Teach Middle East Magazine May 2014 issue 1 vol. 1 | Page 10

Administrators′ Corner

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN
OUTSTANDING LESSON
By Leisa Simapili

I

have been very privileged in my
career to work with some really
talented teachers. They have
challenged me to do better and
expect more of my students. As an
administrator, I have also had the
opportunity to observe some great
teachers at work and they are the ones
who make the difficult job of teaching
and learning look easy. Yet, despite
how talented these professionals are,
they still have the notion hanging
over their heads, that whenever they
are observed they must produce an
outstanding lesson. Over time, through
teaching and observing, I have become
increasingly convinced that there is no
such thing as an outstanding lesson.

that it is all singing, all dancing. This
pressure is applied in order to avoid
not receiving negative feedback. It
therefore means that as administrators,
we need to rethink how we give
feedback. I have now resorted to not
mentioning the following words when
I give feedback; outstanding, good,
poor or any word which could be seen
as a judgement. Instead, I ask a series
of questions which will help to paint a
picture of what is taking place in that
classroom on a daily basis and tie that
in with what I recently observed. The
questions I ask include the following:

Observing a standalone lesson for
forty-five minutes or one hour will not
provide sufficient long term evidence
of progress, except the performance of
the teacher and students on the day.
We have long known that when we
are being observed as teachers, we
tend to do things a little differently. In
reality, even the students themselves
act differently when there is someone
else in the room.

• What have students had to learn in

Teachers often put themselves under
enormous pressure to ensure that the
lesson has all the right elements and

• How do you know if students are

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May 2014

Class Time

• Where does this lesson fit in
with the outcomes that are being
covered?
order to get to this point?

• What did they already know?
• How will you develop what students
have done so far?

• How might the next lesson be
adapted in light of what happened
in this lesson?
making progress?

• Why did you make the decisions
you made in today’s lesson?

• Is there anything you might do
differently?

These are the kinds of questions which
rightly support the fact that teachers
are professionals and make informed
judgments about how and what they
teach. When the teachers answer these
questions, I then look for confusion or
uncertainty which indicates that the
teacher needs some help. However, if
the teacher has thought about his/her
teaching and knows his/her students
really well then that is an opportunity
for me to learn from the teacher’s
experiences and to know exactly what
is happening in that classroom on a
daily basis.
If the aim of giving feedback is to
condemn a professional, then looking
for the elusive outstanding lesson is the
way to go. Conversely, if our focus is
on quality teaching and learning for all
students, then let us make the lesson
feedback process a developmental
one. There is no such thing as an
outstanding lesson but there are
definitely outstanding teachers.