In fact, let's say you have a clearly defined project based learning class. Let's say you've reached the second to last day in the project. Aside from using that time to have students reflect on a check list of what they have accomplished and what they need to do. (Which might actually be useful) administrators typically instead expect to see one of the following: Reteaching material, having pairs try to figure if they understand the material seems (Share pair), or motivating students. These three all seems a waste of time because in the limited time you have in your class, it seems like a waste to try to motivate kids or review material they are already discovering on their own or have already mastered and are now manipulating. In fact, you might be better served to break into groups immediately upon the start of a class and allow the teams to get right to work. If in fact you want to check for understanding or reinforce a concept, it might be better for you, as the teacher, to go around and manually do so by team. It will certainly be less disruptive. Hands down its less time consuming.
So, how do you as a teacher tackle this if this happens to be a day you are observed? Most probably you do what I use to do, you swallow your own views, quickly write some esoteric nice sounding "essential question" or objective on the board, repeat it out loud, create a quick hook/do now, and then break the kids in to the project 10 minutes later. Of course if you only have 40-50 minutes to teach, you loose 20-25% of your class time of this nonsense, but of course, you rationalize that you need tenure and practically observations don't happen everyday, so you won't have to do this all the time. However, you also loose about 5-10 minutes at the end of the period doing the "summary & assessment" which many administrators look for as well. How artificial is this? Summary? What can you possibly say Ina frontal way that summarize the work they are doing on the project? Assessment? Isn't that the rubric, feedback, and grade you will give each team and individual on the project? Seems again like a waste of time. So, now in a 50 minute class, you may have wasted 20 minutes of project time (40%) of the class or if it is a 40 minute class, you now wasted 50% of the class time. Ok not life changing if you only get observed 3-5 times a year, but not useful either. Then comes the post observation...
You are sitting around a table or on the other side of the administrator's desk and they are telling you that you need a better do now or a better wrap up. Or maybe your on the spot do now or wrap up was great and you are being praised for it. What a waste of your time. Shouldn't the focus be on whether or not the students had an authentic learning experience? Shouldn't the focus be on whether on not the students actively participated meaningfully? Shouldn't the focus be on what new techniques or methodology the teacher is working on? Yeah, see. This is why I, as an administrator, refuse to succumb to looking for such formulaic aspects of a lesson every time I observe a teacher.
