Super Visit

This is a quick departure from my Nepal reminiscing. So if you'd like to skip i totally understand.

Yesterday we had the district big wigs come to our campus. The new interim superintendent of schools and his entourage wanted to come look at our school and observe some lessons. I completely understand why they want to come, and even welcome it. I want to know that the people in charge of making decisions that directly affect my working environment have some kind of idea what life in a classroom is like. Often it seems once a person enters District Offices, they seem to forget that kids are kids and tend not to follow a pre-prescribed outline of learning.

BUT, I hope they realize it scares the living daylights out of us normal teachers who are used to hanging around with 13 yr olds all day and not having adults in our rooms. Give me a room full of teenagers and I can deal with them, teach them, and most of time discipline enough to keep a general flow to the class. Add even one adult in there and I'm stumbling over my words, blanking on kids names, my pluse races, and I just sound not as confident as i normally am.

Guess where the superintendent and his entourage ended up. Yup. They made a visit down my hallway just to see me. Super.

It went well, my 8th graders were doing exactly what they should be doing. We were taking notes at first, so not so exciting. But after the notes the students got our digital cameras out to practice photography techniques, which the viewing party seemed to like. Phew. I knnokw my introduction and discussion weren't as spectacular as they could have been, but overall wasnt too bad. I still havent heard anything from my principal deeming the visit a success or total flop. Hopefully I'll have a little bit of feedback soon.

All in all the super was in campus for about and hour. It feels like a dog and pony show, but hopefully they saw some teaching amidst my stuttering.