The Observatory: Prologue Edition

I am a trained observer. You laugh, but in my position as a school psychologist, one of my duties was to impartially observe students. I was to make note of the environment (time of day; how many students in the class; whether they were in desks, at tables, or rolling around on the floor; number of staff in the room) along with the behavior of the student (interacting with teacher or talking with others; attentive or looking at phone, selling shoes on the internet; how often on or off task compared to other students). Having to do three observations per student assessment, and at about 100 assessments per school year, I became pretty good at it. I liked to stand in the back of the classroom — I am short, so if I sat in a desk, especially in the high school, I often could not see what I needed to see. Most kids ignored me. Some would give me the side eye, which I became adept at noticing and would quickly place my attention elsewhere. (They think they are sooo sneaky.)

In the summary of all the assessments, I could make some assumptions regarding the behavior observed. These might look like the following: "During the 30 minute observation, the teacher did not call on any boys to answer questions even though hands were up, so it was not possible to observe how well this student was attending to the material being presented"; or, "Three attempts were made to observe this student, on three different days within the 30 day assessment period and the student was not present."; or "The student would benefit from additional guidance during individual work, as she appeared to be unable to follow directions." We had to use weasel words such as, would benefit from ..., it is suggested that ..., or may want to consider ..., because to acknowledge that a child needs something would put the school on the hook for providing such.

Anyway, what I am leading up to is that I often observe events without being able to necessarily analyze or provide deep thoughts regarding the event or situation. I would like to share my thoughts here on Ricochet, but am somewhat intimidated by the quality of the writing and the ease with which some can articulate complex ideas. So I thought I would just open the Observatory where I can make simple observations and present them, with or without comment, to my fellow Ricochetti. I hope you are able to get into the spirit and straighten me out on some of these by adding your own observations and comments.