I had my first observation of the year today. I was a little nervous because it was during my period 5 class, which I have been struggling with. They have been doing better but I was still nervous. We were doing a lesson on solving algebraic equations & expressions with and without algebra tiles. My students seem to be doing well and things seemed to be doing okay. At the end of the lesson we did an exit ticket to see if they were understanding the concept or not. I knew that they would probably have mathematical errors because of the negatives but I wanted to see if they were understanding the steps even if they were making errors in their operations. When the principal left he said good job that went good and asked me to bring the exit tickets but I was about to get a different story in our post conversation.
I went to my post evaluation meeting thinking things would go pretty well since he seemed to like the lesson. Once in the meeting he did give me positives about how the lesson went and that things seem to be going good but then we looked at the exit tickets.
When looking at the exit tickets the principal didn't really think the students did well. I was trying to explain what I was looking for and that although they struggled they were understanding the concept just making minor mathematical (operation) errors. He kept bring up only 10% seem to reach the learning target because only 3 students got both questions correct. I kept defending my opinion on how the students did. Yes I understand that they truly understand and know it if they are getting it 100% correct but I wasn't looking for total understanding which I tried to explain. I was looking at do they understand the process even if they are making an adding, subtracting, or multiplying error. In the end we agree that both our opinions were valid, however I felt like I failed...
As a teacher we look for the small improvements. Yes not every student is going to understand and show progress but when they do you need to celebrate that!
