LOVELAND, OHIO - FROM MY CORNER by Warren McClellan
I was asked recently after reviewing a teacher’s performance, "Mr. M., I know you are busy, but would you list for me the top ten things you look for when you observe a teacher?" I thought it was a great and fair question/request because it came out of the context of "if I knew more clearly what you expect, I think I could deliver that because I want to be a good teacher." I don’t consider myself to be on the level of a David Letterman, but here’s my top 10.
1. The lesson is directed, guided or focused on a benchmark that leads to a state outcome. There should be no mystery about the purpose or reason of why I am teaching what I am teaching. There are so many things to learn and it can be so easy to loose your way among all these things, not to mention my favorite things, but that time spent together has to be about where and what the state has directed us to go.
2. Mystery or dilemmas have their places among the best lessons. I know where we are going, but if the lesson has this mystique, imbalance, and needs a thinking solution, it grabs the students and me.
3. I hear it, I see it, I do it, I solve it, I know it, I own it, I use it, and the successive stuff velcros to it.
4. There’s this respect for the individual learner. If the content is already known I’m not made to feel- I don’t have to learn it at that same level again and tread water until the rest of the class catches up, No I am given the latitude where I can stretch it some other way and enhance what I already know. If I don’t know it, I’m not made to feel-"where have you been?" but I’m gently guided to get it this way.
5. What is learned, albeit guided by the state, has purpose, meaning and authenticity for my life. I can sit there and see clearly why I should need to know this other than because "I need it for college."
6. We practice, practice, practice correctly. Correct practice does make it perfectly correct.
7. Even if I am not good at showing what I know specifically with a paper and pencil test, there are additional avenues where the student can demonstrate his/her grasp on the content. I demonstrate what I know and it is confirmed that it is now capable of being archived away. I would go so far as to say, is the teacher making every effort to make the content failure-proof. I’ve rarely seen "you are a zero" to be productive no matter how real that assessment is.
8. Technology, seamlessly integrated, bumps up the lesson a notch and the technology tools are critical for getting where we are going. There is a reality bump/engagement with the technology like the purr of a car going into overdrive.
9. The quality and depth of the learning is acknowledged beyond /between the teacher and a learner. There are some forms of public display or communication about the learning growth. Currently, one section of our halls are topped with papier-mâché ice-cream cones.
10. Lastly, I want a feel or connection from what I see in and out of the classroom, that the teacher, whether he is a guide on the side or she is a sage on the stage, to know what they are doing is critically and vitally important. This mission is demonstrated and observed by what is put into it. Teaching is more than a job.
Every Vehicle Day for, at least, the last five years Howard McDaniel has drug his blacksmithing wares to Loveland Intermediate School. What he does is a better metaphor than this top ten list. He labors in front of hot coals, sweats despite it being frosty out some years, no one remembers his name, but you know he loves his work if no other reason he comes here for free and wouldn’t miss it. When he has that iron embedded in those coals it’s like when the teaching and learning come together. He puts a cold, straight piece of black iron into a highly focused bed of coals. He pulls from the embers a glowing piece of iron and works his magic turning something ordinary into something everyday-vital like a nail that holds other things together. As it cools, we hear about the purpose of the work, then we touch it and practice swinging the hammer. Good teaching/learning works like this and it holds us all together.
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