Q.

I taught for five years earlier becoming an assistant main in a center school. I am expected to formally observe teachers throughout the year. How do I evaluated teachers who sometimes have a lot more experience (12 years, 15 years) and probably more than expertise in the classroom than I do?

A.

The attitude y'all bring to an experienced teacher's classroom will make a huge difference in how your leadership is perceived. The fact that yous recognize the inherent problem with someone with v years' experience evaluating someone with 30 years' feel is a very good beginning.

First of all, let's acknowledge that despite the difference in experience, you may very well take some good insights into the improvement of instruction. You will be a fresh set of eyes, and you may have information most new trends or best practices in the classroom. How you conduct yourself with the veteran teachers, notwithstanding, will make all the difference betwixt whether they think you know what y'all're talking near or are just pretending to know.

Here are some tips that can make the classroom observation a expert experience for the teacher and for y'all:

  1. Be on time and stay for the entire menstruation. Accept a seat in the dorsum of the room and exercise non participate. Accept copious notes using whatever device and method you lot adopt.
  2. Fix upwards a time after the course ends to meet with the instructor. Exercise information technology equally soon as possible – that day or the side by side if you can. Plan to meet in the teacher's classroom, not in your office.
  3. Come with questions about the lesson, and let the instructor do most of the talking. Say, "Tell me about how you decided to …" or "How does this lesson fit into the unit?" or "How do you lot normally deal with Sam, the child who can't stop talking?"
  4. Requite praise where it'south due: "I thought you did a great job of including as many kids as possible in the discussion."
  5. If there'south a problem you have to accost, practise it, but say, "I wasn't certain that kids really understood the directions at showtime. What do you think?" Teachers will be much more receptive to this arroyo than they will to your saying, "Your directions weren't very clear."
  6. Enquire if in that location's anything the instructor wants to add.
  7. Complete the written observation form within three-5 days after the briefing while information technology's still fresh in your listen. Practice not put anything in writing that you didn't talk well-nigh in your mail-ascertainment discussion. Never complete the formal written observation form before the conference. Doing so destroys the possibility of working collaboratively with your faculty to improve didactics.
  8. Remember, you lot are coming in equally a new set of eyes, not the skilful who will tell the teacher what she should be doing. Instead, as colleagues, yous tin discuss what you lot saw and together talk virtually what went well and what could accept gone ameliorate.

Every bit teachers get to know you and trust you, the divergence between levels of feel will get less of an outcome.

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