Today I was making weird sound effects in class, trying to make the kids laugh. They sounded like wet farts, basically, because I'm thirty-three and a college graduate, so, yeah, I should be paid to make wet fart sounds, by gum. One of the students said, around his laughter, that it was a good thing the school's observation team (that's coming this Wednesday) wasn't here today.
After school, a coworker, worried about the difficulties of teaching a Socratic Seminar course, confessed that some few students were complaining about how her class was different to mine (as she teaches one grade above me).
I thought of what I had been doing in my class as she asked if she could come observe. I told her she's always welcome, since I figure if I'm willing to say (or do) anything in front of students, I should be willing to say (or do) the same in front of fellow teachers or administration. And if she'd been there today? Well, I still would've made the gross sound effects.
But it has me thinking about what we hope to get out of an observation. It's not quite the (usually misapplied) Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at (misapplied) work here that I'm talking about, though in some ways that's true. An observed teacher behaves differently than an unobserved teacher, in part because there's always the idea of how a peer will respond to what's happening in the classroom. Instead, I wonder what my coworker hopes to see.
There are a lot of things that I would love to do differently as a teacher. One is to shut up more frequently. I get too excited about what we're talking about and I want to dominate the conversation. Whatever the best ratio for student-to-teacher speaking, I don't got it.
I also wish that I had more variety in my classes. Not between classes--they usually go about the same--but rather that we did a greater variety of things with our time. I beat my head against what I want out of the classes and what I can get from them. This means that what my friend will see when(ever) she observes my class is, in some ways, what I've settled on.
In all of this, I'm not trying to brag. (Though this is my personal blog, so technically I could...I think. I haven't read the fine print on what allows me to write on this site.) I'm not trying to give the impression that I teacher better--or worse--than I really do. And while I know that, for some students at least, I have made a lasting difference in their lives, I am hard pressed to point to any one thing that I think has made that difference. Maybe it was one piece of literature, one conversation, or one well-timed question that mattered--but more often than not, I daresay that it is the slow accumulation of experiences, filtered through a common experience, interwoven with a lot of humor, and the aggregation of empathy that leads kids to think fondly of my class. And despite all my efforts, kids still don't turn in their work for me, don't give me their best effort, or sleep through the period. So what is my friend hoping to get from observing me?
And if she figures it out, will knowing "what works" make me better or worse at teaching?
After school, a coworker, worried about the difficulties of teaching a Socratic Seminar course, confessed that some few students were complaining about how her class was different to mine (as she teaches one grade above me).
I thought of what I had been doing in my class as she asked if she could come observe. I told her she's always welcome, since I figure if I'm willing to say (or do) anything in front of students, I should be willing to say (or do) the same in front of fellow teachers or administration. And if she'd been there today? Well, I still would've made the gross sound effects.
But it has me thinking about what we hope to get out of an observation. It's not quite the (usually misapplied) Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at (misapplied) work here that I'm talking about, though in some ways that's true. An observed teacher behaves differently than an unobserved teacher, in part because there's always the idea of how a peer will respond to what's happening in the classroom. Instead, I wonder what my coworker hopes to see.
There are a lot of things that I would love to do differently as a teacher. One is to shut up more frequently. I get too excited about what we're talking about and I want to dominate the conversation. Whatever the best ratio for student-to-teacher speaking, I don't got it.
I also wish that I had more variety in my classes. Not between classes--they usually go about the same--but rather that we did a greater variety of things with our time. I beat my head against what I want out of the classes and what I can get from them. This means that what my friend will see when(ever) she observes my class is, in some ways, what I've settled on.
In all of this, I'm not trying to brag. (Though this is my personal blog, so technically I could...I think. I haven't read the fine print on what allows me to write on this site.) I'm not trying to give the impression that I teacher better--or worse--than I really do. And while I know that, for some students at least, I have made a lasting difference in their lives, I am hard pressed to point to any one thing that I think has made that difference. Maybe it was one piece of literature, one conversation, or one well-timed question that mattered--but more often than not, I daresay that it is the slow accumulation of experiences, filtered through a common experience, interwoven with a lot of humor, and the aggregation of empathy that leads kids to think fondly of my class. And despite all my efforts, kids still don't turn in their work for me, don't give me their best effort, or sleep through the period. So what is my friend hoping to get from observing me?
And if she figures it out, will knowing "what works" make me better or worse at teaching?
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