Sitting In on an Instructor's Class: What to Watch and How to Give the Feedback

The visit that only happens after a complaint

A parent says the Thursday class has become noisy, you sit in the following week, and the instructor spends the whole hour knowing exactly why you are there. The fix is to stop making observation an event: sit in on every instructor on a schedule they know about, so a visit is routine and the feedback is about the class rather than about the complaint.

An instructor who is only ever watched after something has gone wrong learns to read your presence as a verdict. They teach the safest version of the lesson for that hour, you see nothing useful, and the conversation afterwards becomes a defence rather than a discussion.

This is for the instructors who are past their first weeks and teach on their own. Watching a new hire until you are ready to hand them a class is a different job with a pass or fail at the end, and it is covered in our guide to a new instructor's first weeks. Here there is no verdict, only a class you want to be a little better next term, whether it is a maths group at a bimbel, a ballet class at a sanggar or a lane at a swim school.

How often should you sit in?

Once a term per instructor is enough for a stable team, and it is a rhythm a small centre can keep. Put the dates on the calendar at the start of the term and tell each instructor which week you will come, but not which day, so they can plan a normal lesson without preparing a show.

Watch the same class each time where you can. Seeing one group across several terms tells you whether the children have moved on, which is the thing you actually want to know, while a different class each visit only ever gives you a first impression.

Two situations justify an extra visit outside the cycle: an instructor taking on a new level or age group for the first time, and an instructor who asks you to come. The second is worth encouraging, and it happens more readily once the routine visits have stopped feeling like inspections.

Sitting in without changing the class

Arrive before the children and sit to the side or at the back, somewhere the instructor does not have to teach around you. Stay for the whole session. The start and the finish are where most of what you are looking for happens, and leaving halfway tells the room you have seen enough.

Do not step in, correct the instructor in front of the children or chat with a child during the lesson. The one exception is safety: if a child is at risk, act, and treat it as a separate matter from the observation.

If parents wait on the premises, watch the handover at the end as well. It is part of the class as far as a family is concerned, and it is often the only part they see.

What are you actually watching for?

The children, more than the instructor. A polished explanation that leaves half the group waiting is a weaker lesson than a plain one that keeps every child doing something, and you can only see that by watching the room rather than the front of it.

Look at the first five minutes: does the class start on time, and does every child know what to do without being told twice? Look for waiting, meaning children standing in a queue at the pool edge, sitting with a finished worksheet or watching one classmate at the piano while everyone else has nothing to do.

Watch what happens to the child who gets stuck, whether they are helped, moved on or left, and whether the rest of the group stalls while it happens. And watch the last five minutes: whether the lesson ends on something the children can name, and whether a parent at the door hears anything more specific than a good job.

Before you go in, read what the instructor has recorded for that group. If your team posts progress notes to families, or records new levels in Happy Kamper's milestone tracking, the last few entries tell you what the instructor believes these children can do. The visit tells you whether that is what you see, and a gap between the two is a better starting point for feedback than any general impression.

Three moments, written down as they happen

Keep a single sheet per visit and write three moments on it, each with the time beside it and a sentence on what happened. Describe what you saw, not what you thought: "ten past four, three children waiting at the wall while one practised the turn" is something an instructor can picture and act on, while "pacing was slow" is not.

Aim for at least one moment that went well. It is not there to soften the rest; it gives the instructor something specific to keep doing, which is half of the feedback you are about to give.

Keep the sheets. Over several terms they show whether a change you agreed has held, and they stop the next visit from starting from nothing. They are notes on a class, not a rating of a person, and they should read that way if the instructor asks to see them.

How do you give the feedback?

Within a day, in private, and in person where you can. Feedback given a week later is about a class neither of you remembers clearly, and feedback in a message invites a long written reply you then have to answer.

Ask the instructor first how they thought the session went and what they would change. Then give one thing to keep and one thing to change, each tied to a moment from your sheet. One change is a limit, not a starting point: an instructor who leaves with five things to fix will try all of them for a week and then none.

Agree what the change will look like in practice, in their words rather than yours. "Split the waiting line into two groups" is a change they can try on Thursday; "improve engagement" is not. Write down what you agreed, and look for that one thing at the next visit before anything else.

What if the same thing comes up twice?

Then the first conversation did not work, and repeating it more firmly rarely helps. Ask what got in the way. Often it is something you control: a group too large for one instructor, a room where the waiting is built into the layout, or a lesson plan the centre handed over that does not suit the group.

If the obstacle is yours, fix it and watch again. If the instructor agrees the change matters and still has not made it, sit in on a second class sooner, rather than waiting a full term, and make the change the only thing you discuss.

If a problem is about conduct or safety rather than teaching, it does not belong in this cycle at all. Take it out of the observation process and deal with it directly, so the routine visits stay what the whole team understands them to be.