I'm just satisfactory

I had my first principal observation on Tuesday of this week.  Had the post-ob conference on Friday.  I thought it went pretty good in class - of course there were things that could have been better, but it just happened that the two principals wanted to come in on Tuesday - the day I was teaching one of my favorite lessons.  I'm not one to change my plans just because I'm being observed.

I did do a few new things in the class that the principal suggested during our pre-ob conference, though.  They worked well and are things I plan to incorporate into my regular teaching.

The post-ob did not go as well as I would want.  They had a lot of good things to say, but also a lot of suggestions.  Looking at my notes from the meeting, they are all small things, some that only relate to that lesson when I redo it next year, but it was still a little bit disheartening.

I got a satisfactory rating.

Yesterday, I was still thinking about that rating so I had to email the principal to find out the heirarchy and what the upper levels above satisfactory are - to me, satisfactory is just not good.

Turns out that the only options in the city system are satisfactory or unsatisfactory.  That cheered me up a bit.  But I asked for more feedback from the head principal and she gave me a chart that she prefers and that shows more of a gradient for various areas of teaching and planning.  Using my own judgement, I am pretty high in some areas and only need to work more on a couple of things with regard to making sure my questioning includes more students in each class period and that my questions always include higher order thinking questions.

I feel better about my teaching after looking at those.

I don't want to just be satisfactory.

Today at Jana's Thinking Place Stream of Consciousness Sunday there was no prompt - it was free write day.  You can link up or see other's free thoughts on her site.

It's just five minutes of writing whatever is on your mind.