There were not one, but two spies at the school where I work.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t work for the school where I work. Instead I’m assigned there by a different company, let’s call it The Evil Empire (not its real name),  that grows rich and fat whilst I grow, um, older and heavier.

For a while we had almost the perfect existence. The Evil Empire left us alone and we repaid the favor by neither asking for attention nor causing a need for attention. We didn’t miss school (I’ve personally only missed two days of actual teaching in the 14 years I’ve worked at the school) and, for the most part, we only went to the main office to sign our contracts for the next year and listen to the glorious range of excuses for why a raise was neither necessary nor forthcoming.

Unfortunately, someone moved the cheese which caused the mice to become cannibals and destroy all other mice in a seven state region, or something like that (although I may have misunderstood that book). In our case, the Evil Empire has slowly begun creeping into our lives.

The most visible example of this is “observations” which happened one per decade in the first 10 years of the 21st century but which are now occurring twice per year, once as an ambush.

Today’s observation was not an ambush, but it was still very odd. The first observer was our new sales rep, who is one part of one tier of actual decision makers in the company. He was there mostly as a meet-and-greet as he’s only been with the company for two months, but he did jump between three classes then left. He was followed by the second observer, our immediate powerless supervisor/handler who stayed all day.

The problem with observations are many, especially if you’re not new at the job. The best that can come out of them is a chance to talk the immediate supervisor, but you’re in a case where your words can be held against you (as well as the research you’re doing, hypothetically, for your football pool during your breaks) and the observers, to justify their existence, have to find fault. I don’t mind feedback and suggestions but I’m not a big fan of “my job is to say bad things” (which, technically, is my job during exam time now that I think about it).

That said, this was a pretty painless observation. I don’t change what I do, although the students do behave a little better when the observer’s around. Especially after I told them the Japanese Sales Rep was a cop observing the lesson.