Mind Mapping

Challenge    As a member of the School District Administrative Leadership Team, I was tasked with facilitating an  activity with Campus and District Administrators to think about and improve our teacher walkthrough  system. In the educational environment, a phenomenon known as Walkthroughs has become the  approach to capturing a snapshot of how teachers and students perform in each classroom. The  administrator, campus specialist, or district specialist step into a classroom for 5-7 minutes, observe  what is going on, and then leave scripted or preselected comments regarding the practices  happening in the class. The feedback from the walkthrough form may be utilized as a part of the  teacher’s formal evaluation program and as an assessment of the campus’ professional  development needs.    Rather than an opportunity for teacher recognition, teacher growth, or formative assessment of the  campus practices, our walkthrough process had taken a turn toward being an act of compliance or  viewed as a punitive action struggling teachers. Administrators had begun to use the forms for little  than documentation and rarely connected walkthrough feedback to teacher growth or professional  development needs. The challenge was to revise the walkthrough system to a process that was  positive, informative and promoted professional growth.    Selection    Before this activity, the team had gathered teacher feedback via a questionnaire regarding their  feelings about the process, feedback, and any ideas they thought would improve the system.  Additionally, the District Leadership team had been through a similar activity that asked what they  believed to be the purpose, concerns, and effects of the current walkthrough system. As Marisol Aguilar identified in Week 3’s presentation on Mind Mapping, the tool needed in this instance was  one that would help the group make sense of the research and look for patterns and insights that  might inform the design of a revised system. For this reason, I facilitated a Gallery Walk, Mind  Mapping activity with the group.    Application    Before the District Administrative Team meeting, I collected the questions and responses from all  stakeholders, printed them on large cards, and placed them on the walls of our large meeting room.  Each participant walked around the Gallery, with a clipboard and a set of sticky notes. They were  instructed to silently read the comments and jot down noticings that might inform our criteria for a  new walkthrough system. They focused on the needs of all stakeholders and commonalities in the  responses. After writing their comments, they returned to their seats and sorted their comments into  themes. After this individual activity, they worked in table groups to create common themes and  combined their sticky notes on a large poster paper. The next step was to ask each group to share a  theme with the whole room, and then combine the group themes on the board at the front of the  room. Each group was asked for new themes until all themes had been posted on the board. Each  group then collaboratively observed the combined themes on the board and, with a final, large sticky  note wrote the insight they gained from the theme that would eventually inform the criteria for our

Mind Mapping

newly designed walkthrough system. The room collective produced a list of 10 criteria for  consideration in our new walkthrough system.    Insight    Through the application of the Design Thinking model and particularly the Mind Mapping activity, the  District Leadership Team learned a great deal as it began to listen to the concerns and needs of the  teachers truly. I realized that many of us assumed we knew what was best and felt like we had a  strong system to track data in the old walkthrough system. However, the lack of communication  regarding the purpose of the tool and the tool as a medium for feedback did not meet the needs of  teachers. Because teachers felt the walkthrough feedback invaluable and changed nothing in their  practice, those conducting walkthroughs also lost value in the tool. They only participated in  walkthroughs for compliance quotas and punitive documentation actions. The tool designed for  feedback and growth needed to be created or revised with each user in mind. Without the Design  Thinking process, I am not confident that we would have come to the same conclusions.    Approach    This was the District Administrative Team’s first attempt at Design Thinking as an approach to  solving a problem. We have learned a great deal through the process thus far and need to continue  with the brainstorming and prototype stages, followed by more feedback. The mind mapping activity  is one that we will continue to incorporate at the District and hopefully Campus levels to view  problems through an “anything is possible” type lens. The thing that I would do differently next time  is to have representatives from all stakeholder groups complete the Gallery Walk Activity. This time  we were limited to teacher comments and not teachers participating in the Gallery Walk and  providing their insights and suggestions of walkthrough criteria. It would be challenging to involve  800 teachers in the process, but it would be possible to include several teacher representatives from  significant groups in our teaching staff. i.e., New teachers, veteran teachers, elementary, secondary,  and teachers of various subjects.

