On being 'good'
Last Friday everyone at work received the following email: 'urgent meeting in the staffroom at 3:30 today!' It was official, OFSTED were coming.What is OFSTED? Here in the UK they seem to have an OF---- for everything. It's basically a government office responsible for overseeing the quality of government branches. For schools, it's called OFSTED. They regulate all aspects of the education system, from management to allowances for special needs children, from value for money to actual teaching and learning. I was concerned with the teaching and learning part.
What it meant for me was 5 days of chaos. As you may have noticed from my Facebook, I was off the radar; totally engrossed in work. I worked for at least 12 hours over the weekend (which was shitty, because it was Riccardo's and my last weekend together before his current 15-day stint in China), and topped that up with 11.75 hours at work on Monday, and another 12 hours on Tuesday. In addition to the two hours driving there and back each day, I spent the early part of this week living and breathing work.
I had to have the kids' workbooks marked in minute detail; all their essays, stories and other papers marked and recorded on the grids; filing up-to-date; classroom tidy and wall-displays perfect and colourful; imaginative and engaging lessons planned; resources collected; pupils warned and bribed to behave appropriately; not to mention several staff meetings thrown in the mix!
It wasn't that I was really behind. Ok, I was a little behind on marking and such, what with spending the Easter break in Canada and doing absolutely nothing work-related. But it was more because I didn't want to be the newish, unqualified teacher that let my school down. I wanted everything to be perfect.
It was pretty perfect. Wednesday and Thursday the OFSTED folks were at the school, monitoring and recording, observing and rating. They could pop into any lesson at any time, for any length of time without warning. Some people didn't get observed at all; kind of a waste, I would think, after all the preparations. I was observed, Thursday morning, during my rambunctuous year 8 lesson.
Thankfully, the kids always tone things down a little when there's someone else in the room; this was also enhanced by various members of upper-management poking their heads into the rooms and giving the 'evils' to certain usual culprits of atrocious behaviour. Plus, I had planned a lesson they could really get into: insults. Ok, for educational purposes, I had to narrow it down to Shakespearean insults. And I had to call it, 'investigating the language used by Shakespeare in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"', but it was insults all the same.
I started the lesson by enlisting my two most theatrical students to throw Shakespearean insults at each other in front of the class. I'm pretty sure everyone down the corridor was thinking we were mad. This was followed by a role play by 4 pupils, who read a part of the script; followed by a discussion of why Shakespeare would use such awful language; followed by a quick worksheet; followed by an opportunity for class-members to put together their own Shakespearean insults (using several vocab lists) and share them with the class. It was a hoot - so much so, that we had the OFSTED inspector chuckling!
Happily, as she slyly snuck out of the lesson just before the end, she whispered 'very good!' to me. When I sought her out for feedback later, she explained that she noticed my lesson was well planned and I was organised, that I had good control over the classroom, that the lesson involved a sufficient core of learning, and best of all, though often dry subject-matter, she could tell that my students actually enjoyed studying Shakespeare - a real feat, she assured me! When I asked her what I could do to improve, she simply told me to 'keep up the great work'.
Being a perfectionist, I admit that her feedback was somewhat disappointing. I mean, if nothing was lacking and I didn't do anything wrong, why didn't I get the covetted 'outstanding'? Why does a verbal comment of 'Very good' always seem to get downgraded to a mere 'good' on paper? I mean, ok, only one or two teachers in my school got 'outstanding', but what did I miss to get there? Was it the probable fact that my school had me rated only as a 'satisfactory' teacher, and that OFSTED wasn't comfortable with upping that rank by two whole points (on a four-point scale)? Though my school is extremely happy with my 'good' and I have received many congratulations, I am still somewhat irritated that it wasn't an 'outstanding'.
Better luck three years from now, I guess. In the meantime, OFSTED being the end-all, be-all of observations, I do have something fancy-pants to put on my CV from now on. Because a 'good' ain't all that bad.
Didst thou not learn to be modest?
Didst thou not learn to be grateful?
Thou art a real Panta-loon!
(Greetings from Mr. Shake 's beer)