Making Time for Strong Instruction: An Indiana Principal’s Approach

At Central Intermediate School in Indiana’s Beech Grove City Schools, Principal Andy Karr recognized that teachers felt pressure to keep up with the curriculum schedule and needed more time and support to adjust lessons based on students’ understanding.

Karr decided to redesign the master schedule to create dedicated weekly data meetings without sacrificing instructional time for students. Led by members of the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT), these meetings give teachers the much needed time to analyze student work together and plan how to adjust instruction.

For National Principals Month, Karr shares how he made time for this work and how teacher leaders help their colleagues turn student work analysis into action.

What new structure did you put in place to create dedicated time for teachers to work in teams, and what role do ILT members play?

Central Intermediate has implemented weekly data meetings that are led by our mentor teachers, instructional coach, and administrators. ILT members are grouped with classroom teachers who share similar content. Mentor teachers facilitate the process of analyzing student work with the intention of adjusting instruction as a result. This meeting occurs outside of Clusters (teacher professional learning) and teachers' normal prep time. We've aligned our master schedule to ensure that this process occurs with fidelity.

What challenge or need led you to reconsider how teachers were using student data to guide instruction?

Our teachers receive extensive student work and often don't have adequate time and/or support to effectively analyze it. This dedicated time ensures that they have support and guidance from ILT as well as colleagues as they're making instructional moves that are based on student data.

A big challenge was our master schedule and the number of staff that we have who can support this process. We had to rework our entire master schedule around this process to ensure that we gave teachers the gift of time while not sacrificing instructional time for students.

What happens during the ILT-led data analysis meetings, and how do ILT members support teachers to apply what they learn to adjust instruction?

ILT members lead these meetings with student work from their classrooms. Each meeting, ILT members start by analyzing the state standard by identifying procedural and conceptual skills needed to demonstrate mastery. Mentor teachers then facilitate teachers comparing exemplary student work against those identified skills. They then move to the almost-mastered work with the objective of identifying high-leverage action steps. They spend the last portion of the meeting co-planning the upcoming lesson.

Can you share an example of how the new process has impacted or affected teachers and teacher practice or student achievement?

Teachers have been excited to have the time to work with colleagues and mentor teachers. Finding consistent time has been difficult over the last couple of years, and this devoted time that allows our teachers to complete data analysis and determine next steps is going to be a game changer for students. We're excited to see where this process takes us through the course of the school year.