Patterns Over Time: Instructional Leadership Through Many Small Windows

As I continue to enhance my own practice as an instructional leader, the process of getting into classrooms consistently reveals what an invaluable opportunity it provides to gain a broader perspective and to create conditions for growth.

My approach is not accidental. It is grounded in continued research and practice, most recently exemplified by Justin Baeder’s (2022) structure, which emphasises that instructional leadership is best built on many short, frequent observations - six or seven minutes at a time - conducted consistently and repeatedly throughout the year. It is through this rhythm that meaningful patterns emerge and leaders deepen their knowledge of teaching and learning. This resonates with City’s (2011) reminder that improvement comes when leaders identify persistent patterns across classrooms, not from one-off observations.

Bright Spots 

Building on prior knowledge.
A consistent pattern continues to emerge: learners are often able to connect new skills and ideas to what they already know. This transfer is not accidental; it is evidence that teachers are designing opportunities for learners to build bridges from the familiar to the new. What stood out this week, however, was that these links were sometimes more concrete than conceptual. Learners could connect the what of today’s task to something they had done before, whilst sometimes articulating the why or the underlying principle was harder. This signals both a strength (transfer is happening) and an opportunity to go deeper into conceptual clarity.

Clarity of purpose.
Clarity underlying the lesson goals remains one of the strongest drivers of engagement. Many learners could explain not only what they were doing but also why it mattered to their growth. This is encouraging because it reflects a shift from compliance (“I am completing the task”) to ownership (“I understand its purpose”). At the same time, this week I noticed a subtle variation: learners who were confident about how to complete a task, but less secure in why it mattered beyond the immediate lesson. This suggests that while clarity is often present in the moment, we can stretch it further by deliberately situating learning within the bigger journey.

Wonderings 

Assessment for learning.
Our ongoing shift from “formative” language to “assessment for learning” raises a practical challenge: how do we ensure assessments are consistently positioned as tools for growth? What classroom practices reinforce that difference?

Making thinking visible.
I continue to notice that while learners can share their ideas orally, structures for them to capture their thinking individually have been less visible. How might we build in simple routines such as quick-writes, notebook prompts, or visible thinking strategies that make student thinking concrete, both for themselves and for us as teachers? This echoes Perkins’s (1992) reminder that “learning is a consequence of thinking” (cited in Ritchhart & Church, 2020).

Designing for collaboration.
Group learning remains a strength, and I am eager to explore our intentionality behind it more deeply. When do learners benefit from self-chosen groups for ownership, and when should we structure groups, using data or design, to stretch, balance, and support access and challenge more deliberately?

Leading Strategically Together

As I reflect on these themes, I am reminded that the purpose of my visits is not to judge isolated moments but to look for patterns that can inform our collective work. This is about strengthening the coherence between our intended, taught, and assessed curriculum, and ensuring students experience learning as connected rather than fragmented.

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (2021), in How Leadership Works, describe teacher clarity as one of the most powerful ways to accelerate learning — clarity of goals, clarity of instruction, and clarity of success. My observations this week reinforce that message: clarity is most potent when it is consistent across planning, teaching, and assessment, so that learners can see not just the next task but the larger purpose.

This emphasis on coherence also connects to how we are supporting teachers to collaborate. As City and Curtis (2024) argue in Leading Strategically, sustainable improvement happens when teachers are brought together by shared interests to share their work and learn from one another. With that in mind, next week we will launch our Collective Shelf: six books that colleagues have signed up to read across the year, with opportunities to share learning at the end. By the close of the year, our middle school will have collectively read six books together — a way of honouring both professional choice and collective growth.

Baeder’s (2022) structure of frequent, short observations, combined with City’s (2011) focus on patterns across classrooms, reinforces that this work is not about isolated snapshots but about building cumulative insight. As a leader of learning, my role is to identify these patterns, connect them to our strategic goals, and work collectively to create conditions where strong practices become visible, shared, and sustained.

References

• Baeder, J. (2022). Now we’re talking! 21 days to high-performance instructional leadership. Solution Tree.

• City, E. A. (2011). Learning from instructional rounds. Educational Leadership, 69(2), 36–41.

• City, E. A., & Curtis, R. (2024). Leading strategically: How to make good choices for students and schools. Harvard Education Press.

• Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2021). How leadership works: A playbook for instructional leaders. Corwin.

• Ritchhart, R., & Church, M. (2020). The power of making thinking visible: Practices to engage and empower all learners. Jossey-Bass.