Saturday, March 21, 2009

Formal Observation

I had my formal observation on thursday. Getting observed is always nerve racking for me, I'm so self-conscious about my teaching that having another adult, any other adult, in my room takes a lot of attention away from my teaching.

Last semester I set up my class so that the formal observation came on a lab day, my kids tend to do better work in labs, and my administrators tend to be in awe of scientific phenomena. The observation went alright, but was definitely not my best teaching of the semester. It was good enough, and because of other informal observations my principal said I was doing well.

Last thursday I decided to not do anything special, and instead, stick to my long term plan and see where the cards fall. The observation happened to fall on one of the least traditional teaching days of the year for me. The students were in the middle of a 3 day assignment to prepare for a debate. Wednesday was the introduction to the assignment, research in the computer lab, putting them in groups, and having students assign each other group roles. Thursday was about how to turn your arguments and evidence into an introduction, rebuttal or conclusion (depending on your assignment), and writing a rough draft of your debate part, I also introduced the rubric they would be graded on. There was some teaching, but not a lot. Much of the class was small group work, with me going around helping students.

There have been a lot of things going on at ACCE this week, so my principal has been busy. While doing my observation, he got called out several times, missing much of the teaching I did have. He was there for much of the independent work, and then left just before my conclusion and exit ticket, coming back into class just at the end.

I feel that the class was well, students worked on a skill, they did it pretty successfully also. I'm afraid about the conversation at the post-observation conference because it was such an abnormal day. On the other hand, it was a pretty easy day for me because when the principal is in the room, the behavior is GREAT.

I hope to talk about baseball tryouts later today...

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