Summer Reading Suggestion
More impressive was finally seeing an extended reflection on teaching from a real teacher. I’m not used to that. Over the years I've become increasingly irritated by books from people who’ve given it up, who’ve taught for a year or two and have decided to share with us their insights. My insight is those people are failures. I don’t care what they think, and I have no idea why anyone else does. If anyone should be discussing the system, for better or worse, it should be us.
One of the best things José wrote was that feedback, the only meaningful feedback, is that which you get from the kids in front of you. I was at a book release party at UFT when someone read that, and it was kind of a "eureka" moment for me. I couldn’t agree more, and that’s just one reason all this corporate-produced nonsense about complex junk-science evaluation systems is just that. Maybe there are teachers who have no idea whether or not things are going well on a day to day basis. How they manage to drag themselves to work on a daily basis I have no idea.
If you're tuned in, as José clearly is, you don't need to wait until the principal wanders in to know how well you're doing your job. Teenagers tell you all the time, from the moment they arrive until the moment they leave. If you aren't tuned in, then I suppose you do need adminstrators to come in and explain objective reality. (I can only suppose that's what all the E4E teachers who love junk-science based evaluation systems must need. I just can't figure how on earth they equate anything they do with "excellence.)
The best feedback I ever got from an administrator was from a former principal, before Reformy John King decreed "Ye shall be observed 4-6 times, whether ye need it or not." This principal observed full classes of mine twice, promised to write both up, and never did. But when he NYC Educator: Summer Reading Suggestion:
