If I were a doctor taking care of patients and doing a solid job, wouldn't it be strange if another doctor came in and showed me how to do something I already knew how to do? If I were a car repair person, having success fixing those vehicles, how weird would it be if another mechanic dropped in to demonstrate a repair I was already doing? Yesterday, I had an employee from the district come to my class to model a lesson for me. She told me I could "just sit back" and "take notes". I was not asked if this was something I wanted. No one told me that I needed it. Apparently this is what happens if you are at a school with very low test stores. They send you well-meaning distractions.
Now don't get me wrong, I absolutely love observing teachers. I've gladly given countless planning periods to watch others' lessons. I just ask that I have some say in when, how, and why. If you're coming uninvited into our classroom, I ask that you wow me. Otherwise, we have work to do. Ain't nobody got time for that.
This resource teacher took 45 minutes from my class to model a phenomenally boring lesson about summarizing. A super important skill, practically indistinguishable from our recent lessons on paraphrasing, but the content was unrelated to our current focus. However, my students were troopers, and most of them made me proud. One sweet girl shyly pointed out that our district resource teacher was plagiarizing, as she was not putting things in her own words. I almost hugged her.
To come in and model a lesson about summarizing is to say that I am not teaching summarizing, that I don't know how to teach it, or that I'm not doing it well enough. I don't take it personally as an individual teacher, I'm just taking it personally as a member of a profession that feels disrespected. My students and I lost our momentum from our research about national parks and conversations about Martin Luther King, Jr. Instead, we had to put on the breaks for a district charade of helping our children. Our weekly staff newsletter states something to the effect of "district walkthroughs may occur at any time." I have had 4 guests from the district just this week. If those well-intentioned folks would instead come in and work with my students, read with them, write with them, mentor them, then perhaps we could actually make a difference for these incredible kids.
I must admit while I was watching this model lesson, I thought I might pull out our teacher evaluation rubric just for fun! Ya know, so I could see how to be a better teacher. Let's just look at a few highlights:
- 1a Demonstrating knowledge of content and pedagogy- Accomplished. The teacher knew how to model finding key words and main ideas in an article. While she did not put the writing in her own words, she was able to point out misconceptions about text coding to students.
- 1b Demonstrating knowledge of students- Progressing. Our poor guest teacher had two boys who absolutely shut down the moment she began. She made no effort to get to know my students. I suppose the district believes knowing that our school has very low test scores is all the knowledge they need. One of these boys had recently switched classes and is having some teacher trust issues. Another boy in ESE shut down most likely because he is a very low reader and could not keep up with our teacher's notes.
- 1c Setting instructional outcomes- Progressing. my students did not understand what they were supposed to do and I had to go over the instructions once she left.
- 3d Using assessment in instruction- Requires action. When it was time for students to do the work, she got up and left. She gave me a sticky note with the outline of her modeling, which could be done by a robot. In fact, is this what this is all about? Am I being replaced by a computer? I asked her if she wanted a copy of the students performance task but she did not.
- 3c Student engagement- Progressing. The thing I fight not to do every day, our literacy specialist from the district did- have a lesson where I talk and students just copy down my ideas. There was no thinking required.
I don't mean this to be a griping session about teachers' egos. It's just that this mania to increase test scores has these unintended consequences of distractions and disconnect, of meaningless work in the name of test-prep. Later that day, when I actually got to execute the lessons I had planned, it was a different world. My students engaged in deep questions about Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and his role models. One group of 9 year olds were even dancing upon questions of justice and race. This was much more nourishing as a teacher to witness than students mimicking a teacher's notes. Compliance is not learning. Let me teach.
