Recognised mental health disability and observations

[TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince]

I have anxiety. It’s quite bad , l get Access to Work because of it.

I fall apart when observations raise their ugly heads. It terrifies me, and makes my anxiety much much worse.

How do l deal with this, or should adjustments to my job be made? I can cope with pm ones, but SMT ones paralyse me

You do have to he observed, I think. It's really important for your department, your SLT and the children. People have to be able to see what's happening in your classroom.

Could you be observed via IRIS? So that you won't physically have someone in the room with you? Obviously the observers would have to also look at the books and talk to the pupils at the end of the lesson as well.

Many schools don't do formal observations any more as they've realised a 20 minute snapshot demonstrates virtually nothing whilst talking to children and looking at books shows far more. There should definitely be flexibility.

I do get observed. By my pm line manager.

It’s not so much the observation as trying to get through the day not knowing when they are going to turn up.

I’ve been observed as outstanding lots of times. But it gets harder and harder.

Do they give you a day but not a time? We get a time slot (unless it’s Ofsted, obviously).

I detest observations and don’t think they tell good leadership anything they didn’t know. They certainly don’t improve my teaching or the children learning.

My head is in and out of lessons all the time and knows exactly what’s going on in the school.

In my experience, observations are used as a tool by some heads to emotionally ‘torture’ or get rid of older (expensive) staff members and that’s about it.

I wish we could do more peer observations as that’s something you never get to see being in your own classrooms, but they went out of fashion round here a long time ago.