The Morning Dilemma
You walk into school on Monday morning with every intention of visiting classrooms. But before you can get out the door, there's a parent meeting, two discipline referrals, and an email from the district that needs a response by noon. By the time you come up for air, it's lunch — and you haven't set foot in a single classroom.
Sound familiar? Most administrators know they should be visiting classrooms regularly. The challenge isn't motivation — it's logistics. Who should you visit today? Who haven't you seen in a while? Is there a new teacher who needs more frequent check-ins? Many principals track all of this in spreadsheets, sticky notes, or simply memory. By the time they figure out who's overdue for a visit, the window for actually making one has closed.
We built Aprenta's Smart List to eliminate that planning overhead entirely.
Your Prioritized List, Ready Every Morning
When you open Aprenta, the first thing you see is your Smart List — a prioritized list of every teacher in your building, automatically sorted by who needs a visit most. No spreadsheet to update. No mental math. Just a clear answer to the question: who should I see today?
The Smart List considers two factors to determine priority:
- Observation frequency: You set how often each teacher should be observed — consistently, often, occasionally, or rarely. A first-year teacher who needs regular support will naturally appear higher on the list than a veteran who's thriving independently.
- Time since last visit: The longer it's been since a teacher's last observation, the higher they rise. A teacher set to "often" who hasn't been visited in three weeks will climb above a teacher set to "consistently" who was observed yesterday.
These two signals combine into a single priority score. Teachers who should be visited frequently and haven't been seen recently rise to the top. Teachers who need less attention settle toward the bottom. The list re-sorts itself every time you complete an observation — no manual upkeep required.
From List to Classroom in Under a Minute
Seeing who's next is only half the value. The other half is how quickly you can act on it. When you spot a teacher on your Smart List, tap "+ To-Do" to add them to your visit plan for the day. Choose the right observation form — a quick walkthrough, a coaching visit, a formal observation — and you're walking out the door.
The entire workflow, from "who should I visit?" to "I'm in the classroom with a form open," takes less than a minute. That matters when you have exactly 15 minutes between the end of a meeting and the start of lunch duty. The Smart List turns those small windows of time into actual classroom visits instead of planning sessions.
Why Consistent Visits Matter More Than You Think
This isn't just about efficiency. Research consistently shows that frequent, informal classroom visits are one of the most powerful things an administrator can do for their school.
A 2024 study published in the Oxford Review of Education found that frequent classroom visits by principals are the top predictor of teacher retention. Not salary. Not class size. Presence. When teachers feel that their administrator is regularly in classrooms — not to evaluate, but to support — they're more likely to stay.
But most administrators can't sustain a regular cadence because the logistics eat up their limited time. Deciding who to visit, checking when you last saw them, pulling up the right form — each step adds friction. And friction is what keeps administrators in the office instead of in classrooms. The Smart List removes the planning overhead so the actual visit can happen.
Stop Planning. Start Visiting.
If you're tracking classroom visits in a spreadsheet — or worse, in your head — there's a better way. Aprenta's Smart List does the prioritizing for you, so you can spend your time where it actually matters: in classrooms, with teachers.
Try Aprenta free and see your Smart List in action. No credit card required.