Objectivity

The reading for this week deals with writing performance objectives. As I was reading through, I was thinking back to college (1979-83, more or less) and trying to dredge up any of this instruction. I mean, someplace back there, someone must have talked to us about it. Three different contents, a bunch of student teaching, a bunch of time spent directing, pedagogy classes, and the education classes... someone must have talked about them. Someone must have evaluated the ones that I wrote. But all I recall is lesson plans. Yes, there is that objective that was written at the beginning of each, but I just can't remember it ever being a big part of what the evaluation was. Why is that? I was trying to think back through the student teachers who have worked with me, I can't come close to remembering them all, let alone names. Most recently, last year, Lucas. The guy across the hall and I split his time. So we spent a fair amount of time evaluating what was happening in his instruction. We saw the evaluations that his mentor from the U did with him. We spent a lot of time talking to him about his approach, dealing with students, getting around the room, refining his approach to content, narrowing is goals.... What is it about doing that and doing "this" that feels so different? Maybe it's just that we aren't to that section yet, but it feel like what happens is that you state the goal, start into the possible presentation, start refining as you go, and four lessons later, you are off of it for another year, trying to recall what worked, what was straight from hell, what context issues these were... the HAM/HAW assembly always shoots the day in glorious fashion... and then a year later, there is that first glaze lecture/demo again.

So this year, last couple of days, I sat down after spending the break trying to get caught up with the glaze prep, wrote it all out again, tried to consider if my goals were in line with my instruction, and if I really had a terminal goal for the day that was coherent with the instructional goal, and after doing all of that could see a big difference in the way that things were presented...

Jump to the other class, I'm looking at the small matrix with the smiley faces and the frowns... I don't feel very helpless. I keep changing things up every time I present, not really believing in perfection. Sometimes things work better, sometimes worse, sometimes the good is me, sometimes just a whole bunch of things that come together at the right time, sometimes Caesare just seems in the mood to be caught up so I get a break. Sometimes, reverse all of the last couple of sentences AND have Levon show up stoned...

I got stuck on a committee at the district once looking at... who could remember what... data driven reform, or something like that. I asked a question of the guru that was presenting, not having any statistical background. How many variables can you throw into something you are trying to measure before you can't really call the results reliable? What did he say? Was it 7 or 8? As I sit here thinking about this whole thing, when is a day that I can control for that few a number of variables?

And still, I don't feel quite helpless, but not exactly in control either.

Can we all be free and self-efficacious and in the same classroom at the same time if our goals are all different? Can you write an objective that takes that all into consideration? "Given a class of thirty-eight students with different levels of English, different levels of creativity, different levels of sobriety, different levels of interest, different goals about grades, different social desires, different levels of..."

Any Spike Jones fans out there? "As (this post) sinks slowly in the the West, we approach the island of Lulu, spelled backwards, Ulul."