The Dog and Pony Show-a better way to do teacher observations

 One year our principal decided to try something new as far as teacher observations went. He divided the faculty into veterans and those with less than 5 years experience. The newer teachers stayed on a traditional observation type track. But the veterans did something different...

We were told to pair ourselves up with someone who was interested in working on ONE particular teaching skill/idea/weakness. We had to get our area of improvement approved by the principal. Then we had a set of dates we had to schedule to meet with the principal and discuss how things were going. We had to do research, implement ideas, log what did/didn't work, re-implement. We met with our partners to discuss what we were going to try and how it was going. Then we did a final evaluation with our principal to discuss how things had gone and what we had learned.

My partner and I decided to focus on integrating an SSR program into our classrooms. WOW!! It completely altered my attitude about reading in the high school classroom. It also allowed us to focus on what we felt was an area we wanted to improve and gave us a partner we were comfortable discussing things with. 

This was so much more helpful than those stupid observations where the principal would come in one day and judge our teaching based on that dog and pony show one day. Principals  need to be able to trust their veteran teachers to be able to implement this plan. And if there are veteran teachers who don't follow through or who are identified as weak teachers...put them back on the traditional model. 

I learned more when we were using this method than in any of the other teacher observation models I have ever been part of. Try it. Run it by your principal. I think you'll all benefit.