Observations...

I have spent the last two days in school meeting the people and the children I will work with in September, as well as observing lessons. It has been full-on, lots of names, lots of policies, finding out how this school plans, assesses, manages behaviour... 

It has been really exciting and it was lovely to actually be in school after two days talking about school stuff with other adults. However, I am still feeling very scared about the prospect of being responsible for children's learning, my fixed mindset keeps trying to push to the front- fear of failure. The growth mindset, that must be in there somewhere, reminds to keep going and see how it goes. 

Even though I had written about the things I was going to look for in my observations, in reality I found it trickier. There are so many things we take for granted in the classroom interactions that I failed to note them on my first observation. For example, the teacher started the lesson by reviewing prior learning, I did not note that down on my sheet because it seemed so obvious and surely I was looking to observe other things... My mentor was very good at guiding me as to why the things I expected to see were exactly the things I wanted to note! They are signs of a responsive teacher and learning in action.

It followed that I observed four lessons in total, but the experience left me with questions. I am not sure what the right answer is to them, maybe they are arguments that do not have an easy answer. 

1: How do I account for my subjectivity when observing?

2: Does a difference in style/personality of teacher make a difference in real time to learning or does it matter more to the observer (assuming all children are making good progress)?

3: If that "je ne sais quoi" is not obvious in the room, is learning adversely affected? Can that even be answered empirically?

As I reread the questions I can see they are loaded with meaning for me that will not be there for others. They came to me because I was trying to figure out how I deciphered between practice that was good for learning and practice that I enjoyed watching and thought "I would do it like that, what a great idea". Does it matter whether or not I enjoyed it? Maybe it doesn't matter if I enjoy it as an observer as long I enjoy and believe it when I am a teacher?? 

What lesson can I derive from this? Lesson no.3 in learning to teach is believe and be passionate about what you are teaching, make the learning infectious: hopefully others will catch it!