I just added this to the five bail out moves described in my new book (the iFLT notes I wrote for San Diego actually became a book for beginners):
Often, in the daily grind of teaching, we struggle. It’s just that way. The five bail out moves presented in this book are excellent ways to deal with a flat class, but this next move is aimed specifically at responding to those electric moments when observers walk into our classrooms unannounced.
I don’t think that they mean to knock us off our rhythm, and I’m sure that there are teachers who handle such intrusions (that’s really what they are) with aplomb. I, however, am not one of them.
There have been times in my career when an unannounced observation by a supervisor would send me into an internal panic and I would lose my focus. But when Dr. Krashen came into my classroom with Diana to observe two classes last year, I had no such reaction.
That is because Dr. Krashen wasn’t there to find fault with me – he simply wanted to see some of his ideas in action in the field. He is also a gentleman.
I am happy to report that I no longer react in fear to formal observations by administrators. Over time, over the decades, I have slowly come to realize how deeply ignorant most observers are about what I am doing, and also how little they care.
Administrators are always overworked, and most do the observation in large part for no other reason than that they have to. As they sit there observing, if they hear English, it’s fine. If they hear French, that’s fine too. They watch the kids’ response or lack of response to the instruction, as they are taught to do in their administrator trainings, but their hearts are not in it.
Once, when teaching an AP French Literature class in the TL (or as best as I could in the TL without knowing about TPRS/CI at the time), I looked up to see that my principal – a former college football star who thought that education was about bashing heads in – had come in earlier only to fall asleep.
Moreover, I have always felt, I think correctly, that those observations were to judge me, not to help me. That’s what it felt like. For more on the huge mental battles we must fight with observing administrators, click on the PLC categories entitled, “Observation Suggestions” and “Observations By Idiots – What To Do”.
So this final bail out move is for those situations when you get observed unexpectedly and must raise the quality of the class but don’t have time to shift the class into a writing or reading or math or drawing activity, because they take too much time to set up.
The observer doesn’t want to see a two or three minute shift in the class when they walk in – they want to see the flow of instruction and the lesson continue without interruption. (They think that they can observe without changing the energy in the room, but that is another topic.)
So what to do?
My answer is simple. Since TPR is at the heart of all we do and is instantly engaging, we should use it as a bail out move in these situations. We want to fool the observer into thinking that the TPR was what we were doing before they came in. You will find that good TPR, when properly extended out a bit, is a great way to meet the pressure of an unannounced observation and to get all the right boxes checked in a short amount of time.
We can shift to TPR that fast if we need to, before the observer even gets through the door, and thus win the mental battle. Just tell the kids early in the year that when you get observed, there are certain things you need to do for the observation and that you may switch things up on them very quickly if someone walks in. They get it and will go with it. They are good at that and they love a challenge.
How to do this bail out move? Well, to do TPR all we need is a verb. I have a Verb Wall that is separate from my Word Wall. That wall is a powerful place in my classroom, a place I sometimes use to start class as described earlier in this book in the section on Word Associations, but I also refer to the Verb Wall with the laser pointer when I am doing any kind of CI, auditory or reading.
The Verb Wall is an instant support place. Offering kids instant recognition of verbs during a CI class in written form while gesturing the verb to them or asking them to gesture it to you is just a good thing to do.
So, if a badge walks in and I need a quick change in the feel of the class because the CI is not flying at altitude, and the kids’ level of engagement needs to be ratcheted up a notch, I just stop whatever CI I was doing and go through the steps below.
Note that these steps are very similar to the Word Association process but differ in that they always extend into little scenes. So, when the person walks in I immediately swing into action in the following way:
1. I find the next new verb in the list of verbs on the Verb Wall.
2. Before the person gets in the door, I have the laser pointer on the verb while I say these things in this order to the class:
- Class, this verb means “runs”. What does this verb mean? (runs)
- Class, how do you say “runs” in French (court). Good class, “court” means “runs”.
- Class, show me “runs”. (They show me various gestures. I accept one and praise it’s author.)
3. I then inform the class using the PSA technique (Personalized Statements and Answers) that one of them runs:
- Class, Jorge runs! (ohhh!)
I don’t ask if Jorge runs, I tell them. The reason for that is that teachers are not the only ones who are iced by administrators, it happens to kids, too. They also feel judged by the new controlling presence in the classroom which just feels wrong somehow. So we are going to use that one sentence, circled slowly over and over with plenty of comprehension checks in the form of strong choral responses and hand comprehension checks, so that we get command of the observation and convey a sense of instructional ease to the face in the back of the room.
4. So I circle the original statement. The kids get what I am saying but the administrator doesn’t. Score a point for me. In the rare instance when the observer knows what they are doing, they come in expecting to see engaged kids hearing the target language in the class, and that is what they are now seeing.
5. I circle as long as I want, getting ready to extend the scene with the two great extending questions of “where” and “with whom”, which were also mentioned earlier in this book.
6. Then I ask where. I make it a weird place. I circle that a lot.
7. Then I play the “with whom” card. Making that person a celebrity always works best. Circle that.
8. I keep building the image with other question words. I go very slowly. I refer to the Classroom Rules or jGR or the Rigor posters so that the observer can get all the boxes having to do with classroom management checked. Sadly, I have learned how to guide the observer through their observation process.
9. As the extended scene built from that one verb either gains or loses energy, I check the clock and, knowing that the observer needs to check the assessment boxes as well, I quickly get a quick quiz from the Quiz Writer, who has been told to monitor and adjust when a badge walks in by writing at least a five point quiz on the content that happens when the badge is in the room.
10. When the observer is gone, I go back to the lesson or stay with the verbs or go to another bail out move, thanking the class for their help. They know I mean it.