School leader essay

You are a school leader and you have just completed a classroom observation of a successful  lesson. 

1. What did you see? Please be specific about the type of classroom (elementary, middle, high school), the subject (ELA, mathematics, etc.), learning objective, and the most effective strategies and practices you saw being implemented. 
2. What is an important next step for this teacher to improve their instruction and how would you expect that step to impact student learning?

I observed Mr. Hooks while he was teaching his 10th grade History class. Mr. Hooks teaches in District 79, and he teaches high school dropouts that are trying to get their GED. His class has 12 students; 6 have IEP’s, 2 are ESL students and 4 have no intellectual or learning disabilities.

The first thing that I noticed when I walked into Mr. Hooks’ room was the way that his classroom was set up. It was very neat and there were posters all around it with displays that encompassed different civilizations and their achievements.

The smartboard faced Mr. Hooks and in the agenda the lesson was clearly identified. The SWBAT stated the following: SWBAT evaluate, take, and defend positions on the purposes and functions of international organizations in the world today.

The agenda was clear and straightforward, and it included Mr. Hooks’ name, the class name, the date and they Do Now question asked the following: What is the importance of international law?

Below the Do Now, there was the list of vocabulary words: Natural Rights, US Constitution, Society, Public Policy.

Mr. Hooks started the lesson with restating the objective of the lesson and then he quickly moved on to the Do Now question and asked for volunteers to state their answers. Two students raised their hands, and one answered the following: International law is the institution that creates laws for all the countries in the world. Then the student mentioned the Hague as the International Criminal Court which was quite impressive.

The next student went ahead and answered the do now in a shorter version when she stated that international law is the code of laws that are part of legal system. However, this student did not go any further.

What I enjoyed from Mr. Hooks was his persistence in determining to get the right answer from the student and he asked her to elaborate which she did, and she stated that it is the code of laws that is used in the whole world and all countries that are part of the United Nations.

The next part of the lesson involved the hook and Mr. Hook did a wonderful job of tying in trade, diplomacy, treaties, and agreements as his mini lesson.

In the next part of the class, Mr. Hooks asked the students to pair up in groups of 2 and their job was to describe the importance of cooperation between countries in their readings. One student had to chose to describe how the United States and Mexico cooperated with each other in their NAFTA agreement along with Canada and how beneficial this agreement was within the three countries.

The group activity did last 20 minutes, and the students then regrouped as the Teacher asked one representative from each group to share their findings.

Afterwards the teacher moved on to the last part of the class and he explicitly asked the students to share out two things that they learned in the lesson in the exit cards.

Overall, the lesson was good, and the students were attentive however there were some things that Mr. Hooks could improve on. The students did have a habit of reaching for their smartphones when the teacher was not looking so, I suggested to Mr. Hooks that he should be attentive and make sure that the students limit their social media activity on their cell phones while in class.

The next point that I made was the Do Now question and I pointed out that it involved a lower level thinking question. I suggested to Mr. Hooks to use a How, why, when question instead of a What questions to invoke a higher-level learning answer from the students.

The last point that I made to Mr. Hooks was that the students did not all fill out the exit ticket or some of them failed to return it at the end of the lesson. I suggested that he should stand by the door as they exit and ask them individually for the exit ticket so that to make sure that all of them wrote down what they did not understand from the lesson.