Observation of a Business class
I observed a teacher at Pacific Ridge during one of his finanacial literacy classes. After the class I gave the teacher feedback and opinion on how the lesson went. There is a link below to a video that shows this conversation.
While doing my teacher training I was most struck by what one of the teachers who I was required to observe said to me after only a few days of working with him. He said, “Chris, I consider myself to be a good teacher but everything that I have learned, I have stolen from other teachers”. He basically said that as a young teacher in training that I should try to observe as many teachers as I could. According to him this would allow me lots of exposure to different teaching styles and I would then be able to decide what I would want my teaching style and philosophy to be. At the time I thought that he exaggerating about how affected I was by observing other teachers. In hindsight after a decade in the classroom I have to say that not only was he correct, but he might have been downplaying the influence of teacher observations on me. I still use the same classroom management skills that I learned from Mr. Roundtree that I first saw as a student teacher. The ways in which I lecture, conduct test reviews, develop PowerPoint’s, and other student activities is exactly as I learned in my first few years of teaching from other educators. I have, as a result, tried whenever I have free time in my schedule to visit other classrooms at all the schools where I have taught.
I chose a teacher observation as my WALO for the simple reason that this time my observation would be different. Rather than just sitting in the back of the room observing and taking notes I wanted to meet with the teacher before the lesson to see if he wanted me to observe anything in particular. I would then not only observe the lesson, but I would also provide feedback to the teacher on how I thought the lesson went. Not only would I be leaning from the observation, but it was also hoped that I could provide some useful feedback to the teacher to help better his practice.
To make this even more of a “wicked awesome leadership opportunity” I choose to observe and give feedback to the teacher at my school who I thought would least need it. Mr. Noredinne El Alam came to Pacific Ridge School last year to teach higher level mathematics classes. Mr. El Alam gives regular courses to teachers at the Klingenstein Summer Institute as he helps develop young teachers. To make this even more of a challenge it is Mr. El Alam himself who does the teacher evaluations at our school.
We met 3 days before the observation to maximize the potential gains that each of us could get out of the observation. I asked him how I could be helpful and what I should do during the observation. He asked that I check throughout the class that understanding was taking place in the students and also to look for any trends, either positive or negative, that were happening in the class.
The class that I was to observe was a financial literacy class that Mr. El Alam teaches to 11th and 12th grade students. The class starts at 8:00am and is taught 3 times weekly. The class has 17 students, 14 of which are males. The period that I observed started with Mr. El Alam returning a test that the students had taken. (My first artifact). Mr. El Alam went over each problem that the students did not understand and it was right at the beginning of the class where I got to see how good a teacher he actually is. His teaching style is very loose and informal and perfectly complements the Harkness style of teacher which is so important at PRS. After the class had discussed the quiz Mr. El Alam then went over a few news stories from the Wall Street Journal. It was obvious to see that the students respected the teacher because they all seemed eager to impress him as they discussed the articles. The bulk of the class period was taken up with the teacher working at the board explaining the differences between stocks and real estate investments. During this time the students asked lots of questions and it was great to see the teacher inviting class members, or sometimes asking certain students to approach the board to work on a simulation. By the end of the class I had taken extensive notes on the lesson focused on the students, teacher, and the areas that I was asked to focus on by Mr. El Alam.
Follow –up discussion
The follow up discussion (my second artifact) was difficult for me because I was apprehensive about giving feedback to this teacher in particular. These feelings were amplified after I observed the class and saw just how good Nouraddine was with the students. Our discussion post class took place a day after the event and I did my best to give Nouraddine some honest feedback on the class. I did let him know that I thought that he had the attention of most of his students for the duration of the period and that understanding seemed to be the order of the day. One trend which I did see was that he could have given the students more time to formulate answers to his questions. I was mindful of the fact that he was able to get some very quiet students that I had taught in previous years to be quite vocal in class.
This experience taught me that I have useful advice to give other teachers regardless of their experience and I felt like Nouraddine enjoyed my presence in his class. It has also allowed me to understand his teaching better and this will hopefully translate to deeper integration of our two subjects in future years. This experience also allowed me to take notes on Harkness skills of other teachers and also how the students reacted to a different Harkness approach to my own. This I think will be invaluable to my action research project. My possible next steps in this process will be to continue with more frequent observations with more of a focus on Harkness as this would be useful to my action research.
