What's wrong with Ed

Ed does stupid things that get him in trouble. But I am not sure that these really are as stupid as some people make them out to be. One of the major issues in my incompetence hearing revolves around my inability to do observations. Last year this was not true, because last year the observations were designed to evaluate my staff. Last year we were supposed to observe tenured teachers one time and un-tenured three times. My understanding is that the principal is proud that this "nightmare" is over and that they are back to five observations for un-tenured and two for tenured.

I believe that we have created a system that does a bad job of allowing us to manage people. Observations are part of this system. The first time I was observed I was an over 40 year old new teacher. My science chair came in to watch me and afterward I sat down with him. I thought that we were sitting down to discuss what I had taught and that I would speak about what I was trying to do and that he would help me achieve my ends. Not true. What I got was a standard observation spouting some NYC teacher wisdom. It was filled with words such as "aim" and "do now" that only exist in NYC. It did not take into account my contribution to the teaching process. It was designed to tell me how to teach as if there was one way to teach. It was not a dialog. This was over 16 years ago and I remember thinking that it was a joke. I was really disappointed. I never read another observation he gave me. If it said satisfactory, and it always did, I signed it.

Last year one of my science teachers who I have known for years admitted she never read my observations. At first I felt hurt, then I thought to myself that this really spoke to the fact that the format of these observations are sort of useless. What I say to these teachers, or how we plan together is very important. The observations are usually useless.

There is an exception to observations being useless. If you have a really bad teacher you can use observations to build the type of evidence you need to get rid of this teacher. This is the only reason for observations. Instead of observations we should be in young teacher's classes trying to help them figure out how to teach, not telling them. With older teachers the observation is even more useless. If I go into my English teacher's class room on the second week of school I have technically fulfilled my obligation. What I should be doing is talking to him about what he wants to do this year and then doing a year end review. The point of the year end review should not be to punish someone or tell them what they are doing wrong, but to formally state your opinion of what is happening. There is a value to doing this formally because it forces you to be more honest about your opinion than you might be in a less formal setting.

At my pre-trial with my lawyer she pointed out that this type of attitude should probably not be stated out loud. I am sure that she was correct in this because it would hurt me. I can be accused of breaking an absurd regulation and I must defend myself by accepting this regulation, showing why I didn't break it in some cases and being contrite about breaking it when I did. At no point was I to talk about the absurdity of the approach to management.

New York City really is a strange place to teach. The students are the same as other places but the bureaucracy has developed a view of education that almost no one else in the US has. The weird thing is that they seem to think that everyone else does things this way. I think we should create a fund to send a bureaucrat to another city to see how other people teach.