Bruce Karhoff                                                                                                 

EDL 704:  Instructional and Curriculum Leadership

8 April 2013

Mini-Observations

Overview of the Lessons Observed: 

I observed segments of three lessons of a colleague in the English Department.  She teaches a senior seminar of 33 students that meets two hours a day for three days a week; the other two days the class meets for an hour.  Each of the classes I observed were on days that the class met for two hours.  The capstone project is a novella of 55-100 pages that the students have the option of self-publishing. 

I also observed a colleague in the math department.  He teaches one section of Geometry (34 students in grades 11 and 12) and one section of a 9^th-grade Integrated Math and Science (IMS) class of 26 students.  I observed the Geometry class twice and the IMS class once.

Process Reflection:  Overall, I thought Marshall’s mini-observation protocol gave me more insight into both the teaching and learning happening in these classrooms that if I had spent 30 or 40 minutes (or a full hour class period, for that matter) observing the teachers on one day.  While I was a bit disoriented after the first mini-observation—when I first checked my watch, I had been in the class for eleven minutes already, and I left the classroom quite unsure that I would have something to jot down for each of the five SOTEL elements—I quickly adjusted to the quick, in-and-out format.  Reflecting on peer observations in past years for which I stayed 30-60 minutes, I remembered a sense of, well, boredom towards the end of the observation.  The short mini-observations forced me to be much more focused so I could find at least one specific aspect of the lesson to discuss with the teacher.  Knowing that I would soon return, I felt the freedom to leave after just four minutes of a geometry lesson after I saw a writing prompt that I immediately knew I wanted to discuss with the teacher (something to the effect of, How much evidence would you need to provide to convince another student that a quadrilateral was a rhombus?).   If I was not scheduled to return to observe this teacher again, I might have stayed in the classroom longer as a courtesy, even though I had passed a point of diminishing returns for that particular observation.

The five elements, or domains,  Marshall’s SOTEL provided enough structure to focus my attention, while at the same time being broad enough for me to consider all aspects of the learning environment.   For example, under “Safety,” which Marshall (2009) describes simply as a “class running smoothly and student can focus on learning,” I could consider the degree to which I thought the senior English students felt safe to share the phrasing and editing of their writing with the rest of the class—“safety” was much more than the students’ sense of physical safety.   For “Objectives,” only twice in the six visits did I see an “Aim” or “Objective” written or posted in the room, yet during each visit, after the six or eight minutes in the classroom I had a sense of the specific skills being taught in that lesson; to me, it was clear where the lesson was going or had come from.   In an IMS lesson in which I visited late in the period, even though the Objective must have been presented on a Power Point slide early in the lesson and was no longer available to students, the practice problems I observed the students working on and the final “Exit Slip” they were asked to complete, it was clear that the lesson aim was that energy is conserved at all times—an object’s total energy, whether in the form of potential energy or kinetic energy or a combination of the two, was always the same.  The elements of “Teaching” and “Engagement” were, I thought, straight-forward.  One concern I had with SOTEL when I began was the “Learning”—I was unsure how, in a few minutes, I could gauge student understanding.  After a few mini-observations, though, I began to think of “Learning” as assessment, which I could better wrap my head around.  In each of the six lessons, I observed informal assessments of student learning as both teachers peppered their teaching/discussions with students with questions probing student understanding.

Taking notes after the mini-observations became easier after I had done three or four observations.  After the first mini-observation, I returned to my computer, flipped open Marshall, and began structuring my comments around some of his wording for “Proficient” and “Expert” levels of each of the five elements; I was re-reading Marshall as much as I was writing notes.  After that initial write-up, though, I had a template that I could use, the formatting became less and less, and the description of the salient points became the focus of my note taking.  Furthermore, as I repeated the process, I better internalized SOTEL—or at least my version of SOTEL—and thus could “compose” my notes mentally in the classroom as I was observing.  At the point, I could simply return to my room and type out the specific points I had mentally composed a few minutes earlier.

Giving feedback informally was a mixed bag.  Even though I am friendly with both colleagues I observed, the English teacher was more stiff during my feedback than my math colleague.  My English colleague did little talking during our quick feedback sessions, usually limiting herself to answering clarifying questions I had.  I did not get to the point where I felt we were having a genuine discussion of teaching and learning.  At no point did she disagree with or challenge me on any point, but my comments did not spark further discussion, either.  I am not sure if my comments had no value to her, if that is the way she receives feedback from any observer, or if she thought of this as simply an exercise for grad school she was participating in as a consideration for a friend, or if there was another reason for her reaction.  With my math colleague, however, I felt as though the feedback sessions were a continuation of a much longer conversation he and I have about the teaching and learning of mathematics.  (The colleague is the head of the Math Department, and I meet with him weekly to discuss my Algebra2/Trig class.)  Also, even though I tried to think of this activity from the point of view of a supervisor, I could not help considering how I could use what I saw in his classroom and in our discussions to improve my own teaching.   While this may have led our discussions “off-track” of the specific purpose of this assignment of providing feedback to teachers based on Marshall’s mini-observation model, I did find find this a valuable framework to focus my mind on improving teaching and learning.

At any rate, the regular cycle of observation and feedback Marshall endorses led to more frequent discussions of teaching and learning, which I found to be of value.   The greatest challenge of using mini-observation model I see would be to expand its use beyond a few colleagues.  I think it might be easier to find five minutes each month to pop in to see each teacher on staff than to find a few minutes later in the day to meet with that same teacher to provide timely feedback.  The protocol’s strengths, though, I think, outweigh this potential obstacle.  The regular feedback discussion felt as if could become an on-going norm of my professional interaction with the colleagues I tested this on.  In my mind, the more often educational professionals discuss the processes of effective teaching and learning, the greater the likelihood of improved practice—both for an individual teacher and for a school as a whole.  Marshall’s mini-observation model is not time-consuming, a very attractive feature for busy teachers and administrators.   As I was using Marshall’s protocols, I began to wonder too if this mini-observation model could be successfully adapted to peer observation.  If so, the frequent discussion of teaching and learning could expand beyond just supervisor-teacher to teacher-teacher.

 Whether this type of feedback helped my colleagues or not, I believe it is too soon to assess.  In this short practice of using Marshall, though, I am convinced that this is a model worthy of trial when I become a school leader.