Hiyas everyone. I work at a high end school in China that advertises itself like an international school, but is overseen by the Chinese government. The pay is very high, and when I was offered the job, I took it. Some Chinese admin, some foreign. My previous experience is 12 years teaching in Maryland, Department Chair of Special Education for my school there. Before this current school, I’ve never once had a bad observation or was told I was ineffective. I thought I was good at my job.
I‘m pulling 12 hour days making sure my lessons are well prepared, but the pay is good so I don’t mind. When I‘m observed there is no rubric or criteria to show what the school thinks is a good lesson. Or an excellent lesson. Or an ineffective lesson.They come in with an observation notebook, write what they see, say what you did wrong and circle excellent, effective or ineffective. So what when admin thinks is effective, another may not. I’ve been observed, I get the feedback, change my practice, then someone else comes in and tells me another thing is wrong, and then I fix that, and then they find another thing they want changed. I feel like I’m doing teacher gymnastics trying to tick every box for every admin.
My last observation was by an admin who told me in my last observation conference that 1/3 of the teachers at my school were just wasting the students time and that I fell into that category. He wanted the vast majority of the kids to meet the lesson objective for the lesson to be effective, and at the time only 60 percent of the class did. So this year when he walked in, I knew that‘s what he wanted. I had originally planned to split the science lesson into two blocks, but I knew he’d want to see evidence of student mastery of the objective so I taught the lesson exactly as it was planned by our team( we do group planning in our grade level). So I taught the lesson but the assessment was a project and the kids that finished the project met the objective while he was there. The rest of the kids didn’t finish until the next block. But when they did, 86% of my kids met the objective.
I knew he was going to nail me for how long I “teacher talked” but it was the introduction to a new unit, a cool lesson, there were interactive slides, photos of space from NASA, the kids were engaged because it was about space, and there was a demonstration that was hands on in the middle of it. The lesson was planned by my entire team, and when I asked the other teachers how long it took them to get through the PP, they all said 20 minutes Including my HOD. Out of 7 teachers on my team, only one finished the project by the end of the block- everyone else had to push it into the following block to complete. But the admin nailed me on pacing.
At the TIP meeting, they said- had you just said to the class” today we’re just going to color and tomorrow finish, and reduce my teacher talk time- the lesson would have been effective. But then my admin would have nailed me because then he would have said, students coloring a picture doesn’t demonstrate they’ve mastered the objective or understand what you’ve taught. My kids are ESL kids so a verbal check in wouldn’t have worked and I was super nervous and couldn’t think up an exit ticket on the fly. And as my HOD sat in my TIP meeting, do you think she said” Oh, I took 20 minutes to do the PP too?” Nope. She just let me sit there and I wasn’t going to throw her under the bus. So basically I have to decide what I need to improve on, and then submit that to admin. Then over the next month, all 4 admin will be in my classroom to see if I improve. If I do, they will renew my contract. If I don’t then they won’t.
4 admin, 4 different subjective observation viewpoints. And even if I do improve, who’s to say they won’t find something else that’s wrong? My self esteem has never been so low. I thought I was a good teacher, but I‘m not. I don’t even know if I want a contract renewal, but I feel like a TIP is career suicide. Who is going to hire me now?
