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Tipp City teachers expand learning walks, Danielson rubric to boost student engagement
Summary
Teacher leaders from Tipp City Exempted Village described districtwide professional development this year that emphasized Danielson-based learning walks, peer classroom visits and shared planning; staff said the work increased collaboration and classroom engagement and the district plans to narrow and continue strategies next year.
At a district work session, teacher leaders and administrators from Tipp City Exempted Village described a year of professional development built around the Danielson engagement rubric, routine learning walks and teacher-led trainings aimed at increasing student engagement across elementary, middle and high school classrooms.
The work mattered because presenters said the practices broke down silos between grade levels and schools, increased peer-to-peer coaching and produced measurable changes in classroom practice tied to new curriculum adoptions in English language arts and math.
Carrie Hake, a PDL representative at Broadway Elementary, told the board, “So we're gonna share just a little bit about how Broadway used the knowledge that the team gained from the PDL experience and shared it with the wider staff,” describing rubrics, team conversations and peer walk-throughs that school staff used to reflect and change classroom practice. Hake said every Broadway staff member completed a walk-through using the Danielson engagement rubric and that teachers later selected a focus area to observe in colleagues’ rooms.
Jessica Miano, a grade teacher at LT, described a similar approach: staff signed up via a shared Google document to observe specific teaching strategies, ran teacher-led professional development sessions and produced a “learning continuum of engagement” poster intended to give students common language to reflect on their participation. “A lot of teachers use that time to create slides and presentations for next year,” Miano said, referring to PD time spent learning tools such as Canva.
Kevin Kanapke, a middle school math teacher who took part in the district PDL team, said teams met weekly and that teachers were asked to perform learning walks twice a quarter. “We met once a week, 2 as a district and then 2 building specific,” Kanapke said, describing a mix of district- and building-level meetings and regular peer observation.
Leah Levy, assistant principal, said the district used the Danielson Framework as the common calibration tool, noting its connection to the regional evaluation system: “There’s 22 different rubrics that come with Danielson. It is the thing that OTES is based off of.” She described a deliberate rollout that delayed formal reporting for a quarter so teachers could practice without evaluative pressure.
Presenters described concrete practices: building-level teams (BLTs) met monthly to review engagement and data; related-arts and intervention staff joined cross-grade observations; flexible grouping and student goal-setting were emphasized; and teacher teams and department heads aligned curriculum and strategies. Several presenters said the most frequent feedback request from teachers was more time for reflection and collaborative planning.
District staff cited research norms during the presentation: presenters referenced studies saying a minimum of roughly 14 hours of focused professional development is required to affect student learning and noted other estimates (often cited in the materials) that larger impacts occur with substantially more hours. Rebecca Birch was named as a researcher whose work informed that portion of the materials.
Looking ahead, presenters said the district will narrow recommended engagement strategies to two or three for consistent practice, continue classroom-technology and AI professional development to increase teacher efficiency, and implement common planning time for all subjects next year so collaborative curriculum planning can occur regularly. Several speakers described these as direction-level decisions rather than formal votes.
Questions from attendees focused on logistics and teacher comfort in peer observation. Presenters repeatedly emphasized that the goal was to build a collaborative culture, not an evaluative one, and that the practice increased teacher-to-teacher coaching as well as student engagement, especially during hands-on or student-led activities.
District leaders did not present cost figures, a precise district-wide estimate of students affected, nor a formal policy change recorded in the meeting minutes; the session focused on practice, implementation experience and plans for ongoing professional development.
