Last week I had my first formal observation for the school year in my self-contained, special ed 9th grade English class.
I was prepared to engage in the algorithmic silliness of Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching Components. This means 8 domains of which you are rated ineffective, developing, effective and highly effective.
Or, this means your child no longer goes to a school where a teacher reads the energy of the classroom to guide his/her next move. Instead, teacher behaviors are calculated on an arbitrary scale and apportioned out into some Byzantine Evaluator Form.
Days before my formal, (a period long observation) I had the good pleasure of receiving an informal, for which the above is an example of. In an informal, an administrator stays for a minimum of 15 minutes and scours the lesson for evidence of all 8 domains in their hit and run. They stay for such a short time, it’s no wonder these marionettes can’t find evidence. If you followed a police scuba diver for 15 minutes, as they searched the murky East River waters for a dead body, but came up empty-handed, would they be considered ineffective? No, they would be our heroes.
As teachers, we’re told this lack of evidence is a short-coming–that if our lesson had displayed on command interdisciplinary content relationships, instruction that is both differentiated and allows for student choice, a respectful environment with active listening, examples of “rigorous” questioning while the teacher sought opportunities to grow professionally, in that 15 minute snapshot, we would be better teachers.
Ironically, this informal took place with a visiting teaching artist–a Broadway musician with years of working with challenging students. For this lesson, I instructed him that we need to omit all restrictions and teacher jargon. That we just need to let go. That we are simply going to let our students play.
The outcome was a beautiful expression of emotion and vulnerability from a group, who prior to, spent every day cursing each other out. But clearly, I am still developing.
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