"Observation"
I was being observed in class. The lesson I’d prepared, a series of activities I meant to guide the students through- rather, I hoped would provide impetus for them to navigate on their own momentum, making discoveries on the way- wasn’t working, bogged down at the first activity. It was as if the students were walking through wet cement and I was at the blackboard smiling trying to tell them that wasn’t the case.
Rather than risk things getting any worse in front of my boss, I moved away from the plan and asked people to look together at unrelated work they were supposed to have done, exercises on a handout. Some had finished and others hadn’t. While partners were comparing sentences, I walked around and examined a few. I saw a lot of unanticipated grammar problems. There was what I meant to work on in the class and the real-world struggle the students were having, questions they needed addressed regardless of what I deemed worthy of our focus.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s start with number one and see how far we get. If you have any questions on the way, ask me and I’ll try to clarify.” I spoke enthusiastically, as usual a picture of perpetual motion while I taught.
“I’m excited about clarifying this stuff for you.” At the moment, I really was. The students’ confusion posed challenges that would demand my best effort and then some.
While small groups formed, I approached my boss and talked. At first, he seemed surprised I would leave the class on their own to do so, but he saw everyone was occupied, didn’t need me for the moment.
“My lesson plan..” I indicated the blackboard behind us. On it was a grid I had drawn in chalk, some words.
“It’s really good!” the boss said.
“Actually, I decided to drop it. It wasn’t working as I’d hoped.”
“That’s true. It wasn’t.”
“I abandoned it. I was improvising.”
“You did brilliantly.”
“What I realize (just had, actually) is that a lesson plan is a vehicle we use to carry content we want to address in class. Sometimes it doesn’t go anywhere, or at least nowhere the students find interesting. Then you have the choice of either keeping your foot on the gas pedal in the hope of eventual success- risk alienating people- or you stop and try something else, as I did. In winging it, I was in fact desperately searching for a new vehicle. Just taking students’ questions as I had begun to is fine in the abstract but generates only about five minutes of good class time- it’s a limited kind of interaction.”
Some students were finishing their group task, waiting for what we would do next.
The next morning I woke up very early to make a phone call about a mistake in a car rental reservation, and by accident I dialed the number of my boss at his home. I knew it when I heard his voice.
“Is that you?”
“Well, almost.” He meant he wasn’t totally awake yet.
I apologized. There was no hiding the fact that I’d been preoccupied with the observation, so we chatted about when we would meet to discuss it. Before hanging up, I said, “Enjoy your day at work. I won’t see you because I don’t come in till tomorrow.” It occurred to me I might have been better off not highlighting the fact that I could stay in bed while he couldn’t.
I found his written remarks totally absorbing. He went beyond what actually happened in class and drew conclusions about what it all meant, connecting the elements of the lesson in a way I never would have considered on my own. There was an idiosyncratic prose style that drew my attention, frankly made it hard in places to identify the point being made. He addressed me informally as a colleague, yet a lot of the vocabulary and sentence structure resembled that of an academic essay. “Salient,” and “notion” were among the word choices that stood out. This wasn’t the language of ordinary conversation, and as I read I had to concentrate to find meaning.
Confused as I sometimes was by the tangle of ideas, the conclusion pleased me. I’d worried the evaluation might end on a negative note. The writer responded at length to the concern I’d expressed about my tendency to digress from the lesson plan. When I’d spoken of “straying from the curriculum,” I’d felt a little like a wayward husband who’d agreed to get counseling. Fortunately, this “therapist” believed in positive feedback. Rather than criticize, he gave encouragement where least expected, singling out for praise those very habits I thought limited my effectiveness. The last sentence summarized my strength as he saw it. “In short,” he wrote, “you surprise.”
Rather than risk things getting any worse in front of my boss, I moved away from the plan and asked people to look together at unrelated work they were supposed to have done, exercises on a handout. Some had finished and others hadn’t. While partners were comparing sentences, I walked around and examined a few. I saw a lot of unanticipated grammar problems. There was what I meant to work on in the class and the real-world struggle the students were having, questions they needed addressed regardless of what I deemed worthy of our focus.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s start with number one and see how far we get. If you have any questions on the way, ask me and I’ll try to clarify.” I spoke enthusiastically, as usual a picture of perpetual motion while I taught.
“I’m excited about clarifying this stuff for you.” At the moment, I really was. The students’ confusion posed challenges that would demand my best effort and then some.
While small groups formed, I approached my boss and talked. At first, he seemed surprised I would leave the class on their own to do so, but he saw everyone was occupied, didn’t need me for the moment.
“My lesson plan..” I indicated the blackboard behind us. On it was a grid I had drawn in chalk, some words.
“It’s really good!” the boss said.
“Actually, I decided to drop it. It wasn’t working as I’d hoped.”
“That’s true. It wasn’t.”
“I abandoned it. I was improvising.”
“You did brilliantly.”
“What I realize (just had, actually) is that a lesson plan is a vehicle we use to carry content we want to address in class. Sometimes it doesn’t go anywhere, or at least nowhere the students find interesting. Then you have the choice of either keeping your foot on the gas pedal in the hope of eventual success- risk alienating people- or you stop and try something else, as I did. In winging it, I was in fact desperately searching for a new vehicle. Just taking students’ questions as I had begun to is fine in the abstract but generates only about five minutes of good class time- it’s a limited kind of interaction.”
Some students were finishing their group task, waiting for what we would do next.
The next morning I woke up very early to make a phone call about a mistake in a car rental reservation, and by accident I dialed the number of my boss at his home. I knew it when I heard his voice.
“Is that you?”
“Well, almost.” He meant he wasn’t totally awake yet.
I apologized. There was no hiding the fact that I’d been preoccupied with the observation, so we chatted about when we would meet to discuss it. Before hanging up, I said, “Enjoy your day at work. I won’t see you because I don’t come in till tomorrow.” It occurred to me I might have been better off not highlighting the fact that I could stay in bed while he couldn’t.
I found his written remarks totally absorbing. He went beyond what actually happened in class and drew conclusions about what it all meant, connecting the elements of the lesson in a way I never would have considered on my own. There was an idiosyncratic prose style that drew my attention, frankly made it hard in places to identify the point being made. He addressed me informally as a colleague, yet a lot of the vocabulary and sentence structure resembled that of an academic essay. “Salient,” and “notion” were among the word choices that stood out. This wasn’t the language of ordinary conversation, and as I read I had to concentrate to find meaning.
Confused as I sometimes was by the tangle of ideas, the conclusion pleased me. I’d worried the evaluation might end on a negative note. The writer responded at length to the concern I’d expressed about my tendency to digress from the lesson plan. When I’d spoken of “straying from the curriculum,” I’d felt a little like a wayward husband who’d agreed to get counseling. Fortunately, this “therapist” believed in positive feedback. Rather than criticize, he gave encouragement where least expected, singling out for praise those very habits I thought limited my effectiveness. The last sentence summarized my strength as he saw it. “In short,” he wrote, “you surprise.”
posted by the blog at 12:37 AM
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