Proficiency of Choice 4

Name Carolyn Gassmann
EPPSP Group 39
Butler University
The Experiential Program for Preparing School Principals
STANDARD:
Proficiency of Choice #4. Coach teachers in instruction and pedagogy. Work with teachers to
select skills to target for professional growth. Use systematic observation and conferencing to
improve these skills.
Summary:
For the 2021-2022 school year, Lawrence Township has moved to using a new observation and
evaluation system that more closely aligns with instructional practices seen throughout the
district. As a department chair, I have had many hours of training on how to use this system to
effectively conference with, observe, and coach the teachers in my department.
Because one of the main goals of this new system is observed growth over the course of the
school year, the conferencing aspect is crucial. An observation cycle for all teachers is a pre-
observation conference, an observation, and a post-observation conference on three
consecutive days.
In conducting these observations, it has been clear that teachers want to improve their practice
to give their students the best learning opportunities they possibly can. Each of the three parts is
important and valuable to the teachers, and they have been taking them all very seriously.
When I conduct an observation cycle, I begin with the pre-observation conference. In this one-
on-one meeting with a teacher, I ask that he or she bring her lesson plan for the class that I will
observe the following day. We talk through the lesson plan, and the teacher explains what I will
see when I observe, and I follow up with a series of questions in order to gain a better
understanding of the lesson, the teacher’s strengths, and things that may be coachable moving
forward.
Then, the following day I conduct the observation. There is no set amount of time I need to be in
a teacher’s classroom. There are four instructional elements that I am looking for—helping
students question to gain understanding, helping students process new content, organizing
students to interact with the material, and communicating high expectations for all students. I
can stay in a classroom for as long or as short as it takes to observe those elements. When I
observe an element, I note what the teacher is doing, what the students are doing, and the
effect the element is having on the class. After I’ve observed all of the items I need to, I give
them a score on a five-part scale ranging from “beginning” to “innovating”. Upon completion of
the observation, I return to my classroom to write overall comments and feedback that I will
share with the teacher in the post-observation conference.
Finally, on the following day I conduct the post-observation conference. In this meeting the
teacher and I discuss things that went well and things that could be improved upon. We go
through the things I’ve seen and set reasonable and measurable goals to move forward. Once
these goals are set and we’ve reached the end of our conference, I finalize the observation
document and we can move forward to coaching the teacher in implementing new strategies
and working towards meeting his or her set goals.
Reflection:
It has been awesome to complete observations with teachers. While I love growing as an
educator myself, I am finding that I like helping others grow even more. One particular
observation cycle that was particular enjoyable to me was that with our German teacher. I will
explain those meetings below.
To set the scene, our German teacher is a first year teacher who was hired in early October and
started the Monday after Fall Break, so she has been teaching in her own classroom for less
than a month. As we sat down for her pre-observation conference, she told me that she was
having a hard time with her German I class, and that she felt the class wasn’t getting the
material or engaged in the work they were doing. This is the class I was going to be observing
the next day.
As she walked me through the items she’d be teaching, it was clear that she was really working
towards engaging her students in a wide variety of activities centered around the lesson’s main
theme. They would start with a review activity that got them started on a concept from last week,
before using that same concept to teach this week’s lesson using guided notes, connections to
prior knowledge, whiteboard checks for understanding, and a game featuring movement around
the classroom. Her care for how students attain the material made it evident to me that her
lesson was going to be better than she thought.
The next day, as I observed, the students were definitely talkative, but the bigger key point was
that they were almost all engaged. Some of the students would talk to their group, but still
present the right answer on their whiteboard or take the appropriate guided notes. Students
were excited about learning German and the teacher was doing a great job keeping them
engaged. As I left the classroom, I was so pleased about what I had seen.
On the third day, we sat down for our post-observation conference. I started this meeting by
asking her, “tell me about how you think yesterday’s lesson went”. She told me that she thought
it went alright, but that she felt students weren’t doing as well as she thought they would, and
they didn’t seem as engaged as she had hoped. After this comment I stopped her for a second
and asked, “can I be completely honest with you?” She nodded her head. I said, “you’re doing a
lot better job than you think you are”, and her face completely lit up. I went through and
explained all of the really great things I was seeing in her classroom and continued to
encourage her that she was doing everything right. We talked through some points for
continued growth that she can start to implement, with my coaching, to keep improving her
practice. She was very receptive to everything she was hearing, and throughout the meeting I
could just tell that she felt so relieved to hear that she was not a bad teacher.
This situation in particular made me realize just how impactful good educator coaching can be.
Especially this year, teachers feel like everything is harder than usual, and that the world is
against them. To sit down with all of the teachers in my department and reassure them that they
are doing a good job, they are strong educators, and we will work to get better together, has
been so impactful for me. They are all working so hard to ensure that their students are
learning, and my goal throughout these observations has been to make sure that they all feel
seen, appreciated, and supported.
Artifacts:
Observation notes from conference with the German teacher

Proficiency of Choice 4

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Proficiency of Choice 4

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Name Carolyn Gassmann

The Experiential Program for Preparing School Principals

Observation notes from conference with the German teacher

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