Why most observation feedback changes nothing

Think about the last time someone observed one of your lessons. Can you remember what they told you afterwards? Not the grade, if there was one. The actual advice.

Most teachers cannot. And most leaders, if they are honest, cannot remember what they told the last five teachers they observed either.

That should worry us. Across a school year, observation takes up an enormous amount of leadership time. We watch the lesson, we write the notes, we hold the meeting, we file the form. And then, too often, nothing in the classroom changes at all.

The feedback was not the problem

Usually, the feedback itself was perfectly sensible. The trouble is that there was too much of it. Six strengths, five areas for development and a paragraph of targets. Nobody can act on eleven things at once. So the teacher, quite reasonably, acts on none of them, and the form goes into a folder until next year.

I have done this myself, more often than I like to admit. I thought thorough feedback was good feedback. It is not. Useful feedback is feedback a teacher can act on next Monday.

Three habits that make it land

Name one real strength. Not "good relationships" or "well planned". Something specific that you saw and that the teacher should keep doing: the way she paused before taking answers, or how he used one student's mistake to teach the whole class. Specific praise tells a teacher you were really watching, and that makes the next part easier to hear.

Agree one clear next step. One. Small enough to try in the next lesson, and agreed rather than imposed. The best question I know is simple: "If you taught this lesson again tomorrow, what would you change?" Teachers usually know. Our job is to help them say it, and then to help them do it.

Check back within two weeks. This is the habit that matters most, and the one we skip most often. Pop in for ten minutes. Ask how it went. Notice the change and say so. Without the follow-up, feedback is an opinion. With it, feedback becomes development.

What this asks of leaders

It asks us to observe less and follow up more. To write shorter notes. To care more about the conversation than the form. And to remember that the point of an observation is not to judge a lesson. It is to help a teacher teach the next one a little better.

So here is a question for this week. Of the teachers you observed this term, how many could tell you their one next step? And how many of them have you been back to see?