When I observe a colleague's teaching in the classroom, I always give the same glib advice: "Just be yourself and pretend I'm not there."
Ha!
This morning four strangers observed my classroom teaching in order to judge my worthiness for a teaching prize, and I can tell you that (1) it is impossible to overlook the presence of four extra people and a video camera in an already crowded classroom and (2) the self I can be while being observed by strangers in charge of awarding a large prize is not exactly the same as my everyday self.
For one thing, my everyday self sleeps a little better, while my observed-by-strangers self suffers from nightmares--and not just the usual first-day nightmares about arriving in class late, unprepared, naked, and with my teeth falling out, but nightmares about (shudder!) chairs. Inadequate chairs, insufficient chairs, chairs with the backs falling off, trick chairs that tip as soon as someone tries to sit in them--such are the horrors of my visitation-eve nightmares.
I taught today's class a dozen times in my dreams, all of them disastrously, but the reality was, I guess, okay. Good enough. Maybe not my best work but probably the best I could do under the circumstances.
And best of all, no chairs were injured in the teaching of this class.
1 comment:
I hate how unnatural those situations can be. The one thing I've noticed, though, is that it also puts my students on their best behavior.
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