The TEFLer is a fortnightly EFL teachers' companion, written by Simon Pearlman
How do you feel about your classes being observed? Does it make your stomach churn? Or maybe you're excited and interested in what might come out of it? So much depends on how it's presented to us and even the most experienced and confident teachers’ knees can turn to jelly at the mere thought of it.
We are not alone. While some of our colleagues seem so nonchalant about it, most of us have some concerns and a lot of us genuinely fear it. Maybe we've had poor experiences in the past, maybe we're not particularly confident, maybe we don't like the invasion of our space. Observation can feel so personal, like a judgement of us as teachers and perhaps a judgement of us as people too.
What's observation like where you work? It's interesting to find out about other people's feelings on the topic too. If you're new to a school, you could ask your colleagues who have been there longer about it. Or if you've been there a while, start some conversations about it. The Reddit feed here is good and asks whether the anxiety ever goes away and the answers are as varied as you can imagine and so often so supportive. Here's a small selection…
“I'm almost a decade in and I still hate observations by anyone except fellow teachers”
“It definitely goes away. I used to get so freaking nervous I would almost feel sick. Now, as a 7th year teacher, it couldn’t bother me one bit. You just do what you know you need to do during the lesson for your students and put the observer out of your mind. Show them what you’ve got and kick ass!”
And this animalistic metaphor sums up how many of us might feel as the writer describes their“crippling self-doubt”and very human, physical in-class reaction to observation.
“with the alert panic a gazelle must feel when scanning the savannah for predators. I trail off in the middle of a sentence, losing the thread of whatever I was talking about. My face gets flushed, my armpits dump sweat, and my voice sounds plaintive and shrill. The kids suddenly seem either wild or half-asleep.”
The writers guide to surviving observations is great too, especially around all being in the same boat and about meeting observation with grace.
We know that observation changes how things act. It's a recognised scientific principle known as the Observer Effect, or in social science as the Hawthorne Effect.
(How to hyperlink words?) We can feel both ourselves and our students behaving differently; sometimes for the worse but often for the better. There is another adult in the room, probably sitting at the back, why are they there?
Why do schools do classroom observations?
If done right, a classroom observations and the discussion afterwards can be a powerful tool for change. We can gain fresh perspectives and new ideas about our classes, our students and our teaching through supportive feedback. It can be some of the best, most direct professional development we can get.
There is also an element of “that's what good schools do” and often though they're not great and are done through procedures and by people that could do it better. Observation can sometimes and disappointingly just be a box ticking excerise and at worst it can be a negative, destructive process leaving us none the wiser and thoroughly demoralised.
What can we do?
Perhaps we can take some control of the situation. When observation time rolls around, or maybe even before, could we make some suggestions to try to make the process and the outcomes better and more useful.
Our expectations are important too, we should be open to being challenged, we should expect to develop through the process, we should also expect it be supportive and nurturing.
Some questions to ask…
- Which groups are being observed and why? Could we ask for specific groups to be observed for specific reasons?
If we're new to a school, we might want our best class to be observed so that the observer can see us in a comfortable place. Maybe we want it with our most difficult class so that we can get ideas and try to move forward.
- Is there a conversation before and after the observation?
In the pre-obs conversation we can ask for specific focus in the observation, “Juan is an interesting student, could you watch him closely? I'd like to talk about him afterwards” or “Does the group use too much L1 (their own language)?”, “I'm thinking about student engagement, how engaged do the students seem through the class?”, “How fully do we fulfil the objectives?, the list of possibilities is endless. By asking for the observer to have specific things to observe we are taking some control, using the observation to help us with specific issues and helping the observer too.
The post-observation conversation can then be centred around these questions and there's a hugely increased chance that we can get positive professional development from it.
- Is there reflection time before the post-observation discussion?
It's good to get a little distance before we engage, we need time to process it all. We can suggest the post-observation discussion answers some standard questions which we know before and can structure our reflections. We might want to suggest these questions, “How typical was the lesson?
How far did you meet your aims?
What went well? What would you differently?”
- Do we do a normal lesson or something special for the observation?
In so many ways we can learn much more from an observation of a normal lesson; we can get feedback on our everyday teaching through it being just another class under conditions most normal for all concerned.
Having said that, we might want to try out something experimental or really push the boat out and the observation can be a great time to do it.
https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/4-ways-remove-fear-lesson-observations
And finally, we know that good observation and good discussion around it can have a really positive impact on our practice, so why not do it more? We can ask for more observations of different groups. We could ask a colleague if we can observe them (all the same rules should apply, of course), we could even develop a peer observation programme. We could work on self-observation (also referred to a ghost observations) and them talk things through with a critical friend.
Perhaps your school doesn't do observations, maybe you could ask for one?
Hopefully we can enjoy the process of observation and it can an important part of our professional development. Hopefully.
Please do share your experiences of observation here in the comments or by email totraining@activelanguage.net, we'd love to hear your stories and your thoughts.
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