Elementary students spend over 1,000 hours a year with their homeroom teacher. So, balanced class lists are important. In my experience, once class lists are set, they rarely change. That means the decisions principals make each spring about who lands in which classroom quietly shape the entire trajectory of a school year. It’s one of the most high-stakes tasks in a school building, yet we rarely talk about it openly.
In this episode, I sit down with Carrie Hetzel, principal of Paradise Canyon Elementary School in California — a National Blue Ribbon School — to talk about how she and her team build balanced class lists that set every student and teacher up for success. She shares why starting early matters, along with other tips for how they make the process work, including how technology like Class Composer can save hours of manual work while keeping the human touch at the center, and what she wishes she’d known as a brand-new principal.
Here is a visual overview of the key ideas from this episode created from the transcript using Google Notebook LM. Then, I downloaded and edited it with Canva.
Carrie Hetzel is the principal of Paradise Canyon Elementary School in La Cañada Flintridge, California, where she serves over 700 students from transitional kindergarten through sixth grade. She joined La Cañada Unified School District in 2014 as a teacher on special assignment, later becoming assistant principal before taking the helm as principal. Under her leadership, Paradise Canyon has been named a California Distinguished School (most recently in 2023) and a National Blue Ribbon School in 2021. Hetzel holds a master’s degree in Human Development and brings 28 years of experience in education to her work. She is a Google Certified Educator and has presented on topics including executive functioning, reading, and math differentiation.
Carrie Hetzel is also a featured guest on Cool Cat Teacher Talk! For a deeper dive into elementary strategies, check out:
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Vicki Davis: Today’s show is sponsored by Class Composer. We have a principal on today’s show who shares her personal opinions on Class Composer and how it helps her create balanced classes. She also shares other ideas about how to plan ahead and make the next school year better. Now on with the show.
Vicki Davis: Today we have a veteran with us. Carrie Hetzel is the principal of Paradise Canyon Elementary School in California, serving over 700 students from transitional kindergarten through sixth grade. She’s been the principal since 2018, and in that time, the school has been a California Distinguished School many times — most recently in 2023 — and was a National Blue Ribbon School in 2021. Thanks for coming on the show, Carrie.
Carrie Hetzel: Thanks for having me.
Vicki Davis: Today we’re going to talk about how we work hard to create balanced classrooms that will help students and teachers be successful.
Carrie Hetzel: It’s a very complicated process, as you might imagine. Having a big school and several classes per grade level, it’s important to set our students up for success and have really balanced classes for our teachers. One of the things we were talking about earlier is how the process has progressed over time.
One tool that was really helpful that we used this past year is called Class Composer — one piece of a very large puzzle to make sure not only our classes are balanced, but that all of our data gets updated regularly. That’s one of the great things that has been challenging, because we have to change data and make sure that we’re still balancing our classrooms with boys, girls, student behaviors, IEPs, 504s, our EL students — all the things that go into making up a great class and making sure our students are in the right spot for the coming school year.
Vicki Davis: So you’re really setting the students and the teachers up for success. What does a balanced class look like? When you look at a class and you go, “Yes, I feel good about this” — what does that class look like?
Carrie Hetzel: You want a variety of all different levels and abilities — boys and girls, personalities. There are students that click who should be together. There are students that may have had a conflict and should be separated the next year. All those really important pieces. And as we look at the classes, we are constantly reflecting. It goes through quite a process.
Teachers look at it, our counselor looks at the classes — it’s really a group effort here with the staff. As we make changes, one of the things I love about Class Composer is all that data we get on our students. It can be really cumbersome to go back if we make one slight change to a class and then have to redo all our data. We utilized Class Composer this year, and as we made changes or added a student or swapped two students, we were able to see that data in real time and it would calculate instantly — instead of us manually having to go in and make another analysis about whether this classroom is going to be balanced. Class Composer did that for us. That tech tool really saved us a lot of time on a very labor-intensive process that we go through every year.
Vicki Davis: It sounds like you were able to move things around and look at the results and move them back. In so many schools, it is a manual process. It seems like classes are the last place we’re really bringing technology. You’ve been doing this since 2018. How much time, when you did it by hand, did it typically take you?
Carrie Hetzel: Many, many hours, especially with all of the grade levels we have. Having a tool that sped things up while still maintaining our own voice — not just putting things into a machine and pressing go, but being able to put our data in and then as changes happen, having that update for us — just that one piece really saved us a lot of time for other things. It was a great tool for us to use. And then we usually keep data on all of our students, and having that really easily go to the teachers for them to see a snapshot of their students before they walk through the doors — they have pictures of the kids and can see who’s going to be coming into their class and who they need to prepare for before the class even starts.
