Watch your back?

I got home to find that our new garden hut thingy was finished (work-in-progress photo courtesy of my son).

It was just as well as I was a little upset at my observation feedback, hence my title. My main, official observation was fine - no negative comments at all, except that my students didn’t have a tracker sheet that my HoD said she knew she hadn’t actually told me about, so no big deal. She said I was without doubt the best prepared teacher in the department and she was impressed with my questioning and how engaged the students were. I got told off (in the nicest possible way) for working so hard but, phew, I’ll take that - what a relief, I really thought I was going to be ‘hauled over the coals’, as they’re a pretty tricky class.

What upset me was that when I looked at the appraisal system, I saw what an SLT member had written about what he’d observed on his five-minute walk-through of one of my lessons a couple of weeks ago. It was the first day that Year 7 had their iPads and the lesson was basically me going round and helping the students get set up. I genuinely always take feedback as advice, rather than criticism, but he’d written just two lines - about how the students had no idea what they were supposed to be doing and most were off-task. I’m sure it did look like that but not great having the school leadership team thinking you’re incompetent… and probably why so many, including the headteacher, mysteriously appeared that week. I’m probably considered some kind of ‘cause for concern’ now!