Finally we get to teachers observing teachers - what Mark was writing about to begin with.

These observations could be a one off, for a few days, or even through a full course.

This could also be a team teaching situation but to be honest, I think that's a different beast. If I'm team teaching a course with someone, true, I can learn from them if and when we do joint preperation and things like grading and yes, I can learn something by being in the room when they're leading some activity but it's not the same since at that time, my job isn't to observe, my job would be to do something else to enhance the lesson - direct student support perhaps. A school won't be paying me to just observe another teacher except under special circumstances. If they're paying for two bodies in the room, they'll expect two bodies worth of work, whatever that means.

So, let's stick with straigt observations.

First, there are scheduling difficulties. A typical traditional High school teacher teaches 5 out of 8 periods a day. The school day might extend further but then the teacher would be coming in before hours or staying after.

Of the three non teaching periods, one is their prep - when they make lesson plans, grade assignments etc.. One is lunch which contractually is "duty free," and even though one can observe during lunch, another teacher might not want a teacher eating in their room given the rodent and bug problem prevelant in many schools. The third period is the teachers "professional period." In some schools this is treated like a semi-free period, like the prep, but in many school's you get your professional assignment - maybe you have lunch or yard duty, maybe you're doing small group tutoring. If you're lucky, maybe your principal will allow you to use that period to observe.

So, finding time to observe can be tough. If you have the free period, you're still limited - is the teacher you want to observe teaching the class you want to sit in on during your limited free time? What's more, do you also have time to talk either before the lesson or debrief after?

Not easy.

The one thing that works, scheduling wise, is that generally when setting up a school's program, you try to spread all the sections of a class across the day. That is, you won't have multiples of one class during the same period until pretty much every other period has at least one section going.

In college, it theoretically should be easier - lecturers and professors schedules are generally more flexible but I'm sure there's still a laundry list of challenes that make observing hard.

When I was scheduling CS at Stuy, I did try where I could to allow for teacher observations, particularly if a teacher was new to a subject. I tried to make sure that the new teacher could sit in on an experienced teacher's section and if possible, do it in a way that didn't give them something like 4 in a row or have them running all over the building. I wasn't always able, but I tried.

Personally, I only managed large scale observations three times in my career. When I first started at Stuy, I was teaching a section of Linear Algebra. Having never taught it before, I sat in on a colleague's class earlier in the day. He also shared his old lesson plans with me but we never conferenced about the class. That was more about material and pacing though than about instruction.

I also audited a History of New York class but that was because I wanted to take it and never had the chance back when I was a student.

Both of these cases though were relatively early in my career when the professional period was mostly a second prep which made things easier.

I also observed quite a bit in my first year teaching but back then the DOE had a new teacher mentoring program where the teacher, me, would teach one period less as did my mentor. This gave me more time to both conference and observe which, combined with the supportive math department and faculty in general at Seward Park High School was what allowed me to survive as a first year teacher.

I also did the video observations and peer observations back when the my school at the time (Seward) allowed them.

Since then, it was mostly one offs (not counting when I officially observed as the CS program coordinator).

Now, in terms of the actual observations - for those to be valuable the observer must be intentional. You can sit in on a class and just be another student trying to observe content and that's fine if that's what you're looking for but to develop as a pedagogue you've got to look for more.

Of course, it's easy if you and the teacher you're observing specify what you're looking at ahead of time. Early on, I observed a series of lessons a friend taught because he was really good at setting up group experiences and using paper cut manipulatives - this was in a math class. I wasn't particularly good at that (or anything back then) and he invited me in.

Other times, you really have to pay attention. Maybe things are obvious like an ongoing procedure a teacher uses. Sometimes it's subtle like how a teacher might move around a classroom. If they move towards a student who's starting to answer a question and then away. Was that random or for a purpose. Which way they face while writing on the board (yes that can be intentional). If they wrote out a definition on the board and had the students copy it - was that because they wanted the students to engage in a particular way - by transcribing a definition or did they just not have time to make up a slide with it before class?

What about jokes? Are they spontaneous or scripted and if spontenious what will the teacher do when they teach the same class again later in the day.

Observing a teacher can be incredibly valuable but you'll only get maximum value if you pick up on the subtleties. Maybe a teacher does something great and they don't even realize it!!! This is why talking shop around the observation is also hugely valuable.

I'd like to think that at StuyCS we had a culture where teachers were comfortable popping in on each others classes and learning from each other but even so, the timing and other burdens make teachers observing each other a far rarer occurence than it should be.