The new corporate model when fully applied to education will change the culture of professional review. In the past, there was a more collegial approach, which had its flaws, but at least educators were evaluating educators. Now, the evaluation model takes the educator out of the observor, and so there are changes in the nature of the observation process.
The “eye” of the evaluating system (principals and APs) can only focus on one thing at a time. Therefore, in the new observation model teachers will be under the gaze of the eye for only a short time each year, one week in the fall and one week in the spring, usually. There are simply too many teachers in the building for the eye to be on all teachers all the time. Learn to notice when the eye is on you and react accordingly.
Newer teachers, thinking falsely that the evaluative eye can see everything going on in the building at once, miss the chance to be “on” during those few days or weeks when the attention of the eye has come to their classroom. That is to say, if the fall professional evaluation is to consist of an announced visit from an AP, who will be armed with a set of boxes to check, all the teacher has to do is plan the lesson for that day to make sure she hits all the requisite bullet points in that lesson. There are other articles under the category Observations here to refer to for additional details on that point.
If the observation is unannounced in the spring, the teacher need merely have a canned lesson ready to go so that as soon as the AP is seen sitting in the back of the room and the kids are coming in, that becomes the lesson for the day. The posted goals and how they align with standards are easy in CI classes to make the observor think that the new canned lesson, which the kids have been told to be ready for (they always help!), is the regular lesson, because listening and reading is pretty much all we do in most of our CI classes all the time.
It is easier to be ready and have everything ready to go in this way, and then relax the rest of the time, concentrating on actually teaching, than worry all through the year. It is a guaranteed fact that most observors have no idea what they are observing, which explains why so many grammar teachers get away on a daily basis with claiming that the grammar worksheets that they are having the kids do address the “writing” standard, or that the flags the kids are making address the “culture” standard.
Walk-ins by observors are simply not to be feared in the new professional evaluation model. We could be doing anything at all, as long as the kids aren’t hanging from the rafters and seem somewhat involved in class, which they always are when listening to a story or reading or doing some of the marvelous writing activities we have come up with lately here that are full-on CI, so that, in the new observation corporate model, we only have to address the few classes when the eye is on us.
Many administrators became administrators because they were relatively ineffective in the classroom, and, wanting power and position, moved up the ladder. They therefore cannot really recognize good teaching. Why, then, worry about what they think? Get the boxes checked. Then move on with the kids to real stuff.