Principals “Walk” Through School

On Tuesday, March 21, fifteen Lubavitch principals were invited to observe the Williamsburg Preparatory High School in Williamsburg, New York. This visit was a segment of the Menachem Education Foundation’s (MEF) Principal Leadership Program – a one year course that provides training in transformation and instructional skills to principals in schools across the globe.

A key area of focus on this particular day of training was to learn about the concept of learning walks, and how learning walks can be helpful in implementing positive change in one’s school.

“Learning walks” can be best described as the practice of observation of classrooms by a group of teachers and administrators that focuses on a particular area or problem of practice. Rabbi Mendy Greenbaum, principal of Cheder Menachem of Los Angeles and Rabbi Eyal Bension, principal of Darchei Menachem in Crown Heights, co-facilitated this learning walk and honed the observation and analytical skills of the principals so that they could have a better sense of how to gather data about learning in their own schools.

“On a learning walk, principals gather evidence of what is taking place in the classroom in a non-evaluative and non-judgmental way,” says Lea New, curriculum specialist at MEF. “An example of data collected would be ‘fifteen students raised their hand to answer a question,’ and not, ‘only half of the class answered the question.’”

Learning walks are also a way to build collaboration and open the lines of communication between teachers and principals. “It creates a sense of transparency, where classroom walls are open to visitors, and discussion is initiated between faculty members,” says Mendy Greenbaum, facilitator of the men’s Principal Leadership Program.

Another positive outcome of learning walks is that parents will find that when speaking with principals about the progress of their child, the principal will be far less focused on making judgments and will have spent much time observing their child in an effort to know more about how they are doing in the classroom.

The goal of this particular training session was to provide principals with the tools they need to be able to implement learning walks in their respective schools to improve professional practices. In the words of one of the participants, Rabbi Yisroel Goldberg of the Lubavitch Cheder Day School in Minnesota, “I feel that now I have the tools to actually identify a problem properly, work with the teachers to address it, create teacher collaboration, enhance the atmosphere in our school, and above all, put all of the knowledge from all of our teachers in our school to work, in every single class.”

Menachem Education Foundation looks forward to our next session in May, and continuing our collaborative work to build professional practices and common standards in schools all over the world.