Hi
Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. For some reason the thought of giving a presentation on Tuesday is 100 times more stressful to me than the kind of "presentations" I give in front of students just about every day...why is that? Anyway...I found class last week to be helpful, especially the practice observations. At work I am always amazed at how teachers keep track of everything going on their classrooms, and because I am more used to being one on one or with smaller groups of children I am afraid that I am going to miss things. Perfect example...I didn't even notice the student standing on the table in the woodshop. On the other hand, the different techniques for collecting data will probably be useful tools for me (as a supervisor or just in general) becasue they help keep the focus on the target of the observation. I am often asked to observe students in their classrooms and provide strategies for dealing with various behavior and motor issues...one of my problems is that because it is part of my training to look not just at behavior but also at the root of those behaviors, my tendency is to spend part of that time speculating about why the child is demonstrating that particular behavior and I often end up needing to go back a second or third time to better document the more objective things (like incidents of head banging, book licking, hand flapping, etc.) which is not especially efficient. I especially liked the example chart in Glickman for the science class with three problem students...because it was efficient, friendly, clear and pointed at specific and simple solutions.