Today I knew that I was going to have six or nine teachers coming through my classroom all day as part of our school’s Learning Walks.
To prepare for this, earlier in the week I added new information onto my whiteboard for my students. Yes, I was tryign to show off.
I added a table of contents for our Weekly Writing Explorations and our English Toolkit. I had been wanting to do this pretty much all year, but was really low on my to-do list.
This morning I added a green a box that told the students what they needed to take out for the period.
As I always have done, I already had the stuff that the students would be turning in labeled in red.
The first group of teachers came through during third period and all went well.
There was a small surprise today, though.
During fourth period, our interim principal (who is really good!) came in and hung out for about twenty minutes with teachers on the Learning Walks in my classroom.
Again, things went well, no problems. I enjoyed seeing my principal and other teachers talking with students, asking what we were doing and all that good edu stuff.
Eventually they all left.
Afterwards a student told me that he was surprised I was not nervous when the principal came in.
Other students laughed and asked “Yeah Mr. Davis, why were you not nervous because other teachers are nervous when the principal walks in?”
I said “I don’t know, I just I think that the principal should come to my room more frequently.”
I continued, “I have no secrets, I want them in more often. I want them to co-teach a few lessons with me!” (My first principal, Susan McCance did this during one of my observations! She wrote me a glowing review when she did most of the work!)
About a minute later I realized that I just put up stuff on the board to look good for these other teachers, to show off.
So I shared that with my students.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, and Todd, I’m an idiot. To be honest with you, I only put up the table of contents for Writing Explorations, the English Toolkit, and the green box of stuff to take out in order to look good in front of the teachers. I was being vain.”
At some point during the rest of the day, I realized that the stuff I had on the board was actually really good for the students, so I decided to make a few permenant places on the board for the content.
The students are happy because it’s easier to read and know what they need to do.
I know, nothing earth shattering.
But I realized that sometimes going after one’s vanity can be good, if you eventually realize it and adjust your motive.