School leaders desperate for strategies that will improve student learning have often opted to embrace strategies that they have observed being used successfully in other districts. Sometimes, this works; sometimes, it does not. Two vignettes about districts that made similar decisions to implement learning walks help demonstrate our beliefs about what is required to identify and implement a strategy that can be in your district. These examples are amalgams of real districts with which we have worked. Alexander School District After two years of hard work, Alexander Public School's central office leadership team was pleasantly surprised that implementing learning walks had gone more smoothly than they had expected. In spite of that, this initiative, like others before it, failed to deliver what it seemed to promise. Teaching practice remained largely the same, as did student performance. The initiative couldn't yet be pronounced dead because learning walks were still scheduled and conducted occasionally. But the reality was far from what administrators had envisioned. In the beginning, the leadership team was energetic and optimistic about implementing learning walks. Neighboring districts were using learning walks to great effect, and after attending a workshop about organizational change and large-scale improvement, they also wanted to introduce learning walks in their schools. They hired a company to teach principals to conduct learning walks. During a monthly administrator meeting, the trainers provided rich resources, including appropriate vocabulary for describing high-quality practices and examples of learning walk checklists for documenting these qualities. Initially, principals received the news of the learning walks initiative with mixed reactions. Spending more time in the classrooms made sense to them. As building leaders, they should have deeper, more intimate connections with teaching and learning. But, they also felt anxious about where they would find time to visit classrooms regularly. They also worried that teachers might react negatively. Out of this worry, the central office and building administrators spent considerable time talking about how they could communicate and frame learning walks in order to reduce teacher anxiety and resistance. After two years, principals report a greater sense of efficacy as instructional leaders. They say they experience a deeper connection to classroom work, which once seemed so foreign and distant. These principals also report feeling more confident during discussions about teaching and learning with individual teachers and with the entire faculty. Teachers report that despite the intense anxiety and stress that emerged at the beginning of this initiative, having building administrators in their classrooms was no longer problematic. Relieved that implementing learning walks wasn't as hard as they expected, the administrative team directs its attention to other initiatives. But, despite initial energy and anxiety, learning walks occur only twice per year, just before the superintendents' deadlines for principals to provide written summaries of learning walk results. They are a perfunctory ritual, not a core component of administrators' leadership practice, and new initiatives--such as a new math curriculum, districtwide training in effective teaching strategies, and efforts to increase student engagement--have taken precedence. Although many teachers and administrators in Alexander Public Schools say learning walks have been successful, few can identify tangible improvements in teaching and learning because of learning walks. Baxter School District After two years of hard work, the principals and central office staff in the Baxter School District retained much of their initial enthusiasm for learning walks. Despite struggle and frustration, they see evidence of improvement in teacher practice and student performance. …