Job Discussion Forums

[nomad soul]

Ah... teacher observations. You either love 'em, dread 'em, or are somewhere in the middle.

What are your overall feelings about being observed and/or performing observations as part of your job? Are they an effective evaluation tool or just a waste of time? If you've never been observed, please comment as well.

[fluffyhamster]

I'm not sure if you've seen the following thread, but there was some good discussion in it:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=67858

[sharter]

I think they are necessary. Employers have to weed out bad teachers. Observations can also be used very effectively to develop new teachers and make older teachers aware of their 'bad habits'.

I see them as an opportunity for something positive to happen.

However, TEFL is full of precious types who stress out about them way too much.

[Denim-Maniac]

Im course tutor on a CELTA-esque type course at the moment, and of course, observations are a big part of that, including my own class being observed. Sure, there is a bit of stress involved, but its also part and parcel of the job.

I have observed some rather shocking lessons from my colleagues in the last week .... but we were observing from the course trainee perspective, so I didnt actually give feedback to the teachers in question.

I am quite hard as an observer in terms of feedback given, but I like to think I give it in a gentle way. Kinda good cop/bad cop rolled into one. I agree with a previous comment about EFL types often being precious...most of my peers wouldnt take my feedback very well, but at the end of the day...its only given to help/improve, rather than to dismiss or punish.

[fluffyhamster]

Hmm, the only precious types I've found in TEFL have been some of the trainers and observers.

My frank opinion (I mean nowadays, not at the very beginning of my career, when I might've been inclined to at least half-listen) would be that if anybody reckoned they could do better than me with my classes, hey, why not take over my teaching schedule? (The response of course would be "But that's not my job", to which one can only really say "Then don't act like it should be! My place may or may not be in the classroom, but yours is now most definitely with your feet up behind a desk and enjoying a cuppa and a few biccies"). So yeah, I think I can teach a mean-enough lesson nowadays.

And as the percentage of truly awful EFL teachers is probably only a very vaguely worrying 25% or thereabouts, and weeding them out usually a slow painful process (if only because it's never that economically convenient to replace them at short notice), why should the better teachers be made to suffer equally? Plus those better teachers are probably only ever '(barely) satisfatory' whenever observed, so there wouldn't seem much possibility for improvement either way. But in the unlikely event that the observer's comment's are ever "Wow, fantastic lesson!", all one can really think if not reply is "How on EARTH did that transpire?! What a total fluke!" (=Tell me something I don't already know!).

[nomad soul]

[fluffyhamster]

No need IMHO for the scare quotes or even the word they enclose (generous), Nomad Soul - I contributed some comments there, plain and simple, as I have to now this thread. (Whether you agree with my opinions or not is obviously another matter entirely though!).

My current situation is that I'm only doing a bit of occasional private tutoring here and there (my main thing now is bookselling LOL - that, and slowly writing and compiling some TEFL and Chinese-related resources), so if any of my few "customers" don't like my teaching they can vote with their feet, no need for an observer at all if and when they do (not that that happens too often!).

Were I to start teaching in a language school again, my concern wouldn't be so much that I was teaching so very badly, but whether my whole teaching style and persona (teachers are people too LOL), which was forming even before I did the CTEFLA, and has continued pretty much unaffected by that CTEFLA, was a reasonable match with that of the school (there can be some quite strange and anything but communicative methods out there). I have actually come to the conclusion that most mainstream teaching hasn't much idea of how to teach grammar, let alone e.g. really "teach" (show, develop, impart) genuine conversation and communication skills (despite the claims they make in advertisments). Most classes are too stiff, arid and patronizing, imparting little in terms of knowledge-ability or even interpersonal experience.

The majority of my time in Asia I spent as an AET in Japan, so it wasn't so much a question of being observed as of me getting to "observe" the good, the bad, and the ugly in JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) materials and methods (though of course I was only very rarely asked for my actual opinion on such matters...and then I guess it would simply be "It is what it is, and it isn't all bad"). I've probably been observed often enough in not only eastern but also western settings though, and at all stages in my (so-called LOL) career, that I honestly have to say that observation has made little if any difference to my thinking and teaching - I'm serious enough about my teaching that I've absorbed a fair bit of wisdom and a number of ideas from quite a few books, discussions (among peers) etc already, and most observers wouldn't have the time or inclination (or possibly even the raw knowledge) to impart stuff of comparable quality and depth anyway, even if it had been really necessary in my case.