I once walked into a second-grade classroom where the teacher, Mrs. Johnson, was introducing a new concept. Within a few minutes she knew where every one of her students stood. She gauged their understanding based on who answered a question immediately and who hesitated, who kept speaking up while others disengaged. And she was able to adjust her attention constantly, identifying the groups of students who were struggling while making it all look effortless.

I was an assistant principal at the time, popping into dozens of classes each month, and I remember thinking: This is both the hardest and most important part of teaching. It’s almost like watching Olympic athletes; they make their sport look easy, and great teachers do the same.

The instinct Mrs. Johnson displayed — noticing what a student needs and responding in the learning moment — is a practice called responsive teaching. It isn’t new, as teachers have always adapted on the fly. We reteach a concept when someone looks confused, pull a small group together mid-lesson, catch a student who’s uncharacteristically quiet and check in before it becomes a pattern. In short, teacher judgment is the engine behind responsive instruction.

But that judgment is now being asked to cover more ground, with less support to draw on. If schools want to address the issues facing education today, they need to empower teachers to see and respond to every individual in real time — without adding to their workload or stress.

Teachers face mounting, intersecting challenges

Classrooms today hold a wider range of needs than ever. NWEA research from this year shows that even before the pandemic, elementary classrooms were academically diverse: In a typical fifth-grade class, only about a quarter of students were on track for grade-level proficiency. After the pandemic, that overall proficiency level hasn’t changed dramatically, but the depth of the gap has. Lower-achieving students are now further behind and need accelerated growth just to catch up by year’s end.

Practically, that means teachers are managing abilities that are further apart than they used to be in classes that, especially in upper grades, might contain 30 or 40 students.

At the same time, teachers are being asked to cover more than academics. Kids walk in carrying social and emotional weight that shapes their ability to learn, and it’s up to the teacher to make sure they succeed. In fact, when TPT (a marketplace for classroom resources, surveyed thousands of educators this summer, meeting emotional and behavioral needs was their top concern, even above academics.

There’s no question over whether educators are capable of helping every student thrive. Teachers like Mrs. Johnson don’t need to dig through yet another data system to know their classes. But they do need the time and support to act on their judgment, for every student, all day, without sacrificing their own happiness or passion for the job.

Helping teachers scale what they’ve always done instinctively 

Enabling responsive teaching in today’s landscape doesn’t have to be complicated.

It can start with something straightforward and often overlooked: encouraging teachers to build routines that create space for judgment to work. The best teachers I’ve seen add intentional structure into the day, to help kids stay in the learning mindset.

I visited a public school in New York City where every student wrote a personal goal on a sticky note each morning, something like “I’m going to be kind today” or “I’ll do well on my math test,” and circled back to it before dismissal with their teachers. Another simple practice is pairing students with different classmates for a few minutes of guided conversation before class or between topics.

Neither takes more than five or 10 minutes or requires a new program. The value is in giving teachers a read on their students throughout the school day, while also giving students practice naming what they need.

Technology has a role here too, if done right. It’s important to remember data points don’t capture everything. An assessment score won’t convey that a student did poorly on a quiz because he was distracted about a field trip that afternoon, or that a tough week had more to do with what’s going on at home than the material. Teachers are able to bring those insights because they know their students.

What technology can do when it’s thoughtfully designed is sharpen the teachers’ hunches by providing immediate insight into which skill students understand. It can flag issues even before they’re visible, then help teachers respond right away by offering personalized next steps to deepen learning for every student. In other words, tech doesn’t override judgment, but it should make exercising that judgment faster, more precise and scalable.

With any new tech, rolling it out correctly is the most important piece. I’ve seen effective tools and smart initiatives fail because teachers were trained once and left to figure out the actual usage alone. Instead, schools should build in ongoing support: a dedicated tech leader who can answer a quick question, regular time for teachers to explore resources and compare notes, and leadership that rigorously assesses what’s working and actually drops what isn’t.

None of this is complex, but it’s not going to happen without effort. It requires administrators to protect teachers’ expertise as fiercely as they protect instructional minutes, to resist piling on disparate tools that lead to fatigue more than results, and to treat teacher judgment as the thing worth building systems around rather than a variable to be managed by those systems.

If we focus on making responsive teaching easily achievable in every classroom, we have a real opportunity to improve outcomes for our students while making life better for teachers — and that benefits everyone.