Planned observation
…hm, that should be easier.
Had the conference with my principal. He basically said I’m doing too much of the work in the classroom. When I hear about politicians slamming teachers, they say it’s because they don’t do much of anything in the classroom. How can anyone win in a situation like that?
My supervisor is coming in tomorrow. I have a Pre-observation conference today and Post-observation conference Wednesday. Talk about efficient! But I did angle my lesson plans more towards the students doing the work- but not too much. It’s really hard to strike a balance. There are always too many people trying to put their “pair o’ pennies” in.
I am of the opinion that there needs to be a small staff of curriculum reviewers in every school district. Their only job is to make sure the lesson plans follow the curriculum and the teachers follow the lesson plans. If this was left to an independent group in the district instead of the administrators, they could get more input from the superintendent, who really should be the one leading such things, if s/he is doing the job. This would also allow for more observations, which can remove some of the “performance anxiety” of getting observed. So long as the job is getting done, some observations can be as little as 5 minutes.
There are flaws to my idea, I’m sure. But I still think it’s better than what we’ve got.
teachingtothecheapseats 
I like your idea of the curriculum reviewers, but even more so I like the idea of pre-written lesson plans, such as those Saxon Math. Every child who has gone through that program has been given the same education, while still being allowed time for adjustment and practice for his individual needs. I know liberal arts classes may be harder to account for, but they don’t have to be. When I taught, there was barely even a pacing guide available. We were literally given the text book and were told to “cover most of it”, and throw in “some outside reading” as well. So, while I taught the Hobbit and focused on things like excerpts from the Odyssey with my Freshmen, the teacher next door taught very little of the same things. This would be fine if there had been any list of specific literary devices, skills, techniques, etc that we were required to cover, as they could have been covered in just about any works we each chose. There wasn’t. Too much of it was left up to the individual teacher as far as I was concerned. As a result some of the sophomores knew one set of information and another had learned something completely unrelated.
Core Knowledge schools seem to have a good system for avoiding situations like this. Have you heard of them, or of the “What Your Student Needs to Know” Series?
Interesting post!
The school system where you should is most likely using the money they got in that big gift from the social media guy to create pacing guides. I had one in the city school where I taught that is next door to your city. (Being vague on purpose- a thinly veiled as it is). We’re working on Unit Plans and Pacing guides in my little suburb, even though our curriculum is very consistent from teacher to teacher. If it works, let’s do it. And this, out of all the things that are being proposed, seems to be the most workable.