How-to Guides

How-to Guide: Teacher Reflection & Acknowledgment

This guide walks you through the three new pieces of the post-observation workflow in the weCLIMB module and where to find them. It’s written for district and building administrators who will turn the features on and configure them, and for observers who will see the updated submit-and-close flow on every observation they write.

Overview

The feature has three layers. Each one works on its own, but they’re designed to work together.

Teacher reflection lets the teacher write a self-reflection as part of the post-observation workflow, using prompts the admin configures per Form Set.
Teacher acknowledgment captures a signed, timestamped record that the teacher has read the observer’s feedback — with an optional written disagreement that becomes part of the permanent record.
Magic-link access sends the teacher a secure email link that opens their observation directly. They reflect, acknowledge, and reply in the discussion without ever logging in.

All three are off by default. Districts that don’t want them aren’t required to do anything to adopt this release — but two changes are part of the base product and will be visible either way: the observation page has a new section layout with a “What’s next?” card, and the observer’s Finalize button is now labeled Submit.

Everything administrative lives under the weCLIMB section of the admin sidebar.

Part 1 — Turning the features on

Find it (acknowledgments and reflections)

Form Sets → Edit

This page is new in this release and is visible only to system administrators. The two switches that drive Reflections and acknowledgments are here.

The two switches

Require teacher reflection — When on, observations close only after the teacher has submitted their reflection (or an admin overrides). Reflection prompts come from the Form Set; see Part 2.
Require teacher acknowledgment — When on, observations close only after the teacher acknowledges (or acknowledges with disagreement, or an admin overrides). The acknowledgment is recorded as a signed audit row with the teacher’s name, timestamp, and IP address.

Switches save automatically — there’s a green Saved indicator next to each one. No “Save” button to click.

Find it (magic link)

weCLIMB→Settings→Allow magic link access
Allow magic-link access — When on, emails to the teacher contain a secure link that opens the observation directly with no login. Links are valid for 30 days. When off, the same emails go out, but the buttons inside route through the standard sign-in page.

A note on scope

These settings used to live under My Organization. They’ve moved to the dedicated weCLIMB Settings page.

Turning a switch on only applies to observations created after the switch is turned on. Already closed observations are not pulled retroactively into teachers’ queues, so you can enable reflection or acknowledgment mid-year without thousands of older observations suddenly appearing in teachers’ to-do lists.

You can also override reflection and acknowledgment per Form Set under the Form Set’s edit page, if some Form Sets in your district should require it and others shouldn’t.

Part 2 — Customizing reflection prompts on a Form Set

If you’ve turned reflection on, the prompts the teacher answers come from the Form Set. The page comes pre-loaded with a default set of prompts (drawn from research-based teacher reflection frameworks) so you have a working starting point even if you don’t write your own.

Find it

Admin sidebar → weCLIMB → Form Sets → open the Form Set → Edit

Configure the prompts

Turn Require reflection on for this Form Set. The Reflection prompts section appears immediately.
Edit any of the default prompts, or add your own. Each prompt has its own text box that grows automatically as you type.
A short note on the page clarifies: “Applies only to observations created after this is enabled.”
Save the Form Set.

That’s it. The next observation created on this Form Set will route through reflection using the prompts you wrote.

Toggling Require reflection off makes the prompts section disappear right away. The prompts are preserved — turn it back on and they’re still there.

Part 3 — Submitting an observation (observer)

This is what observers see. Nothing here needs to be configured per observer — the new page layout and lifecycle apply to every observation, regardless of whether your district has turned the new workflow features on.

The redesigned observation page

The observation page opens with a clearly labeled section layout — Details, Observation, Overall Feedback, Reflection, Acknowledgement, Closure, and Discussion — with a tab-style menu to move between sections.

Two things on the page are worth orienting to:

A state summary at the top of the page shows where the observation currently sits in its workflow.
A “What’s next?” card on the right names the next action and identifies who owns it. When a teacher action is required, this card tells you at a glance whether you’re waiting on the teacher and what they still have to do.

