What Do They Want From Me?: How to Win at Classroom Observations

A few years into my teaching career, I received feedback from an assistant principal that was difficult to hear but ultimately changed the way I planned and taught. After observing one of my ninth-grade English classes, she told me that I had done nearly all of the talking. I had entered the lesson feeling prepared and energized. We were reading Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” and I had planned a series of questions to help students analyze how Connell built suspense and developed General Zaroff as an antagonist. From my perspective, the lesson had gone well: Students had listened, taken notes, and answered when I called on them.

The assistant principal saw something different. She pointed out that I had asked thoughtful questions, but often answered them myself when students hesitated. When a student gave a partial response, I tended to restate it, expand it, and move quickly to the next question. I believed I was helping students arrive at the right interpretation, but I was actually doing much of the intellectual work for them. During the debrief, the assistant principal asked me, “How many students had a chance to explain their thinking to another student before you asked them to share with the whole class?” The answer? None.

This experience was one of those pivotal moments in my teaching career when I realized that it was time to change how I framed class discussions. However, the experience also floored me in another way: I felt as though the assistant principal was using a hidden set of criteria for observation that I didn’t quite understand. In the years that followed, whenever an administrator walked into my classroom, I was always filled with trepidation that whatever they were looking for would be absent.

This experience points to a more universal challenge: How can we know what leaders are looking for when they enter our classrooms, and with that knowledge, how can we be sure that we are always observation ready? While new teachers might feel the most trepidation around being observed, the truth is that no matter how skillful or experienced we may be, it’s natural to feel anxiety around classroom observations. However, incorporating specific strategies into the way we plan for instruction both serves student growth and alleviates a bit of the stress.

Frame the Lesson

In my district, one expectation for teachers is that both content and language objectives are posted daily, and they are often the first things a classroom observer looks for. One of my former teaching teammates always swore up and down that he would never post an objective on his board or do any formal framing of the lesson. “It’s meaningless,” he said. “It’s just a box to check.”

For my colleague, it was clear that some of the rationale behind this practice got lost in translation or explained poorly because the truth is, framing the learning is a core tenet of strong teaching practice. When leaders walk into a classroom, they expect that every student understands both what they will know by the end of the class and how they will demonstrate that learning.

In my own high school English classroom, posting content and language objectives became one of the most effective ways to make learning more visible to students. Earlier in my teaching career, I assumed students understood the purpose behind an activity because I had mentioned it as I introduced the day’s work. However, I started to notice that when I asked students what they were learning, they often named the task, such as “We’re reading the poem” or “We’re working with our groups,” rather than the larger skill or idea. That response helped me see that students needed more than directions; they needed a clear understanding of where the lesson was headed and why it mattered.

For example, during a unit on The Crucible, I posted this content objective: “Students will be able to analyze how Arthur Miller develops a character’s motivations and how those motivations contribute to conflict in the play.” Alongside it, I posted a language objective: “Students will be able to use evidence from the text to explain their analysis in a structured partner discussion, using phrases such as ‘Miller suggests…’ and ‘This detail reveals….’”

Students began class by doing a choral reading of the objectives, and I returned to them as we moved from close reading to discussion to writing. At the end of the period, we circled back to the objectives to reflect on what they had learned and to identify evidence of their own progress. Instead of saying only that they had read a scene or completed a graphic organizer, they could explain that they had traced John Proctor’s conflicting motivations and supported an interpretation with specific lines from the play.

Posting both types of objectives was helpful because it gave students a clear destination and made the connection between classroom activities and learning explicit. It also helped me plan with greater purpose: Every text excerpt, discussion question, and writing task needed to support the stated goal. Most important, objectives gave students language for talking about their own learning. When they understood not just what they were doing, but what they were trying to know and demonstrate, they were more likely to engage thoughtfully, monitor their progress, and see themselves as active participants in the lesson rather than people simply completing assigned tasks.

Every time I observe a lesson, I do my best to talk to at least a couple of students, and I typically ask them directly what they are learning about. If they can’t answer, I consider it a piece of data to share with the teacher about possible missed opportunities to communicate the learning goals for the day. This process is not a “gotcha,” but more of a way to help the teacher understand that students might be confused about why they are in the room that day, and to work toward alleviating that lack of clarity. Ultimately, lessons that are framed with explicit communication about objectives are more likely to include a level of transparency that is valuable not only to students, but also to teachers.

