Making Classroom Observations Matter

 I was brought back to my second year teaching today when I read Educational Leadership's article, "Making Classroom Observations Matter" by Lynda Tredway, Mark Militello and Ken Simon. During a classroom observation an administrator recorded who I called on using a seating chart and tallies. Now in college I had been given the three minute make sure you call on everyone speech (boys get ignored in English and girls in math), but hadn't really thought about it. I was delighted that I called on every student a couple of times, but it was not really planned. Over the years I have used Co-teaching time to conduct such observations of my co-teachers. Sometimes they are enlightening. If nothing else, they provide a data point for discussion.

This article provides an insight to Project I ⁴, a project focusing on improving STEM discourse. In the article they provide a coding system for calling on practices that takes my simple tally one farther. They pair the chart with a seating chart to look for patterns in who and where calling on occurs.

abbreviation	Names of practice	total times observed
R	Raised hand
CC	Cold call
CCD	Cold call for discipline (catching a student off guard)
BA	Blurt out that is accepted
BI	Blurt out that is ignored
CR CR/V	Call and response ( ask for a group of response or indicates students should popcorn) Virtual: Use the chat box
ES	Use equity based strategy- popsicle sticks, card, random name generator
TR	Teacher repeats response to call verbatim
TRV	Teacher revoices student response, paraphrasing for emphasis, often in the form of a question.
TPS	Think, pair, share Virtual: Private chat
other

Now the authors note that cold call and raised hand are not equity based strategies. In today's hybrid instructional models, teachers often repeat or revoice a response because student attending virtually might not have heard a response in the classroom or vice versa. I like the idea of coding the types a calls, because we are often doing something unconsciously. Bringing it to our awareness allows us to improve our skills. I know that when I am working with concurrent classrooms, I often do not frequently respond to one group or another. I do not have a mic beyond my machine and toting the machine around as I work with students is cumbersome at best. My question becomes how do I monitor both the physical and virtual spaces. At times I am better than others. In all cases I feel like one group is being denied my attention. Sometimes I can use divide and conquer- I'll do one group, you do the other. This ensures attention to both, but still feels forced. I suppose that is the rub of learning new skills- it is awkward and uncomfortable at first, but with enough practice and feedback, it can become integral to our practice.