It is 10 days since I completed a profile on a Teacher and I have not yet been able to sit down with her and give her any feedback. She does have the score sheets, thank goodness, but she will not know what they mean.
Work is so stuffed full of things that have to be done - how is it that I am going to be able to fit proper profiling sessions into my workload? The Teachers deserve to have feedback and in fact there will be no cultural shift to best practice this way without it. How do I make profiling more of a priority in the midst of the overdriven teaching workload? Already I am wondering about how I will catch up with the marking and planning and so on that I will miss out on next week when I am on the second week-long training session with Mark and Denise.
Is it just because it is so late in the day and I am still buzzing around trying to be 'productive'? That's part of it, but I am concerned about this matter when I am not tired, too....
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2 comments:
Susan, this is a very important point and one we need to address as a team. You are absolutely right when you say "there will be no cultural shift" without feedback, and yes the feedback should be given in a timely fashion.
I believe each member of our team needs to work out realistically what adjustments need to be made in their workload to allow for reasonable time to conduct profile and reflection sessions - including how many profiles you are likely to do in a given timespan. Then we need to present a case to management. The clearer we can be about exactly how much time is required - and also having some specific suggestions for how this could be achieved - the better our chances.
Thanks for the feedback, Martha. I think if we do not 'drive' the idea of profiling, it may fall in a heap - no one will use it because other things come along and take people's attention - so we do need to keep chipping away, flying the profiler's flag, and just making sure we quietly do the job...so let's you and me keep encouraging each other!!
I did get back to the Teacher I profiled today and she seemed very grateful for the feedback. She asked for a copy of the microskills booklet, so I gave her that. She asked me back to profile another class next year - whew! That was so good!
I also got a chance to make a statement at today's faculty staff meeting about what profiling is, AND offered to profile people, AND offered to deliver some microskill training next year. Everyone is too busy now to think about staff development. A couple of people have asked about me profiling them and I will start a list so I can hunt them up next semester....
Change by increment! We're away!
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