When my dear friend and roommate Cara was a sophomore in high school, a girl named Stephanie Gouge etched the following into her locker (with a knife, and without my asterisk): "C*NT FROM BEYOND".
And just today, Stephanie asked to be her facebook friend.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Being Observed
When you're a teacher, you get observed. The principal or the department chair or the curriculum instructor or someone else important will sit in your classroom, observe your teaching, and then write up an assessment. It goes in your permanent record, and that's how you get tenure (or get fired).
I hate being observed. I HATE IT. So much so that I just wrote it in all capital letters. And let me be clear, it is NOT because of the people who have observed me. I've had my department chair observe, the principal observe, about 14 Fulbright teachers observe, and two German exchange teachers observe. And that's just in the first 8 weeks. (In one class, on one day, I had 11 observers observing 11 students). All of these observers have been thoughtful, respectful, helpful, inquisitive, and downright wonderful.
But I still hate being observed. This is my 17th year of teaching, and if I did the math, I've probably been observed on at least 40 occasions, by 50 or 60 people. I should be used to it. But I dislike being observed today as much as I did in my first year.
And why?
Because of murphy's law, and because of the observer effect (otherwise known as the observer-expectancy effect or the actor-observer bias, sometimes erroneously conflated with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle).
First, murphy's law: You've been having an entire month of fantastic classes. The students are engaged, the conversations are authentic and organic, and curiosity abounds. You've had 20 straight classes of good behavior and sophisticated scholarship. And then your department chair or the principal wanders in on the ONE day that month when the kids are dragging, or when one kid says a cuss word to another, or when the kids complain, or when the kids have endless sidebar conversations, or when the whole room seems to be off task. That's the day you get observed. The observer will only see the thinnest slice of your teaching, and it's that one bad day out of the entire month, and from that one class they will have to come to broad conclusions about your teaching ability.
I remember, about 14 years ago, I had one last observation before I was up for tenure . . . so I planned and I planned, and I even got a haircut the night before to look presentable. And lo and behold, on that very day, as my department chair was sitting in the back, a kid shot a coin across the room at someone else at 100 miles an hour that clanged into a cabinet and bounced around the room. After weeks of good work with that class, I was now yelling at a student as I watched the whole room (and lesson) fall apart, on the day of my final, crucial observation.
(Happy ending though, I did get tenure . . . back then in the mid 90's, it only took 2 years).
Here's another perfect example of murphy's law at work.
I teach AP Language second hour; I've really enjoyed the class thus far, and I am pleased with the progress of the students. We've talked about rhetorical strategies, we've read some of the big name philosophers, we've talked about justice, happiness, human rights, animal rights, etc. Which means 99% of the time, if anyone would have walked in the room, they would have heard something that might make me look good.
But one day we talked about female genital mutilation. It's a great way to talk about cultural relativism, and whether the good life is a universal virtue or something contingent from society to society. But it's still about female genitals and their mutilation.
And this was the one day that the principal came in to observe, unannounced.
That's right, the principal Dr. Saheed has been in my class once, and he walked in during our female genital mutilation conversation. For all I know, he opened the door when I was saying "genitals."
I quickly told him the broader discussion we were having, how this issue is an entry into important philosophical and sociological questions. He was great about it, and he had some really interesting things to say to contribute to the class discussion.
But, think about it. The one day he comes in. Female genital mutilation.
And then there's the observer effect. This is a psychological term that refers to the idea (in my mind, the truism) that you can never actually observe anything in it's true form, because the very act of observing changes the nature of what you are trying to observe. When there's an observer in the classroom the kids know it, and you the teacher definitely know it. So now everything is different--this isn't how you are normally as a teacher, and the atmosphere and goals of the class have been altered.
I've found that when I'm being observed, my mind is always split into two: the part of me that's speaking and teaching, and the part of me that is watching myself speak and teach. And a split mind isn't a fully immersed mind. The best classes are the one where you not only speak and teach, but also merge with the students and the lesson and the content and what you're pursuing-- you're almost no longer an individualized self (or as Alan Watts would say, a "skin-encapsulated ego"), but rather a part of something bigger. Which is why Yeats wrote "how can we know the dancer from the dance?"
O.K., I know that's a bit trippy and metaphorical and mystical, but the point is we're never at our best when we're hyper self-aware. And being observed makes us hyper self-aware.
So where does all this leave us? How do you ever know how good a teacher is?
Here's the only way I know: teach next door to somebody for 10 years. I taught in the same hallway of English teachers for 11 years, and only after all that time could I go down the hallway and give you my personal assessment of the teachers. Only after all those years of knowing the teachers, talking to them, teaching their former students, discussing students in common, being in their classrooms, walking by their classrooms, working on curriculum with them . . . only then did I get a true sense of who they are as educators.
