At the moment at school there is an awful lot of observing going on. People observing one another in pairs, which is fine and can be very constructive. But sometimes it can be destructive and demoralising. Today I was marked down because......wait for it.....there was an issue of trailing wires and that was a big health and safety issue. Aforementioned "trailing wires" referred to the cable connecting my laptop to the projector and were "trailing" between me and the wall. This is one of the aspects of OFSTED style inspection which I find incredibly frustrating. I don't have my own room and therefore can't be responsible for the wiring in every classroom I teach in. A real live OFSTED inspector did a similar downmarking because I only had one plug socket in the room. (I'm taking a sabbatical to train as an electrician so I can become a better teacher!) I was also marked down because someone in a room above scraped their chair whilst the cassette was playing.
Colleagues have also been marked down because "there's no place for humour in the classroom"; "your scissors weren't sharp enough"; "your belt was twisted" and "you didn't use the whiteboard" (to which my colleague protested, "But there isn't one" and was told "That's beside the point.")
How a teacher fares under inspection is very much dependent on the whims and hobby horses of a particular observer. I've been told on one occasion, "You could just feel the learning in the room. It was an excellent lesson" and yet today "There was no fizz in the lesson and the children were getting all the answers right." Well, of course there's no fizz when there are two extra adults at the back of the room and pardon me for teaching them so well that they know the answers.
You can't win. If the children are seen to succeed, then you are deemed not to be challenging them enough. If they struggle, you haven't taught the subject properly. If you do something kinaesthetic you are asked, "What was the point of making that kinaesthetic?" If you don't, "Where was the fizz?" A government adviser says that you don't need to teach in the target language all the time, the fad for that has passed but then a senior colleague says that you should use the target language as much as possible.
You can understand why children like boundaries, they need to know where they are and how they can succeed in what you are asking them to do. Setting impossible standards or standards that have to be second guessed just leads to frustration. And they wonder why people are leaving the teaching profession..... Probably the must frustrating thing of all is the fact that the observers are often some of the dullest teachers that ever there were.
At the end of the day, the children matter and you just have to tell yourself you're doing it right by them.
Colleagues have also been marked down because "there's no place for humour in the classroom"; "your scissors weren't sharp enough"; "your belt was twisted" and "you didn't use the whiteboard" (to which my colleague protested, "But there isn't one" and was told "That's beside the point.")
How a teacher fares under inspection is very much dependent on the whims and hobby horses of a particular observer. I've been told on one occasion, "You could just feel the learning in the room. It was an excellent lesson" and yet today "There was no fizz in the lesson and the children were getting all the answers right." Well, of course there's no fizz when there are two extra adults at the back of the room and pardon me for teaching them so well that they know the answers.
You can't win. If the children are seen to succeed, then you are deemed not to be challenging them enough. If they struggle, you haven't taught the subject properly. If you do something kinaesthetic you are asked, "What was the point of making that kinaesthetic?" If you don't, "Where was the fizz?" A government adviser says that you don't need to teach in the target language all the time, the fad for that has passed but then a senior colleague says that you should use the target language as much as possible.
You can understand why children like boundaries, they need to know where they are and how they can succeed in what you are asking them to do. Setting impossible standards or standards that have to be second guessed just leads to frustration. And they wonder why people are leaving the teaching profession..... Probably the must frustrating thing of all is the fact that the observers are often some of the dullest teachers that ever there were.
At the end of the day, the children matter and you just have to tell yourself you're doing it right by them.
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