While doing my teacher training I was most struck by what one of the teachers who I was required to observe said to me after only a few days of working with him. He said, “Chris, I consider myself to be a good teacher but everything that I have learned, I have stolen from other teachers”. He basically said that as a young teacher in training that I should try to observe as many teachers as I could. According to him this would allow me lots of exposure to different teaching styles and I would then be able to decide what I would want my teaching style and philosophy to be. At the time I thought that he exaggerating about how affected I was by observing other teachers. In hindsight after a decade in the classroom I have to say that not only was he correct, but he might have been downplaying the influence of teacher observations on me. I still use the same classroom management skills that I learned from Mr. Roundtree that I first saw as a student teacher. The ways in which I lecture, conduct test reviews, develop PowerPoint’s, and other student activities is exactly as I learned in my first few years of teaching from other educators. I have, as a result, tried whenever I have free time in my schedule to visit other classrooms at all the schools where I have taught.
I chose a teacher observation as my WALO for the simple reason that this time my observation would be different. Rather than just sitting in the back of the room observing and taking notes I wanted to meet with the teacher before the lesson to see if he wanted me to observe anything in particular. I would then not only observe the lesson, but I would also provide feedback to the teacher on how I thought the lesson went. Not only would I be leaning from the observation, but it was also hoped that I could provide some useful feedback to the teacher to help better his practice.
To make this even more of a “wicked awesome leadership opportunity” I choose to observe and give feedback to the teacher at my school who I thought would least need it. Mr. Noredinne El Alam came to Pacific Ridge School last year to teach higher level mathematics classes. Mr. El Alam gives regular courses to teachers at the Klingenstein Summer Institute as he helps develop young teachers. To make this even more of a challenge it is Mr. El Alam himself who does the teacher evaluations at our school.
We met 3 days before the observation to maximize the potential gains that each of us could get out of the observation. I asked him how I could be helpful and what I should do during the observation. He asked that I check throughout the class that understanding was taking place in the students and also to look for any trends, either positive or negative, that were happening in the class.
The class that I was to observe was a financial literacy class that Mr. El Alam teaches to 11th and 12th grade students. The class starts at 8:00am and is taught 3 times weekly. The class has 17 students, 14 of which are males. The period that I observed started with Mr. El Alam returning a test that the students had taken. (My first artifact). Mr. El Alam went over each problem that the students did not understand and it was right at the beginning of the class where I got to see how good a teacher he actually is. His teaching style is very loose and informal and perfectly complements the Harkness style of teacher which is so important at PRS. After the class had discussed the quiz Mr. El Alam then went over a few news stories from the Wall Street Journal. It was obvious to see that the students respected the teacher because they all seemed eager to impress him as they discussed the articles. The bulk of the class period was taken up with the teacher working at the board explaining the differences between stocks and real estate investments. During this time the students asked lots of questions and it was great to see the teacher inviting class members, or sometimes asking certain students to approach the board to work on a simulation. By the end of the class I had taken extensive notes on the lesson focused on the students, teacher, and the areas that I was asked to focus on by Mr. El Alam.
Follow –up discussion
The follow up discussion (my second artifact) was difficult for me because I was apprehensive about giving feedback to this teacher in particular. These feelings were amplified after I observed the class and saw just how good Nouraddine was with the students. Our discussion post class took place a day after the event and I did my best to give Nouraddine some honest feedback on the class. I did let him know that I thought that he had the attention of most of his students for the duration of the period and that understanding seemed to be the order of the day. One trend which I did see was that he could have given the students more time to formulate answers to his questions. I was mindful of the fact that he was able to get some very quiet students that I had taught in previous years to be quite vocal in class.
This experience taught me that I have useful advice to give other teachers regardless of their experience and I felt like Nouraddine enjoyed my presence in his class. It has also allowed me to understand his teaching better and this will hopefully translate to deeper integration of our two subjects in future years. This experience also allowed me to take notes on Harkness skills of other teachers and also how the students reacted to a different Harkness approach to my own. This I think will be invaluable to my action research project. My possible next steps in this process will be to continue with more frequent observations with more of a focus on Harkness as this would be useful to my action research.
- Video of the post discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8C2TS2fJXo