exchange, feels worth exploring further as both matter, particularly in clarity around the purpose of learning.

City (2024) urges leaders to notice patterns across classrooms rather than making judgments on individual lessons. The pattern I saw was encouraging: some clarity of learning intentions is evident, students are engaging in multiple ways, and many are beginning to take ownership of their work. The recurring questions, however, are about inclusion, spontaneity, and coherence across teams. That is where I see the next challenge: How do we build self-efficacy, not compliance? How can we ensure clarity extends beyond the confident few and that learning experiences are structured to invite reflection and agency from all students?

Engaged in one of my favourite parts of the role, this first week affirmed that instructional leadership is not about surveillance or performance management. It is about curiosity, listening, and giving learning back to the community. Hattie’s provocation rings true: impact is not about what we do, but how we think about what we do. For me, beginning with “What are you learning?” has been a way to think more carefully about the difference between doing and learning, and to notice where that distinction is alive in classrooms.