Be seeing you ...

OBSERVATION DAY

Today was my peer / tutor observation. I've been through through peer obs before, live in a classroom ...where I'm at my most comfortable, live 'in performance'. Being observed remotely, via a platform that is inherently clunky ("Clunky Ultra" as we call it in BAFTV), in a session where students are juts blank black boxes, offering almost no interaction. Quite daunting to be honest.

I made a decision early on to just do it and behave in the way I always do. No special alterations or making a big deal to the students, so what they got is what they always get from me. And of that I was pleased. I was just able to be myself and teach in my usual way. Knowing you're being observed though does bring an added element of reflectiveness and perhaps I wasn't as 'familiar' ... or informal as I sometimes can be in sessions. I was using breakout rooms for the very first time, so my mind was more tied up in the tech of that than in any sense of being watched or judged. I felt the session went as well as they usually do. I got pushed for time towards the end, but that's usually the way with online sessions. I haven't been able to work out why they can stretch ... whereas in a classroom environment, I'm always really tight to my timings. Probably the comfort of being at home? Able to anecdote at length? This needs working on. Onwards!