WEEK 5 - Observations

In Minneapolis (and most other districts as well, I presume), every teacher has to have a series of observations done by either an administrator or some higher-up from the district. As a non-tenured teacher, I have to do 5 this year. During these observations, the observer looks for certain things, such as how well I communicate the objectives and content, and how well I create a positive climate with routines and transitions, among other things.

The observation itself is actually great, in my opinion. I love it when other people watch my class and give me feedback on what I can do better. The only real negative about the observation is that for both the observer and the observed, it's a lot of paperwork. For every observation, we have to do a pre-conference as well as a post-conference. In order to prepare for the pre-conference, I have to fill out papers that outline just what I'm going to do, how they meet the students' learning objectives, how they meet the "Standards of Effective Instruction" for teachers, what I anticipate might be difficult, why I decided to do this lesson, what data have I gathered from my students' abilities that helped me choose what the lesson will be about, what instructional strategies I'll be using, how I'm connecting my lesson to other classes the students are taking, how I know if they've understood, and how I will differentiate based on the different abilities of the students.

Filling out all this paperwork took me just under 2 hours on Sunday. Then on Monday, I communicated all this information to my observer during our conference, which was about 45 minutes. The observation was Wednesday during my 2nd hour class. Then on Friday we had our post-conference. To prepare for the post-conference, there's another series of paperwork that needs to be filled out outlining what I felt I did well and not well, and how I would rate myself in the different domains of teaching. This took me an hour, then the next day we had the conference, which was another 45 minutes.

Bottom line: there are many more things that teachers do than just teaching.

My hours for this week:

Day	Date	Start	End	Total Hours
Sun	9/16/2012	10:00 PM	11:45 PM	1.75
M	9/17/2012	7:15 AM	4:15 PM	9
T	9/18/2012	7:15 AM	5:30 PM	10.25
		7:45 PM	10:15 PM	2.5
W	9/19/2012	7:00 AM	6:00 PM	11
		8:45 PM	9:15 PM	0.5
		10:00 PM	10:45 PM	0.75
Th	9/20/2012	7:15 AM	5:30 PM	10.25
		9:30 PM	10:30 PM	1
F	9/21/2012	7:30 AM	4:15 PM	8.75
Sat	9/22/2012	3:30 PM	5:30 PM	2
		6:45 PM	7:45 PM	1
	Total			58.75