As you might remember, I was group observed a few weeks back, as part of our district’s “professional studio” observation structure.  It was a great process, and I thought that the feedback that I recieved from all of the folks who were kind enough to offer was cogent and actionable (outside of the typical platitudes).

A friend of mine, working in a different district, well away from the one that employs me, was not quite as fortunate.  This individual was observed teaching an advanced-level genetics course to advanced-level science students.  The observation was conducted by one person, the immediate boss.  The feedback was not quite as robust as one might hope.  

Here is the relevant bit that really got my goat to the point where I asked if I could write this post.  It’s a direct quote (emphasis mine):

<Teacher> presented highly technical information to the students, and did so in a highly competent manner.  Through providing the students with additional opportunities for exposure to the materials, such as through the Khan Academy, there may be enhancement of the classroom discussions.

Wait…what?  Khan Academy for college-level genetics?  Seriously?  Not awesome.  it’s not awesome for two reasons.  First, Khan academy videos are BO-O-O-O-RING!  At least to my way of thinking about things, they are.  Black screen, colored lines, and the calming voice of Sal Khan.  You couldn’t script a worse lesson.  Who wants to sit through that nonsense for a minute, much less ten?  

But as bad as that might be, here’s the worse bit:  There are no Khan Academy videos on College-level genetics.  None at all.  The closest he gets is maybe his DNA presentation.  There doesn’t (at current), even seem to be a decent video on Gene Expression.  So, how exactly, is a teacher supposed to incorporate materials that don’t exist?  

This is bad feedback, representative of the old adage that supervisors have to put something down when they observe a lesson, just for the sake of making it seem like they are doing a good job supervising, never mind if the feedback is actually useful or representative of the shared reality that we all inhabit.  

Why, if one didn’t know better, one might think that this particular supervisor was maybe just trying to work in a couple of buzz-words just to show that they are hip to the currents of the educational scene.  Not that such things ever happen in education…

So, I’m being observed on Thursday.  Not the traditional “here comes your boss” style.  My district offers a professional studio option, wherein my boss, two other teachers, and their bosses all come in to see what I’m doing.  I get a pre- and post-observation conference, too.  

Being as how I figure that more eyes on my room will lead to more feedback, I love the model (sadly, it’s a model that there probably will not be room for after the new changes to the APPR come through next year).  Being as how I can’t help myself, I figured I would throw in a bit of a challenge to my colleagues in the lesson plan that I had to submit.  

I haven’t written a full lesson plan in a good long while.  It’s not a problem for me to do it, and this is not me grousing about having to do it.  After I wrote it, I went over to the educational jargon generator and generated a few choice terms to insert at various places in the plan.  It should be fun to see if anyone who is reading the plan notices. Granted, given my propensity for logorrhea, they may very well just come across as me being me…

Update:  No one called me on my shenanigans.  But I did get some good and actionable feedback.  If I had to pick, I’d take the later over the former any day.

A friend of mine turned me on to the campaign website of Ivan Cohen, who is running for something or other in Philadelphia this year.

Mr. Cohen is an “incorruptible” individual whose life has not all been “peaches and cream”.  He is also, pretty clearly, designing his own website, which is notable for many things, including the amount of news items it has listed three days before election day.  

C’mon Philly!  I have a hard time believing that there is any other candidate in the city who has the remarkable web sense to have their homepage auto-play “Carmina Burana” every single time you load it.  

In light of all of this, Pseudopodia is proud to endorse Mr. Cohen for whatever the hell it is that he is running for.  This not only makes Mr. Cohen the first (and most likely the only) individual running for office this year who will receive our endorsement, it also seems that our endorsement is the only one that Mr. Cohen will most likely receive.  

This year, I decided that I would tackle the word marathon that is “National Novel Writing Month”.  Therefore, most of my non-work-related writing for the next few weeks will be in an attempt to hit 50K words in a somewhat cohesive manner during the upcoming month.  Maybe I’ll remember to post something here or there.  Or maybe I’ll just post the whole mess here once I’m done.  Who can say.