Today my "nice" master teacher observed me, as my evaluation form is due this week (actually it was due yesterday, and I'd procrastinated telling my teachers that because I was hoping to stabilize things with the mean master teacher, which I have, before she filled out my evaluation, and I knew the two of them would talk if I gave one of them the form). I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the form to her yesterday because then she would observe me today, and I hadn't worked out exactly what I was doing today and didn't want her to observe me. She's observed me maybe 10 times so far, and she's been really happy with how those classes have gone.
I spent a long time yesterday thinking through exactly what I wanted to do, and I wanted it to be something good especially bc I was being observed. Really, that's just SO stupid. It totally distracts from the point of teaching--to make a difference for the students--and turns it into trying to impress some teacher based on something or other that doesn't necessarily correlate to what I see as "making a difference for the students."
Anyway, last night I came up with what I thought was a good idea. For homework last night they had to bring several copies of their essay drafts in for their small group to peer review for homework tonight. For today I wanted to give them practice looking critically at writing and focusing on body paragraphs in an analytical essay, as they are working on essays for Black Boy. (I'm so bummed that we're done with that book, by the way, as it's just been so wonderful to reread and teach. The Woman Warrior, another really good book, is next.)
In our English class at State, we always talk about giving students samples of good writing to model their writing after. I was kicking myself for not making a copy of any of the good essays or writings some of my students did, so I decided to write something myself. I didn't want to write something about the book, as I thought that would be less interesting for them and might just give them a freebie in terms of imitating the content of what I wrote in their essay.
So, I wrote an outline for an analytical essay, as well as one full body paragraph and the conclusion, about Britney Spears. My thesis was that "Britney Spears' celebrity status has led to her emotional breakdown, to her drug use, and to her becoming an unfit mother." I wrote a really well-written analytical paragraph using quotes, using the formal structure of context and commentary, etc., and we went over that today in class. The kids were cracking up laughing and were totally engaged. As I read it aloud to them while they read it on the overhead, we identified topic sentences, context, commentary, etc., and we talked about whether the topic sentences relate to the thesis, whether the paragraph proves the topic sentence, and whether I successfully proved my thesis. I asked them afterwards if they found it helpful, and just about the whole class was emphatic in raising their hands and nodding. One kid said, ""helpful and interesting." Later, I met with a student to help her on her paper, and she mentioned a couple things that she realized about how to restructure her essay based on the Britney example I showed them, which was really gratifying.
Anyway, I spent a really long time preparing for that and thinking it through. The only problem was that it took a little more time than I had figured it would, which meant that I didn't do something else that was in the lesson plan that I gave my master teacher before class. In retrospect, I really just underestimated how long that would take, which is a very common thing for me--in lesson planning and in life, as some of you can attest--and this is something I know I need to work on. I just find it so hard to teach classes that are just 40 minutes; if a discussion goes in an interesting direction or if there are unanticipated questions or if you just think of something you want to take a few minutes to talk about, it totally affects what you've got planned since the class is so short.
O.K. So after classes she observes, my master teacher and I usually meet to debrief in the English office. Today I had a student come to the office with me right after class to ask me for help on her essay. I was working with her and then, after a few minutes, the teacher came over to where the student and I were, and I could see she was waiting. I stopped with the student for a minute and asked the teacher if she wanted to talk to me, and she said in a very annoyed way that we were supposed to have our meeting now. (It's not like we have a formal meeting--or that I was kicking my feet up or sneaking off to (god forbid) eat lunch or something--I was helping a student.) I asked the student to come back, and she did, but the tone the teacher took with me was just so unnecessary.
In our meeting, she talked about timing, and some of the feedback she gave was good, but she didn't give me any compliments about the class, which I felt overall went really well for what we did--whereas she was upset about what we didn't do that was in the lesson plan. I felt like she was so melodramatic about it--like some huge disaster had occurred because the lesson didn't go just as I'd planned it. Ugh. I knew that it didn't go as I'd planned it, and I was a little frustrated about it, but overall it wasn't something I was going to feel bad about until I heard her reaction.
I have to just mention that this teacher, while she's always been very nice, is the most BORING teacher I have observed. Her classes are painful, and when Yanan (my classroom mgmt teacher) observed one day she said the same thing. While I respect her for being organized and hard-working, I'm not sure how much I really want to listen to her advice anyway.
Whatever. This is so stupid. I just have felt crappy all day because of this interaction, which has gotten me to think about whether I'm just too sensitive or taking things too personally or worrying too much about the approval of these teachers. I guess I just feel like I'm working my ass off and keeping my students engaged and working really hard, yet the two people who are in the positions to critique my work don't seem to acknowledge any of that, and in fact my interactions with them too often result in me feeling bad about things.
That just got me to think of something: I have been meaning to tell my 10th graders how amazed I am at how hard they've worked in this class all semester and to acknowledge them for that. I'm going to do that tomorrow.
As Tomas sweetly told me today, this is all great experience and it doesn't have to be perfect--which is a really key point to keep in mind. I guess there's some part of me that aims to please--or at least not to disappoint--and that part of me is feeling a bit frantic and demoralized.
For now, I need to plan out next week's lessons for the meeting with my mean master teacher (the one whose St. Patrick's Day party I'm scheduled to go to on Sunday...depending on how that meeting goes).
I feel like it's like 3 am, but it's not quite 10. That feeling has gotten old.
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