Plan for Output

Contrary to what television shows might lead non-educators to believe, leaders are not looking for quiet classrooms with obedient students in rows when they come to visit. In productive spaces, students are not just receiving information but also expressing their thoughts in ways that demonstrate some degree of cognitive lift. When visitors can see evidence of students grappling with information and interacting with content in ways that showcase critical thinking skills, a classroom observation will be that much more impressive.

Increasing output for every single student is certainly challenging; for example, in every class I have ever taught, the same three to five students will be sure to raise their hands each day unless I do something specific to change that pattern. Therefore, it is essential to plan an approach to 360-degree student participation prior to the lesson. That might look like building in time for students to stand up, find a partner across the room, and talk about an essential question or new piece of learning, or having students respond to a prompt quietly first before getting into groups to discuss their answers.

However it works for the students and the lesson, planning for this type of participation is key to ensuring that classroom observers clearly see how the teacher makes student thinking visible.

Align Activities to Criteria for Success

I teach a graduate-level class about teaching, and many of my students—most of whom are classroom teachers—routinely express discomfort about the idea that every activity they design must somehow connect to a larger learning goal. Their main pushback? “It’ll stifle my creativity.”

Being creative is one of the most stimulating parts of teaching, and nobody should have to lose that joy. That said, activities that occur in a bubble rarely benefit learning. Certainly, there is a time and place to have fun for its own sake, but for the most part, classroom activities should be clearly aligned to criteria for success that support the daily content objective. For example, if the objective for a physical education class is that students will be able to demonstrate proper form for a split squat, the criteria for success might include the correct placement of the knee over the ankle, or the appropriate distribution of weight toward the working leg.

When classroom observers watch students, they want to see that students not only are doing work that supports the explicit objective but also understand what it means to successfully complete that work and make progress. If we make a habit of explicitly noting through-lines between what students need to know and how we build their awareness of that learning, visitors will see these vital content connections occurring for students in real time.

Measure the Learning

One of the most common post-observation follow-ups from a leader is along the lines of, “Did students reach the learning target? How do you know?” Without even the briefest and most informal of checks for understanding at the close of each day, all we have to rely on is intuition, which can be misleading. I remember being so excited by a lesson that involved students throwing paper “snowballs” at one another to exchange ideas, and when an administrator walked in, I was pretty confident about how things went until they asked me for evidence of student growth.

To ensure that all lesson planning incorporates the recommended backward design steps of identifying objectives, determining evidence that achieves the objective, and then moving into instruction, the intention with which we prepare is crucial. With every lesson we plan, making sure we know the answers to the following questions before each class can help ensure that formative assessment practices don’t get lost in the shuffle:

1. What are students supposed to know and be able to do by the end of the lesson? (Objective)
2. What evidence will measure their achievement of the objective? (Assessment)
3. What instructional activities best demonstrate this learning? (Instruction)

With the questions above answered in advance, we can rest assured that if someone walks into the classroom unannounced and wants to know how learning is being measured, we will have specific answers that demonstrate what students got from instruction that day.

Reflect and Recalibrate

I once coached a teacher who had many strong instructional skills but wasn’t reflective about the connections between their classroom practices and students’ learning outcomes. The teacher had a very high student failure rate, and when I asked them to reflect about next steps, they turned the focus outward and said that students needed to work harder. Because the teacher struggled to think analytically about their own practice and change course where needed, it was difficult to make any headway.

Once we realize that making mistakes is a natural part of becoming better teachers, reflection comes more naturally. The goal of each lesson is not to be flawless or even necessarily to succeed; it is to learn how to make small improvements to instruction that impact student growth. When classroom observers have conversations with us after a visit, they mainly want to know that we have given time and thought to next steps that are built upon what happened that day. To that end, it helps to be prepared by considering just three questions:

1. What went well or as expected in class today?
2. If I could go back and change anything, what would it be, and why?
3. What are my next steps for upcoming learning as a result of student performance and understanding today?

It’s important to note that even when we are not thinking about a post-observation conversation, these reflection questions are essential to ensuring that our work contributes to a continuous growth process for students.

Ultimately, being observation ready is less about performing for an audience and more about committing to practices that consistently support student learning. When lessons are clearly framed, aligned, and assessed, with students actively expressing their thinking and reflection guiding next steps, strong teaching becomes visible in any setting. While we may never feel entirely comfortable with an observer present, grounding our work in these habits allows us to shift the focus away from feeling judged and toward what matters most: ensuring that every lesson moves students forward in clear and measurable ways.