Learning from Peer Observation

As  professors, we should be always looking for new strategies to improve our teaching methods and to boost our student's learning process. However, sometimes it's difficult to analyze ourselves and to see what we are doing wrong or what can be improved, or simple to "give advice ourselves." That's when peer observation comes into play, since you may have some else to observe you and to give you feedback.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had to plan and teach a culture based class, and as part of this assignment,  we had to peer observe. And I have to say that it was a very interesting and worthy experience for me as a professor, and also as an observer. In the first case, it was very worthy since I had the opportunity of getting feedback from another professional, and in the second case because I was the one who could attentively observe and analyze my coworker's class, and then give the corresponding feedback.

Another interesting aspect of peer observation is that it is not only for giving feedback for our coworkers, but learning from them,too. For example, the day I went to observe my coworker's class, I learnt a lot.! That's because the class I attended was one of elementary school,they were first graders. I have always worked with teenagers and adults, so you can imagine I don't know much about teaching English to very young children. Something I learned was about the strategies the professor used to control discipline and to catch her student's attention; she used songs! every time kids started to get disorganized, she started singing, and a two second later all kids were singing and looking at her! This was very interesting for me since I had always wondered how primary professors got  their young students  to pay attention, I mean, I imagine that young kids always want to play, right? 

Besides, I also learned about the class content, too. For this class, the professor had prepared a wonderful class about traditional games around the world, and it was just great! I really loved her class.

She first started by asking kids about the traditional games they knew, and then, she started explaining them about one in particular, "Marbles". In her class, there were several students whose native country was not Costa Rica, and so she asked them if they played marbles in their respective countries: some of them said yes, but there were others who said that they did not know anything about marbles. It was so interesting to see little six or seven years old kids talking about marbles!. Well, to make a long story short, the professor then explained how to play marbles, and set up a space in the middle of the classrooms for kids to experience it for real. They all had the chance to learn and play marbles, and you could see in their faces and their big smiles that they just loved that class!

Marvin Mendez B

ESL Professor

Universidad Nacional