Continuing to Wait for Marzano

February 2012, leading up to the observation: With my observation now inevitable (I pictured my 2^nd-grade self in line for a smallpox vaccination, counting the kids in front of me, knowing there was no escape), I began to reflect on how many years I’ve spent proving myself to myself and to my students.

On my first day as an intern at Raa Middle School in 1976, I dreaded the possibility of failure and of the negative feedback that comes immediately – almost simultaneously with the incompetent act – for every teacher. Naïve, dreamy, idealistic – belly churning with nerves --, I tried as hard as I could to be an effective teacher. I wanted my students to learn something that day and, okay, I admit it, I also wanted them to like me. I also not only wanted to be an effective teacher, I wanted to be perceived as one, i.e., I wanted my effectiveness to recognized and rewarded.

(And, looking back, I’m really sorry, and I apologize to all of those students who, if they lived, would now be over 50 years old, for starting the class by playing Cat Stevens’ version of “Morning Has Broken.” I meant well!)

The same was true for my first day as a Freshman Comp teacher the following fall, and then again for my inaugural day as a college professor facing a Writing for Science Majors class at 8 a.m. in September of 1981.

I don’t know what other teachers are like, but every day of my teaching career, someone has been in my class watching me critically, making a list and checking it twice, causing me to fret and wince over every blunder and, when the class is over, to count the freaking hours until I can get back to that class and make right the sins of yesterday.

Like John Proctor in The Crucible, the magistrate that judged me sat in my heart; there were also typically 25 more external magistrates sitting in my class.

And now, being driven by my inner pedagogical demons for over 35 years -- driven, I humbly acknowledge, to a small truckload of teaching awards bestowed upon me at every stop along the way -- must I now endure an actual iPad-bearing judge with the power to articulate for the world my competency level as gauged by a Marzanometer? And with the power, in theory, to impact my salary and my job security?

Having driven myself fairly mad with these ruminations, I was led to ponder the unfairness of this ordeal on another count. My experience has led me to believe that to be an effective teacher requires a great deal of time and labor. There is no reason to recount here the hundreds of information bits swirling around in a teacher’s brain from the moment s/he flicks the classroom lights on at an ungodly hour in the morning when even newspaper deliverers are sleeping, to the depleted afternoon when s/he wobbles back out to the car, a bundle of student manuscripts nestled in the book bag.

The daily teaching experience is, as a friend of mine said, like racing into a house on fire, looking for people to save. Even young teachers who still have short-term memory can become disoriented, sign the wrong form, hit the wrong key, give the wrong grade, call the wrong name.

For teachers driven to do their best daily, who are trying with all their might to be highly effective, this is a very demanding and sometimes overwhelming job.  

So. Add to this another layer of bureaucracy to one already Everest high; add many more urgent Marzano-related messages and meetings and workshops; add pre-observation and post-observation conferences, and the forms required for each; add the hours foolish teachers like me will spend on that one class that will be observed, at the expense of the other classes and of that aforementioned bundle of student manuscripts.

It isn’t fair, I thought, to make me a less effective teacher by forcing me to prove that I’m a highly effective one.

Waiting for Marzano

In case you are a seasoned teacher and haven’t undergone your Marzanoscopy yet, maybe I can help by providing you with a timeline of what it was like for me in the days and weeks leading up to the procedure, followed by a play-by-play of the Thing Itself, then a reflection on the entire journey.

I may also include a checklist which should be especially helpful now that we know teaching can be both assessed and perfected through the use of weights and measures.

I hope readers will not be put off by what appears to be whining and complaining. I have tried to be honest about the whole thing, and not worry over whether I’m pleasing any particular audience in the process. So, if it is whining, it’s at least genuine and heartfelt whining. This is what it actually felt like to me, a 35-year veteran of teaching.  

Furthermore, in case what follows is so off-putting that readers can’t get themselves to finish it, I’ll give you a brief version of my conclusion: The process is absurd and wasteful, but not without benefits – benefits I seriously doubt were ever intended by Marzano and his fellow rubricifiers.

August 2011: During preplanning, I hear ominous references to a new evaluation process and to something called iObservation and to something else called Marzano, which turned out to be someone’s name. I tune most of these out because I am too preoccupied with something called Skyward, a program that would soon be taking hours away from my efforts to be a highly effective teacher (HET). Also, I always like to look forward to the new academic year, and I don’t want to be brought down by this intrusive junk.

October 2011: We are alerted during a Wednesday in-service about upcoming workshops to help prepare us for the Marzanofication of the evaluation process. Some would be for rookies (may God spread his mercy upon them), others for out-the-door old-timers like me. I mentally hit delete on the dates for the rookies and go into denial about the others because I have too many papers to grade and I’m still not sure how to change grades on Skyward.

November 2011: As pre-evaluation workshops begin to proliferate, Marzanophobia (or Misomarzano) sets in. I learn there is an especially long meeting on the horizon, a Marzanopalooza, for old-timers, and I immediately set out to learn the most critical information about it, i.e., is it mandatory?

December 2011: I write a snarky blog entry in which I imagine Marzano raking in the dough from this obnoxious system and roasting his chestnuts over an open fire. I also quickly make a mental list of 39 things teachers do that aren’t part of Marzano’s list of indicators, not even his Super Marzanio list of 60, and wonder if it’s okay to stop doing all of these things in order to better my chances of becoming HET.

January 2012: Finally, I’m knocked out of my denial when, at either an in-service or a PLP, I’m handed a date for my pre-observation meeting with a list of requirements for said meeting and a list of the indicators my observer will be iBalling. I guess I will need to fashion a lesson that allows me to allow her to check “YES” on those babies. Now the worrying and fretting can begin in earnest.