Surviving my lesson observations
Lessons observations feel like you need to tick all the boxes, and if it goes wrong, you’ll feel like you’ve been found out.
The Imposter Syndrome
I’ve lost count of the number of lesson observations I’ve been subjected to over the last seven years and yet I still get nervous. I’ve heard this term ‘Imposter Syndrome’ but until recently I didn’t know just how many teachers felt like that. Lessons observations feel like that moment when the spotlight is on you and you need to perform, tick all the boxes and demonstrate your skills and knowledge. If it goes wrong, as lessons sometimes do, you’ll feel like you’ve been found out.
I studied for a PGCE, then moved from teaching foreign languages into teaching English as a Second Language. I then applied to do the CELTA course and now I’m currently studying for my DipTESOL. I’ve done observed interview lessons, British Council observed snapshots of lessons, lessons observed by managers in the various schools where I’ve worked, peer observations and observations by newly qualified teachers. You’d think it would get easier, but no. It just feels like the bar is getting higher. I’ve recently completed several lesson observations for the Dip and I’ve been guilty of overthinking all of them and spending a disproportionate number of hours planning.
The level of detail required for the Dip lesson plan is phenomenal, way beyond anything I’ve been required to do for other observations. But I like that – even if that comment sounds a bit strange given the hours I spent agonising over the planning! Detailed analysis of individual students’ strengths and weaknesses and thinking about the class dynamics before the lesson is the best part. It took my planning away from WHAT I was teaching and helped me to focus on WHO I was teaching.
Before ‘doing the Dip’, I’d never had to write individual student profiles before. I have, in the past, contributed to ILPs (individual learning plans) to help students with special needs. Within ELT I’ve encountered far fewer students with special needs but far more criteria to which I needed to be sensitive; cultural, global, religious, L1 etc. ESL teachers deal with students across a wide age range, and that impacts what experience and knowledge they bring to the classroom too. Plus, it’s also fundamental to understanding what motivates them to learn.
Why are you learning English?
This is my favourite question in any GTKY [Getting To Know You] session. It highlights students’ expectations. It helps me to find out more about who they are and what they do, and also to spot the ones who are really driven to work hard and make progress. One of the most common answers is that they want to improve their confidence using English. At the end of the day, because I work in an English language school in the UK, my students are often the ones who can afford to take time out and pay to study here. They are motivated, focused and keen to learn, well – most of them!
I ask my students what they think their strengths and weaknesses in English are, focusing on 7 points:
- Listening
- Speaking
- Reading
- Writing
- Grammar
- Vocabulary
- Pronunciation.
Their answers inform my teaching and help me to focus on key points in my lesson planning. It shows that my focus is finally moving from what I am teaching to what they are learning. I know this should be the whole point, but I seem to panic when an observation is looming and I think too much about how I’ll be ‘presenting’ when I really should be thinking about ‘facilitating.’
But here’s the paradox. I foster a classroom culture where my students are happy to make mistakes and understand how mistakes can lead to valuable lessons. When I’m being observed though, more often than not it is because I am being assessed and so even though constructive criticism is very useful, there is little room for mistakes. Is this why some teachers pull out their tried and tested observation lesson? The one they’ve delivered over and over.
The difficulty for my tutors though, was that they wanted to do more observations earlier in the course but I felt I wasn’t ready so I stalled and delayed. Others on my course did the same. It was understood that the observations were a development process and even though my tutors told me that, I was the one who made it into a performance, an assessment. My bad.
It worked out OK in the end, I passed all my observations and my teaching improved as a result of the process but if I can offer one piece of advice to future Dippers it’s this. Remember that you are doing the course to learn, and it is a process. Ask for as many observations as you can, listen to the feedback, tweak your teaching, planning, delivery and reflection accordingly and you will develop. When you’re going through the process, you’re not the finished product, yet.
My problem is having to create a detailed lesson plan. How can you plan a spontaneous moment in class? Knowing your subject well allows you the flexibility to be spontaneous in class. Maybe you notice a mistake from a student and you’re able to hone in on that and give clear explanation – it wasn’t on the plan. But the beauty of the DipTESOL for me was in being encouraged to do just that and having an opportunity to justify it afterwards. It takes courage, because the spontaneous moment could be one of combustion.
That’s the beauty of self-reflection though. Time to replay in your mind, what went well (WWW) in the lesson and think about the EBI (even better if)…. Time to analyse how the students reacted, responded or, better still, initiated and questioned things during the lesson.