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Chapter 8 |
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Babalee Jenkins is in a meeting with Mr. Knowles, her principal. Mr. Knowles recently held a pre-observation conference with Ms. Jenkins. At that time, he determined when he would come to see her teaching, and what he would be observing her doing. Yesterday he did the observation, and compiled his results and thoughts. Today he is sharing them in the post-observation conference. The summary of the observation, and this meeting will be placed in Ms. Jenkins' file, and used to determine if she continues working at the school this next year. As Ms. Jenkins is coming up on her tenure year at the school, she is a bit nervous about this meeting.
MR. KNOWLES: Ms. Jenkins. I think that your health and wellness class for juniors was a very good class for me to use for this observation. I really learned a lot. Clearly we have much to talk about.
MS. JENKINS: Thank you, again, Mr. Knowles, for this opportunity. I appreciate that you met with me before observation, and now after. I am eager to have you share what you learned.
MR. KNOWLES: First, I did look at student involvement. You had indicated that you were concerned about a few students, if they were involved in their learning. During the observation, all of the students were doing their work. I would say they were involved.
MS. JENKINS: I'm glad about that.
MR. KNOWLES: Second, I looked at the various ways that you're stimulating memorization and recall in your classroom. This health and wellness unit has a lot of facts about nutrition that the students should memorize to do well on the state tests, and also to use in their own lives. I looked specifically at the number of times that you stimulated memorization and recall.
MS. JENKINS: Can you tell me what behaviors you included in your counts?
MR. KNOWLES: Sure. Every time that you use a physical gesture to emphasize a point, that went into this first column. Every time that you made a reference to meaningfulness in someone's life, that went into this next column. In this last column, I recorded every time that you had student recall something. I tried to track you during lecture in this row, and then as you worked in small groups in this row. See my slash marks? Here is what I learned. You made many more physical gestures with the whole class than when you were moving around group to group. You were more animated with the whole class lecture. You asked students to recall information three times as often when you were talking with the whole class than when you were talking with the small groups. However, when you were with the small groups, you specifically made 20 comments that made a personal reference or meaningfulness to a student or a couple of students. You only did that twice in the whole group.
MS. JENKINS: Thank you for making me aware of these behaviors. I really didn't realize this.
MR. KNOWLES: The behaviors in isolation can help you think about your teaching. Overall, your methodology was very good. You did a nice job grabbing their attention and introducing the concepts. You were very clear on your expectations and on stating the learning standards you were working towards. You were very dynamic in your classroom management and discipline. You seemed to know which students needed more of your attention and how to deal with student behavior before it became disruptive. I have seen some of the same students in other classes become very disruptive! I think you know your subject matter. That's not a concern to me. The only concern I have is if you can make material meaningful to a whole group of students at once. I really didn't see you doing that during this observation. Overall, you have done a good job this year, and if the student test scores are good, I will certainly be looking to retain you this next year. Do you have any questions.
MS. JENKINS: Not right now. I will definitely think about what I do to make material meaningful to a whole group. Thank you.
Teacher Notes:
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