Submit vs. Close

The button observers previously called Finalize is now Submit. The behavior depends on what the Form Set requires:

When the Form Set requires reflection or acknowledgment — Submitting sends the observation to the teacher and the observation waits in Awaiting reflection or Awaiting acknowledgment before it can close. The teacher gets an email with a reflection prompt or an acknowledgment prompt, depending on what’s required.
When neither is required — Submitting closes the observation in the same click. The workflow behaves exactly as the previous Finalize button did. The label is different; the action is the same.

The lifecycle in one diagram:

Open  →  Submitted  →  (Awaiting reflection / acknowledgment)  →  Closed

                                                                     ↓

                                                                Reopen → Open

Downloading the closed-observation PDF

The closed-observation PDF now mirrors the on-screen audit record:

Information → Total Points → Forms → Overall Feedback →

  Reflection → Acknowledgement → Closure → Discussion (optional)

Reflection, Acknowledgement, and Closure sections appear automatically when those features were used.

When you download from the toolbar, you’re asked: “Include Discussion comments?” (off by default). The Discussion thread is a living conversation and may continue after close — leaving it out keeps the PDF a clean snapshot.

The close emails to teachers and observers always send a clean PDF with no Discussion comments, regardless of the toolbar choice. If a teacher later asks for the Discussion in their copy, re-download with the checkbox turned on.

Reopening an observation (admin)

If an observation needs to be edited after submit or close, an organization or system administrator can reopen it from the always-visible toolbar on the observation page. Observers cannot reopen their own observations, and teachers cannot reopen at all — reopen is an admin-level action by design so the audit record can’t be quietly rewritten.

Reopen requires a written reopen note explaining why. The reopen is recorded with the admin’s name, timestamp, and the note as a permanent audit row, so even after the observation is re-closed later, you can see that it was reopened, by whom, and why.

When you reopen:

The observation goes back to Open state. The observer (or an admin) can edit any of the form data and re-submit when ready.
The previous submit and close records are cleared. Both need to happen again.
The teacher’s previous acknowledgment is cleared. If acknowledgment is still required on re-close, the teacher will be asked to acknowledge again.
The teacher’s previous reflection text is preserved — it is not erased.
Any outstanding magic link the teacher had is retired.
No automatic email is sent on reopen. Communicate with the observer or teacher out of band.

What the teacher sees (for context)

You don’t configure this, but it helps to know what the email looks like when you click Submit.

If reflection is required, the teacher gets a “please reflect” email when you submit.
If only acknowledgment is required, they get a “please acknowledge” email immediately.
If both are required, they get the reflection email first; the acknowledgment email follows after a short delay once they’ve submitted their reflection (so a teacher who reflects and acknowledges back-to-back doesn’t get a stale email).
When the observation closes, they get one close email with the PDF attached and the magic link in the body — previously this was two separate emails.

If the organization has teacher email notifications turned off, no teacher emails go out at all — the admin has chosen to handle communication themselves.

Under the weCLIMB admin section:

Settings — magic-link feature switch. System administrators only.
Form Sets — per–Form Set override of reflection / acknowledgment, and the reflection prompts the teacher will answer.

Observer-facing pieces (the redesigned observation page, the Submit button, the What’s next? card, the PDF download dialog, the Reopen toolbar action for admins) appear automatically on every observation page — no configuration required.

A few things to know

All three features are optional. With everything off, observers click Submit and the observation closes in the same click — exactly like the old Finalize button.
Settings are forward-looking. Turning a feature on applies only to observations created after the switch is flipped. Existing observations are unaffected — their statuses, content, and PDFs remain the same as before.
Acknowledgment is a one-time signed action. A teacher cannot edit an acknowledgment after they submit it. If they need to change it, an admin must reopen the observation.
Reopen is admin-only. Observers cannot reopen their own observations, and teachers cannot reopen at all. Every reopen requires a written note and is recorded as a permanent audit row.
Magic links retire when the workflow completes or after 30 days. Visiting an old link shows a calm “no further action needed” message with a “log in” option, not an error page.
The same flow applies to Performance Reviews in the Review module — the same Submit / Awaiting / Close lifecycle, the same Reopen behavior, the same email timing.