When it's time to waive invisibility

My helpful colleague suggested that I wear a hoodie and dark glasses and slump down in a seat at the back of the room, so I said "Sure, and I'll wear a big name tag saying 'Not the Unabomber,'" but my colleague said, "Don't bother--they don't know who the Unabomber is anyway."

He has a point.

The larger point, though, is how I'm supposed to be inconspicuous when I observe teaching in a class with only two students enrolled. The question comes up periodically on the tenure and promotion committee, which sends multiple members to observe different classes on different levels and sometimes has no choice but to include low-enrollment classes.

In large classes, I generally sit in the back trying to be invisible so that the students forget I'm there, and I know it works because sometimes students in front of me do things they probably would not do if they remembered I was watching, like visit web sites one would not normally share with a professor. Once (this is true) I watched a videotape of a classroom that knew it was being videotaped and saw, right there on the videotape, a student watching porn on his laptop in the middle of class.

But those instances are rare. I've seen students check email and shop for shoes online, but mostly they just take notes, inspiring me to take note of the fact that they're taking notes. All we need is for someone to observe my observations and we'd have note-taking on my note-taking concerning students' note-taking, which seems a bit superfluous.

But I digress.

The point is that soon I'm scheduled to observe a class with only two students in it and I don't know how to hide in that kind of crowd. How does one escape notice in a room containing only four people, one of whom clearly does not belong? I suppose I could sit next to a ficus and try to look leafy, but alas, so few classrooms come equipped with potted plants.

Should I slip into the back of the room when students aren't looking--and scare the bejeebers out of them the first time I sneeze? Hide above the ceiling tiles--and evoke the climactic ceiling-collapse scene of Richard Russo's superb academic novel Straight Man? Or follow my colleague's suggestion and go full Unabomber?

It looks like I have little choice in this situation but to waive my right to invisibility and park myself boldly in the classroom without attempt at obfuscation. (But I'll slip those fake glasses with the big nose and moustache in my pocket just in case.)