My formal
observation is this week, and after fifteen years of writing lesson plans,
attending parent conferences, and scoring thousands of essays, it is still the
part I hate most about teaching. Now,
don’t get me wrong. The world of public
education definitely needs accountability.
Probably more. If I’m being
completely candid (and I generally am), the one thought that gets me through
these dreaded observations each year is the knowledge that some of the clueless
yahoos I have worked with in the past still have jobs--in education, no less! And
while that concerns me as a parent, the stressed out teacher in me sees it as
job security. But it doesn’t make these observations any easier. Each year without fail, I have trouble
sleeping in the days leading up to my observation and then act like a total
spaz while it’s happening. In all
fairness, I have a tendency toward spastic behavior, but having an
administrator in my classroom just exacerbates the already existent
behavior. I talk too fast, I pace too
much, and I hover around my kids like an impatient waitress, trying to take the
salad plate before you’ve had the last crouton.
So I always ask myself, “Why are you freaking out? Have you ever failed
one of these before? Haven’t you always
been considered ‘highly effective’?”.
But just as in other areas of life, we can’t always rationalize our way
out of our irrational behavior, so we cope the best way we know how and try to
figure out why we are acting so crazy.
So that is what I did, and this is what I’ve come up with.
Not suprisingly, the sheer idea of having
another adult watch your every word and move is bad enough, but then you throw
in 25-30 living, breathing variables, and you have an instant recipe for a
nervous breakdown. You don’t know what
kind of day your kids are going to have on any given day. It could be raining, or cold, or sunny, or an
odd-numbered day, or any of the many other arbitrary stimuli that tend to make
them act like complete goons. And let’s
be honest. Even on good days, some of
them are absent-minded nose pickers, at best. Do I really want my teaching
reputation banking on whatever might come spewing forth from little Johnny
Boogereater’s mouth when he’s not eating boogers? Heck no!
But I have no choice, and truth be told, that’s not even the real issue
for me. I just have to make peace with
the fact that at least once a year for at least the next 15 years, there will
be another adult in my classroom to make sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be
doing. At least once a year, I will get
little sleep and act like a total spaz not only in front of my students, but
also in front of the other alien presence, who is on a higher pay scale and who
will undoubtedly be sitting at my desk with iPad in hand, documenting my
knowledge, judging my lesson delivery, and noting my use of classroom space.
And therein, my friend, lies the real issue.
That is really where all my anxiety stems from—the presence of an
outsider in my classroom with my kids and me.
One would assume that all the stress and sleeplessness stemmed from
not-so-repressed teaching insecurity or low self-esteem, but I’ve found that it
is neither of those things. My exaggerated lunacy at this time of year comes
from the fact that my classroom, for all its gritty floors and strange smells,
is our domain. In that room, for better
or worse, we are a family. We know each
other’s strengths, we’ve learned each other’s quirks, and we understand each
other’s humor. It’s called rapport, and
it can’t always be measured on a scale of effectiveness or gauged in a single
class period, but it is wildly important.
So this week, my little family and I are going to get through my
observation together. I am going to do
lots of praying and probably still act like a chipmunk on crack rocks, and they
are going to be oddly quiet and try to say all the things that they think my
observer wants to hear, not because they’re scared they might get in trouble,
but because at the end of the day, most of them care about me as much as I care
about them. So, I’ve made peace with this year’s impending observation, or at
least until next year comes, and I’m a basketcase all over again.
