I've been evaluating teachers for over sixteen years. I still remember the first time I calendared four hours for a single observation cycle and realized, halfway through the write-up, that I'd already forgotten key moments from the lesson. That was years ago. The process hasn't gotten any easier.
Ask any principal what a single observation actually costs them, and the answer is never “one classroom visit.”
The Time It Really Takes
A single formal observation does not end when the lesson does.
Classroom visit: 30–60 minutes.
Evidence review and alignment to standards: 45–90 minutes.
Writing the evaluation: another 60 minutes (at least).
Post-conference meeting: 30–45 minutes.
That's often three to four hours per teacher for one complete evaluation cycle, and many of us oversee dozens of teachers.
Observations are essential, but they are rarely the only urgent thing on the calendar.
The Struggle to Simply Be Present
Most of us entered leadership because we love teaching and learning. We want to be in classrooms. We want to see instruction in action. We want to coach teachers in real time.
But the demands of the job pull us away.
The irony is painful: the very role designed to support instruction often keeps leaders out of classrooms. A discipline referral interrupts a walkthrough. A district meeting overlaps with a scheduled observation. A parent concern becomes the priority of the day.
We often find ourselves asking: How can I support instruction if I can't consistently be present?
The Quiet Guilt We Carry
There's a kind of guilt that doesn't get talked about in leadership meetings.
The guilt of not being in classrooms as often as you promised yourself you would be. The guilt of knowing a teacher is trying something new, but you haven't had time to see it. When feedback isn't timely or actionable.
We know that feedback is most powerful when it is immediate, specific, and growth-focused. When days, or weeks, pass before an evaluation is finalized, the momentum fades. The teachable moment softens. The opportunity to coach in real time is lost.
None of us wants to hand a teacher feedback that feels delayed, rushed, or overly general. But when time is scarce, depth often becomes the casualty.
The Emotional Toll of Falling Short of Your Own Standards
Every administrator I know got into this work because they wanted to be in classrooms. They wanted to coach. They wanted to notice when a teacher nailed a lesson and tell them exactly why it worked. Instead, most of us spend the majority of our time managing systems, not leading instruction.
When we cannot meet those expectations because of time constraints, it feels personal.
It feels like letting teachers down.
And that weight accumulates over the course of a school year.
There Must Be a Better Way
The current systems for teacher observations were designed for compliance and documentation. But we need systems designed for efficiency, clarity, and support.
What we actually need is a way to capture evidence without losing our attention to the room. A system that connects what we observe to the rubric without requiring us to flip through a 27-page document from memory. And a way to draft feedback that's specific enough to matter, without spending another hour at a keyboard after the school day ends.
The last thing any of us needs is another complicated platform. What would actually help is something that handles the time-consuming parts so we can focus on the work that matters.
Because when we can complete observations efficiently, we gain back the one thing we desperately need more of:
Time in classrooms.
Time to coach.
Time to encourage.
Time to notice excellence.
Time to lead instruction, not just manage systems.
This is exactly why my co-founders and I built Elevate. Not because the problem is technically hard, but because nobody had built a tool that actually understood what administrators go through during the evaluation cycle. Elevate handles transcription, rubric alignment, and drafting suggestions for the report so I can stay focused on what's happening in the room. It's changed how I do observations, and it's changed how much time I get back in my week.
When I used Elevate for the first time, I finished an observation write-up in under thirty minutes. That's what this is about.