As a trainee teacher back in 2007 I would dread lesson observations. I was trained in a school with very high standards in which the maths department was always deemed as English and science's terribly-under-performing, coffee-focused sibling. There was always a feeling around lesson observations that the observer was trying to catch you out. Trying to find ways to prove your second coffee of the day wasn't helping year 9 set 4 get a level 6 in their end of term test. I don't want to use the term 'witch hunt' but feedback from lesson observations often came with mass hysteria and SLT banging at the door with flaming AfL policies.
With this in mind I despised lesson observations. Despite teaching my first outstanding lesson within the first two months of my first teaching placement, I would leave no element of the lesson unplanned. I would rehearse how I would word the instructions to each task in the car on the drive into school, I would practice the lesson on another class before the formal observation and I would lose sleep over those 30 seconds that seem like several hours when waiting for silence. It would be safe to say I developed a highly irrational fear of anyone observing me.
During my placement at said school I was offered a job as a Maths Teacher and I accepted feeling excited that I was joining a team I loved and kids I already knew. I thoroughly enjoyed my seven years at the school and only left as I felt I would have been there 40 years later receiving my retirement gift but the observation and learning walk techniques at the school did absolutely nothing to quash any fears I had of an observer in the room. There were the lesson observations that were slated for not displaying a learning objective at every moment of the lesson, books that were stealthily taken from classrooms before the actual observation and scrutinised to monitor whether marking was consistent or purely for the observation, and the learning walks that took place from outside the classroom without even opening the door.
I would sit in awe of a colleague in my department who took lesson observations in her stride. She was an AST only a few years older than myself who would not bat an eyelid if the whole population of Salem arrived two minutes before her lesson to watch her teach bottom set year 11 during period 5 on a Friday. As my mentor, if I had an observation coming up she would calmly sit and talk me through suggestions and be nothing but positive about the learning that would take place as a result of the different parts of my lesson. Even with this incredible support the thought of a lesson observation would still bring that cold sweat and the instant brain-racking of why the observer possibly wouldn't want to see that group on that day. This feeling continued years later and even as I took on my current role as Head of Department, I would feel incredible sympathy for those teachers in my team I was observing imagining the stress they must be going through.
But last week, something miraculous happened. I was observed teaching sharing in a given ratio to mixed ability year 7 and I still managed to get eight hours sleep the night before. For the first time I felt my lesson was bloody brilliant and that the relationship I had built with my class, the teaching strategies, the assessment and the content were exactly where they should have been. Sure, I had taught many outstanding lessons before (including in front of Ofsted) but this was the first time I felt outstanding. The best part for me was that I hadn't put on a 'show' lesson. I wasn't at the front sawing a student in half while reciting the quadratic formula I was teaching a normal lesson like I do sometimes five times a day. I knew the students had made progress, the observer knew the students had made progress but, better still, the students knew they had made progress.
I can put my finger on only one thing I did which was different to any observation I had in the past; I did what I thought was right. It was my classroom, my scheme of work, my class, my department and my specialist subject. I did exactly what I knew was right for those 11 and 12 year old students in front of me and it worked. I didn't try to second guess what the observer was looking for, nor did I take home and mark every single page of their exercise books 'just in case'. I didn't frantically try and fit in the latest buzzwords or use any fancy hand held technology.
This mindset echoes exactly a story passed on from my father-in-law. Sometime in the 1950s when my husband's great aunt was teaching in a secondary school, she was visited by an inspector during a whole school inspection. He watched the lesson and at the end she went to him for feedback. He made some general comments on the lesson and then asked "do you think you did the right thing for your students?" she responded with a very firm 'yes' to which he replied "well, keep doing that and every five years you will be in fashion".
With this in mind I despised lesson observations. Despite teaching my first outstanding lesson within the first two months of my first teaching placement, I would leave no element of the lesson unplanned. I would rehearse how I would word the instructions to each task in the car on the drive into school, I would practice the lesson on another class before the formal observation and I would lose sleep over those 30 seconds that seem like several hours when waiting for silence. It would be safe to say I developed a highly irrational fear of anyone observing me.
During my placement at said school I was offered a job as a Maths Teacher and I accepted feeling excited that I was joining a team I loved and kids I already knew. I thoroughly enjoyed my seven years at the school and only left as I felt I would have been there 40 years later receiving my retirement gift but the observation and learning walk techniques at the school did absolutely nothing to quash any fears I had of an observer in the room. There were the lesson observations that were slated for not displaying a learning objective at every moment of the lesson, books that were stealthily taken from classrooms before the actual observation and scrutinised to monitor whether marking was consistent or purely for the observation, and the learning walks that took place from outside the classroom without even opening the door.
I would sit in awe of a colleague in my department who took lesson observations in her stride. She was an AST only a few years older than myself who would not bat an eyelid if the whole population of Salem arrived two minutes before her lesson to watch her teach bottom set year 11 during period 5 on a Friday. As my mentor, if I had an observation coming up she would calmly sit and talk me through suggestions and be nothing but positive about the learning that would take place as a result of the different parts of my lesson. Even with this incredible support the thought of a lesson observation would still bring that cold sweat and the instant brain-racking of why the observer possibly wouldn't want to see that group on that day. This feeling continued years later and even as I took on my current role as Head of Department, I would feel incredible sympathy for those teachers in my team I was observing imagining the stress they must be going through.
But last week, something miraculous happened. I was observed teaching sharing in a given ratio to mixed ability year 7 and I still managed to get eight hours sleep the night before. For the first time I felt my lesson was bloody brilliant and that the relationship I had built with my class, the teaching strategies, the assessment and the content were exactly where they should have been. Sure, I had taught many outstanding lessons before (including in front of Ofsted) but this was the first time I felt outstanding. The best part for me was that I hadn't put on a 'show' lesson. I wasn't at the front sawing a student in half while reciting the quadratic formula I was teaching a normal lesson like I do sometimes five times a day. I knew the students had made progress, the observer knew the students had made progress but, better still, the students knew they had made progress.
I can put my finger on only one thing I did which was different to any observation I had in the past; I did what I thought was right. It was my classroom, my scheme of work, my class, my department and my specialist subject. I did exactly what I knew was right for those 11 and 12 year old students in front of me and it worked. I didn't try to second guess what the observer was looking for, nor did I take home and mark every single page of their exercise books 'just in case'. I didn't frantically try and fit in the latest buzzwords or use any fancy hand held technology.
This mindset echoes exactly a story passed on from my father-in-law. Sometime in the 1950s when my husband's great aunt was teaching in a secondary school, she was visited by an inspector during a whole school inspection. He watched the lesson and at the end she went to him for feedback. He made some general comments on the lesson and then asked "do you think you did the right thing for your students?" she responded with a very firm 'yes' to which he replied "well, keep doing that and every five years you will be in fashion".