I don't know how you formalize that into a school policy, (O.K., you can't), but that's the only way I know how to do it.
I hate being observed. I HATE IT. So much so that I just wrote it in all capital letters. And let me be clear, it is NOT because of the people who have observed me. I've had my department chair observe, the principal observe, about 14 Fulbright teachers observe, and two German exchange teachers observe. And that's just in the first 8 weeks. (In one class, on one day, I had 11 observers observing 11 students). All of these observers have been thoughtful, respectful, helpful, inquisitive, and downright wonderful.
But I still hate being observed. This is my 17th year of teaching, and if I did the math, I've probably been observed on at least 40 occasions, by 50 or 60 people. I should be used to it. But I dislike being observed today as much as I did in my first year.
And why?
Because of murphy's law, and because of the observer effect (otherwise known as the observer-expectancy effect or the actor-observer bias, sometimes erroneously conflated with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle).
First, murphy's law: You've been having an entire month of fantastic classes. The students are engaged, the conversations are authentic and organic, and curiosity abounds. You've had 20 straight classes of good behavior and sophisticated scholarship. And then your department chair or the principal wanders in on the ONE day that month when the kids are dragging, or when one kid says a cuss word to another, or when the kids complain, or when the kids have endless sidebar conversations, or when the whole room seems to be off task. That's the day you get observed. The observer will only see the thinnest slice of your teaching, and it's that one bad day out of the entire month, and from that one class they will have to come to broad conclusions about your teaching ability.
I remember, about 14 years ago, I had one last observation before I was up for tenure . . . so I planned and I planned, and I even got a haircut the night before to look presentable. And lo and behold, on that very day, as my department chair was sitting in the back, a kid shot a coin across the room at someone else at 100 miles an hour that clanged into a cabinet and bounced around the room. After weeks of good work with that class, I was now yelling at a student as I watched the whole room (and lesson) fall apart, on the day of my final, crucial observation.
(Happy ending though, I did get tenure . . . back then in the mid 90's, it only took 2 years).
Here's another perfect example of murphy's law at work.
I teach AP Language second hour; I've really enjoyed the class thus far, and I am pleased with the progress of the students. We've talked about rhetorical strategies, we've read some of the big name philosophers, we've talked about justice, happiness, human rights, animal rights, etc. Which means 99% of the time, if anyone would have walked in the room, they would have heard something that might make me look good.
But one day we talked about female genital mutilation. It's a great way to talk about cultural relativism, and whether the good life is a universal virtue or something contingent from society to society. But it's still about female genitals and their mutilation.
And this was the one day that the principal came in to observe, unannounced.
That's right, the principal Dr. Saheed has been in my class once, and he walked in during our female genital mutilation conversation. For all I know, he opened the door when I was saying "genitals."
I quickly told him the broader discussion we were having, how this issue is an entry into important philosophical and sociological questions. He was great about it, and he had some really interesting things to say to contribute to the class discussion.
But, think about it. The one day he comes in. Female genital mutilation.
And then there's the observer effect. This is a psychological term that refers to the idea (in my mind, the truism) that you can never actually observe anything in it's true form, because the very act of observing changes the nature of what you are trying to observe. When there's an observer in the classroom the kids know it, and you the teacher definitely know it. So now everything is different--this isn't how you are normally as a teacher, and the atmosphere and goals of the class have been altered.
I've found that when I'm being observed, my mind is always split into two: the part of me that's speaking and teaching, and the part of me that is watching myself speak and teach. And a split mind isn't a fully immersed mind. The best classes are the one where you not only speak and teach, but also merge with the students and the lesson and the content and what you're pursuing-- you're almost no longer an individualized self (or as Alan Watts would say, a "skin-encapsulated ego"), but rather a part of something bigger. Which is why Yeats wrote "how can we know the dancer from the dance?"
O.K., I know that's a bit trippy and metaphorical and mystical, but the point is we're never at our best when we're hyper self-aware. And being observed makes us hyper self-aware.
So where does all this leave us? How do you ever know how good a teacher is?
Here's the only way I know: teach next door to somebody for 10 years. I taught in the same hallway of English teachers for 11 years, and only after all that time could I go down the hallway and give you my personal assessment of the teachers. Only after all those years of knowing the teachers, talking to them, teaching their former students, discussing students in common, being in their classrooms, walking by their classrooms, working on curriculum with them . . . only then did I get a true sense of who they are as educators.
I don't know how you formalize that into a school policy, (O.K., you can't), but that's the only way I know how to do it.
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Social Network
I just saw The Social Network. Great movie. Here's the thought I left with:
Nothing changes the world like a jilted nerd.
Nothing changes the world like a jilted nerd.
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