How Do You Want Your Formal Observations to Go?

Teachers, what do you want out of your formal observations?

Knowing that you're going to be evaluated, what do you want to happen in your formal observations?

Do you like the pre-conference, the post-conference?

What do you want to happen during the observation itself?

I'm working on a module for school administrators on formal observations within the teacher evaluation process.

And don't worry about what you think about the teacher evaluation process overall.

I mean, just assuming that you're going to be evaluated, what do you want the formal observation to entail.

And specifically, I'm wondering what you think about suggestions, feedback, wows and wonders, warm and cool feedback, that kind of thing.

I've seen lots of different terms for that type of feedback.

And I'm wondering if you like that, if you find it helpful or if it's not helpful, or if you feel like it's just kind of something you have to endure and kind of smile and nod through.

Like that's my sense that people don't necessarily appreciate the feedback they get from a formal observation if it's that kind of like warm and cool feedback.

And personally, I'm very opposed to the feedback sandwich.

And one thing that I recommend that people not do especially in classroom walkthroughs, if you've read my book, Now We're Talking 21 Days to High Performance Instructional Leadership, I advise against the feedback sandwich where there's like a compliment and then another, like the cool feedback.

So we start with the bottom layer is the compliment, and then the meat of the sandwich is the suggestion for improvement, and then the rest of the bread is the other compliment, that compliment, suggestion, compliment, feedback sandwich.

I'm not a big fan of that.

Because it seems artificial to me, it seems inauthentic and you don't necessarily always want to talk about two positive things and one negative thing.

You might just want to have a conversation.

You might not have any positives or negatives, or you might not know until you have the conversation, kind of how things went after you've heard from the teacher.

But I get the sense that administrators feel burdened to give that feedback sandwich, to give the wows and the wonders, to give the warm and cool feedback.

And I want to know how you feel about that.

As a teacher, do you feel that that's helpful?

Or if you're an administrator currently, do you do that and think you do a good job of it?

Did you find it helpful as a teacher?

I'd like the full range of opinions on this.

Because I want the teacher observation process to do its job well.

And I think we have to remember that it exists within the larger evaluation process.

And if you do classroom walkthroughs, they might serve kind of a wide variety of different purposes, depending on what the district is going for.

But formal observations specifically are for the formal education.

evaluation process and they need to do some jobs there for the administrator and they need to do some jobs for the person being observed and one of the things i'm very concerned about is fairness and evidence i want administrators to make sure that they're getting fair evidence about your practice that they're getting a good sense of of what your practice is like you know like it shouldn't be a dog and pony show but it also shouldn't be a gotcha right it should be you good quality evidence.

And one aspect of good quality evidence is recognizing the limitations of what you can actually see in a teacher's practice, right?

I use the metaphor of an iceberg, right?

Like if you have a glass of water with ice cubes floating in it, 90% of the ice is beneath the surface.

And I think teacher practice works the same way, that about 90% of what matters is hidden beneath the surface.

So when you get into a classroom to do an observation or a walkthrough, you're only able to directly see about 10% of what's really there.

So my course is called Evidence Driven Teacher Observation.

or teacher evaluation rather, and this module that I'm working on is on observation.

But I don't believe that everything is directly observable.

I think we have to use conversation to get at what is hidden beneath the surface.

And I'd love to know, what gives you the greatest confidence that your administrator, who's observing and evaluating you, is going to really get you, get your practice from your observations?

Not be out to get you, but like really get it, like in the sense of understand your practice.

Leave a comment, let me know what your experience has been and what you think.