When people come into our classrooms to “observe” us what are they really doing? I think that they are judging us. They should call their creepy actions what they are – judging. Announced or unannounced, it is still judging.
Sure, they say that they are there to help us, but that is a surface truth. The deeper truth, in my opinion, is that, even if these people themselves believe that they are in our rooms to help us, they aren’t that altruistic at their professional core, in my opinion. I think they like power. I think they believe they are better than classroom teachers. Why else would they leave the classroom?
I once had a high school principal in a school of over 2,000 kids, East High School, who had taught one year of first grade – that was the total experience he had in a classroom. And yet there he was in there judging me without the least bit of doubt in his knowledge of how to do that.
Do I sound bitter? I am. That guy caused me a lot of internal pain. Two years worth. I have trouble letting it go. I’m working on it. Principals can do that to ya’. They can ruin your career.
There is a creepy observer in the nicest of people. Except for people who train us like Teri Wiechart. Teri is an example, Laurie Clarcq is another and Sabrina Janzcak a third, of people who are honest and brave and have our well being at heart when coaching us.
I know that because whenever I present with Laurie explaining what I am doing I feel better at my ability to do this work. I feel what Laurie wants to accomplish and it doesn’t have a lot to do with judging my teaching. She and Teri and Sabrina want the word out on CI, and that’s it.
But such people are rare. They are career classroom teachers. You don’t see too many of them in the offices of school buildings. Robert Harrell is another example. He could be President of the NEA if he put his mind to it. But that is not who he is. He is a classroom teacher.
That is the highest compliment one can pay in this profession. Many in our group are in the fray, in the dust and the heat, in the classroom. Are they beat up? Yes. Are they shining in battle? Oh yes.