Vicki Davis: I like that. So many times people say, “We’re just going to have the computer do it.” But computers — especially in elementary — there is a lot of nuance there. There’s a lot of emotional intelligence from the teachers and from the principal required to create a good, balanced, effective classroom that’s a win-win for everybody, isn’t it?
Carrie Hetzel: It’s obviously different in high school where the master schedule is very complicated. In elementary school especially, we really need to have people doing that. Like you mentioned, the nuance and the slight differences in personalities — who might be really successful in this class and who needs something else. All those things that really need to be done by people who know the students and know what they need. We want every year to be the best year. Some years are more challenging than others. If we need to make changes or adjustments, we do that all the time. It’s just nice to have something that helps us do that data analysis and update instantly, so you can see who’s in what class.
And if there are certain kids that shouldn’t be with each other the next year, it won’t let you put them in there. So if you had a kiddo that needed a break from another, it’s really nice to have that extra safety check. It alerts you — it allows you to override if you want to, but it gives you a little alert that says, “You’re going to make a change that you said shouldn’t be changed. Do you want to proceed?” Those safety checks are really helpful.
Vicki Davis: If you could travel back in time to Carrie Hetzel, day one, new principal — when you took over — what would you tell her about creating classes that you wished maybe you had known back then?
Carrie Hetzel: Start early. We start thinking about it early. We end in June, so we’re definitely in the process in May, because it’s not something to rush. It’s really important, and we want to make sure it’s thoughtful and purposeful. Everything at the end of the school year gets so busy with end-of-year activities, and the teachers are so busy. So starting early and taking your time is really important.
Vicki Davis: I’m sure that can involve tricky conversations because you also don’t want children labeled. So there’s always that piece of it. Do you feel like you’re able to handle that aspect and keep it positive?
Carrie Hetzel: It’s actually a really positive process. It’s just data and information, and a lot of it is personality. It’s not at all labeling or negative — it’s just trying to make sure, if we have students that have special needs or students that have a second language, that we are able to spread them out so that the teacher can get to everybody. We want everybody to have a little bit of something in their classroom. And so it really helps us with that process. It’s just us being humans, and these teachers have had the students all year long. They know them very well.
I see a bigger picture because I’ve seen them over several years, and so I have a different point of view. Our counselor has a different point of view. That’s why it takes a process of going through teacher revision, principal revision, counselor revision — definitely a team effort to make sure students are where they’re supposed to be.
Carrie Hetzel: Teachers have different personalities, and we want to make sure that we’re thinking about all those pieces.
Vicki Davis: As we finish up, Carrie, I want you to think about all the principals across the country and beyond who do what you do and groan when they think about setting up classes. What is your encouragement to principals as they prepare for this? Because it’s really important.
Carrie Hetzel: I think it’s a positive experience. It really starts you thinking about the new school year. You get to reflect on how far the students have come this school year. You’re seeing their growth throughout the school year. It’s really positive, and I think it doesn’t need to be looked upon as negative, because it’s always exciting to start the new school year. One fun thing about school and the way that our school system works is that every year is like a fresh start. I think it’s a really positive experience, and that’s why it’s so important to have great classes — so these students are starting off on the right foot, in a great environment with peers that they can learn from and learn with. I think it’s a really positive new beginning as we start another school year.
Vicki Davis: We’ll include a link to Class Composer in the show notes. Carrie Hetzel, principal at Paradise Canyon Elementary School — thank you for helping us talk about preparing to have a great school year next year. These are things that we don’t really talk about a lot, but it really does make a difference as those classes are set up. Thanks for coming on the show.
Carrie Hetzel: Yeah, thank you so much.
Vicki Davis: In today’s show, you heard from Carrie Hetzel about how she plans ahead for the school year, and particularly how she uses Class Composer. This tool is a game changer for elementary schools. What I love most about Class Composer is the intuitive, paper-like look and feel that makes it simple to visualize everything across your entire grade level at once. This platform really balances data very well with human intuition, and that’s why I’m a fan of Class Composer. If you want to see it in action and take Class Composer for a test drive, head over to classcomposer.com for a look. That’s Class Composer — C-L-A-S-S-C-O-M-P-O-S-E-R dot com — and set up an amazing year for next year now.
Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
