On 12th May 2020, we signed up our first school as a subscriber to Walkthrus.co.uk. We didn’t know what to expect – how much interest there would be and how many schools might join. But now, three years later we’ve delighted to have just passed a major milestone. 3000 schools and colleges are now signed up as members of our community.

All The Threes:

The line-up of threes is nicely satisfying with various milestones all coinciding.

The Books are the Bedrock

It was quite a feat publishing a new volume each year in 2020, 21 and 22 but we did it and it seems that Walkthrus are everywhere. We’re absolutely thrilled that our books are reaching so many teachers. The numbers are amazing to us. and we’re grateful to everyone reading and sharing the books around the world. Our US edition is due for release this summer – it’s a bit of a ‘greatest hits’ of the three volumes wrapped into one, and re-written for a US audience.

Walkthrus World Wide

Thank You:

Walkthrus has only been able to grow to support so many schools as a result of the endeavours of a lot of great people and organisations:

John Catt Ltd; Alex, Jonathan and Annabel, with Scott in the background and Mark and Gale in the US team. It’s a powerhouse team that works tirelessly to distribute books and support schools signing up and generally get things going. It’s a fabulous partnership without which, nothing would have happened at all.

Haringey Education Partnership: Fran, Nat and Sophie, supported by James, who bring such huge energy to our operation. We now have a team of trainers and a newly recruited team of consultants, all supported by HEP. In addition, HEP’s Walkthrus programme is the biggest we have, with 80 schools in Haringey and Enfield, leading the way in terms of system-level support for professional development. A big shout out to the awesome Trainer team — too many to list individually but they are all brilliant people; we get awesome feedback from schools where our trainers have provided online or in-person support.

Contributors: It’s important to acknowledge the array of contributors to each volume – a host of amazing writers, adding depth and rigour to our ideas about teaching:

In addition we have had regular support from the wizard Matt Stone who is soon to join us full time. He made our google site and wrote our brilliant coaching booklet and most of the trainer notes. Emma Turner has done superb work on the ECF mapping tool supported by Sherringtons Daisy and Sam and we’ve had amazing support from Claire Hill and Libby Howell creating some of our resources. We also have some excellent new tools in the pipeline by Walkthrus users Nicola Cole, Sally Jellett and Jamie Clark. A special mention is due to John Tomsett and Nikki Sullivan for their implementation work as trainers and consultants.

One of our most significant collaborations has been with Chiltern Learning Trust – thanks to Sufian and Nadine and the brilliant teachers who volunteered to take part in our video coaching project.

Global Partners: We’re excited by the growth of Walkthrus around the world, with special thanks to Simon Breakspear for his amazing work in Australia where we have 50+ schools in a community of practice based around Walkthrus. Thanks also to Meg Lee and her incredible team at Frederick County Public Schools. for exploring how our materials translate to the US context and supporting other districts to come on board. Finally, most recently Mark Verde and Cindy at Patana Bangkok for hosting me recently – helping to road test Walkthrus as a tool to support instructional coaching.

Makematic: Thanks to Becky and the fabulous team who made our animated promo videos, bringing the characters to life:

Walkthrus Full Intro from Teaching WalkThrus on Vimeo.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants and we acknowledge our debt to those whose work we celebrate throughout our work: Dan Willingham, Dylan Wiliam, Efrat Furst, Deans for Impact, Sam Sims and his colleagues, Doug Lemov and Paul Bambrick-Santoyo. We’re also grateful for the support and friendship of the legend Jim Knight and the dynamic StepLab crew – Josh, Peps and Claire – with exciting collaborations in development.

We keep pinching ourselves – our wildest imaginings have been exceeded in terms of the extent of school engagement in just three years. At the same time, we know we’re only just at the start. We’ve learned a great deal along the way about running a business, about CPD, coaching, teaching, school leadership, publishing, writing and how ideas are communicated more generally. It’s been a fascinating experience, with the thinking about our process evolving continually. It will evolve further for sure.

Most recently we’ve found that our Six Decisions framework has been a major support for schools devising and implementing CPD programmes;

This emerged from all our implementation work. When you have 40 or 60 or 80 school leaders in one space, one system, all able to discuss the elements of professional learning and evidence-informed teaching with a common language and common set of resources – it’s just so powerful and that seems to be the key territory for us as we look ahead.

Thanks to absolutely everyone who has cheered us along the way and to all the teachers and school leaders working with us, doing the great work you do every day. It’s been a great adventure already with much much more to come:

Build Great Teaching. Step by Step.