Observing Classroom Behavior

What Happens Before the Actual Classroom Observation?

Speaker: The first initial meeting we just want to talk through what’s our starting point, what are we trying to achieve together, and what are we going to do going forward. The other thing I always talk about with the teacher is the idea, and I always just want to make sure that we’re clear on this, that we’re going to work on the things that we can control, and that is generally not going to be the child.

If we have a child who’s having a really challenging behavior, I don’t have a magic fix that’s going to make that child stop doing whatever they’re doing. What we’re going to do is look at that, we’re going to go back to the teaching pyramid, we’re going to look at the environment, and we’re going to look at the relationships.

I always want teachers to understand I’m going to come in and observe, and I’m observing that child, but I’m also looking at the environment. I’m looking at how the schedule is and what kind of prompts are in the environment. I just want to always form that relationship so that they understand that’s not criticism, that’s really intended to look at what are the things that we have control over.

We can control how we react, we can control how we set up the environment, so we’re going to start there. Just forming that relationship where we can move forward on those terms of what the work that we’re going to do is going to look like.