Earlier today I observed a trainee teacher in action. It wasn't actually proper observation; I ended up in the
class incidentally. First of all, it wasn't an English lesson at all; it was a
biology lesson. I had been asked to sit in the class more as a 'guard' than an
observer because the regular supervisor, a qualified biology teacher, was
missing. I didn't mind; I had lots of tests and essays to correct after all. So
my initial intention was to sit there quietly, doing my stuff and paying no attention to what was happening. I wasn't supposed to
provide feedback or even talk to the teacher anyway, thus it was none of my business, so to speak.
However, I didn't have
my earplugs on me so I did listen and I did pay
attention in the end. I think I had never observed a lesson other than an EFL
one, but honestly, it doesn't really matter what subject teacher you observe;
teaching principles are similar across the whole education spectrum. I guess it's even to
the good to go and see a lesson totally unrelated to the subject you teach.
The first
accidental observation was that the young teacher in front of me was pretty
confident. To be more precise, she looked pretty confident. She spoke in a
clear, pleasant and expressive manner - her voice was loud enough to be heard at
the back of the classroom where I was sitting, but not
irritatingly loud, shrieking or intrusive. The first thing that occurred to me
was that some day she might become a fantastic teacher. She had the so-called
innate qualities of a good professional - I admired the air of confidence
surrounding her, I was in awe of her commanding presence, and I appreciated the
proper level of strictness, which will undoubtedly bring her respect and
authority once she manages to control what's going on in the classroom. But it
seemed to me that she was also caring. She asked questions to make sure that the
students understood. She encouraged the students to ask whenever they had a
problem. Later on, when she started speaking about the cranial bones and the best
way to commit a suicide (oh yes, that's what she did!), the students flooded her with
curious questions. It was evident that she didn't know all the answers but by
no means did this make her feel nervous - she said she would find out and tell
them the next time. This is something experienced teachers sometimes struggle
with - the feeling that they must know all the answers at all costs.
Unfortunately,
sometimes she let the students ask too many questions, especially during
the test. Inevitably, the students seized the opportunity to gain extra time for
completing the quiz but also time to copy each other's answers. I didn't want
to interrupt and undermine the teacher's authority so I didn't intervene, but I
could see that the students were cheating, no matter how threatening my expression was. The
thing is that I wasn't sure what kind of test this was supposed to be - a mock
test or a real test? One thing was certain; the test had been prepared by the
regular biology teacher so the trainee could only guess the
requirements and expected answers. The students haggled and squabbled, perhaps
in the attempt to divert the teacher's attention, but she always patiently
answered their questions.
While observing
this part of the lesson, I came to a conclusion that one of the advantages of
being a teacher with some experience is the fact that you can concentrate on
two things happening at different corners of the room - over time, you simply
improve your peripheral vision and your approach becomes more holistic in the
physical sense of the word.
I must admit that
I truly regretted that I wasn't supposed to talk to the teacher and that I
couldn't tell her about all the positives. However, I also felt the urge to tell her
that her board was a real mess; that I couldn't make out any of the Latin terms
she had written on the badly cleaned board. I desperately wanted to tell her
that she had spoken when she was supposed to be silent and let the students
work.
I was genuinely surprised at how
much one can notice without really paying attention. It also occurred to me that it
might be a great idea to stop by in other teachers' lessons from time to time
just to get a general idea of how other subjects are taught. I think there are
loads of things I could learn from a maths teacher, for example. One also gets
an idea of how much the students actually know in other subjects; we invariably tend to
judge them based on how well they can express themselves in L2 but there are
students who are excellent at biology, for example, but struggle with English.
Also, it's not bad to see what is actually taught in other subjects so that we
can naturally link what we do to other fields of education.
