“Common sense is not so common.” —Voltaire

As a veteran teacher, my class schedule became a bit complicated. Some years I was assigned four or five different course preparations. This often included what we in secondary schools call “singletons” — courses for which there is only one section of students which must fit somewhere in the master course schedule with minimal conflicts for other courses which might enroll the same students. (Those who have served as curriculum administrators know that master schedule conflicts are inevitable; the goal is to minimize them!)

One particular year, I ended up with two courses embedded in first period. This included my usual section of Advanced Placement Physics (the old “B” course) with about 25 students. It also included a small specialized course called Gifted Directed Study where students with gifted designation could direct their own learning in the form of an extended project or non-taught subject under the facilitation of a faculty member: me. I had a section of Advanced Placement Physics C (the Calculus-based course) later in the day but our class periods were only 52 minutes long so we covered the Mechanics half of that course during one scheduled period for the year. Two students in that class also wanted to study and test for the Electricity & Magnetism half of the Physics C course. It was these two students who were placed on a secondary roll in my first period. They would come to first period a few minutes early each day and I would get them started on their daily tasks for the E & M topics and they would sit in the back row of desks and work independently while I taught my actual first period class. I would check on them to answer questions occasionally, but I saw them in fifth period with the rest of the Mechanics students each day so I could help them then. (This was very close to what we call differentiation now.)

This same school year, we added a couple of brand new assistant principals to our leadership team. Both were coming from other schools from teacher roles the previous year so they were learning a new school, a new staff, a new culture, and, most importantly, a new job, all at the same time. In addition, neither had been science teachers.

During the middle of first semester, one of these new assistant principals entered my first period class for my official observation of the year. It makes a lot of sense to assign veteran teachers to new evaluators, both for standard-setting and to allow for rating proficiencies to develop at a reasonable pace. This brand new assistant principal sat in the only open seat in the back row…between my two GDS students and the actual class I was teaching.

The lesson carried on as normal and I made sure to overtly announce what I knew this new school leader was looking for and marking on her paper copy of the evaluation form so she could check off every box with some idea of what we were doing. In other words, I slowed down my teaching cadence to help her carry out her job responsibilities and to hopefully assist in her development.

After school I went to check my teacher mailbox, and it contained a file folder which held the completed evaluation form. I was supposed to sign and date the bottom and return it to her mailbox. There was also a sticky-note attached indicating to see her with “any questions.”

I quickly reviewed the form and saw a mixture of ratings at the “meets” and “exceeds” level. However, there was a written comment at the bottom of the page. It read “The two students sitting beside me put their head down on their desk the last ten minutes of class and you did not address them. This does not need to happen again.”

I did not sign the form. I took the folder back to my room. My plan was to catch her before school the next day and explain the arrangement of courses so she would strike out her comment since she was observing me teach the class with 25 students on roll; the one she wrote at the top of the form in the blank labeled “Course Observed”.

The next morning, I entered the building headed to my room having rehearsed a bit how I was going to coach the person directly above me in the organization as professionals sometimes have to do. She was waiting for me outside my room as I approached at my normal time, about 30 minutes before the start of first period.

I was greeted with a somewhat indifferent “I need that folder with your signed evaluation form.”

We entered my classroom…I set down my things…I opened the folder and pointed to the comment at the bottom; and then I spent two minutes explaining how the master course schedule was set up…what those students were doing…why they were in the room…and I paused out of respect for her still sparkling name tag. I was confident in what she would do next.

Over twenty years have passed since, but I still remember her response in that moment: “I wrote down what I observed and I need you to sign the form as it is because that is what I saw.”

As a highly-decorated and veteran teacher, I was trying to move chess pieces; and she thought we were playing red rover.

I was confident she would make the obvious decision needed to make the situation better. In the process, she would grow and establish needed credibility. I was wrong. It ended up being me who had to make a decision — one to keep the situation from getting worse. I signed the form as it was and handed it to her with a smile, telling her to come back to my class anytime she wanted to.

That situation was one of many during my teaching career where common sense did not prevail. What that situation did do however, was to add one more personal commitment to my internal list of future school leader promises. There are times in the business of doing school and getting all the work done that we can give all our attention to the process or the handbook or the rules or the flow chart doing so at the expense of checking ourselves against the informal test of common sense. #PrincipalExcellence does not require leaders to be perfect in this; but it does require never bungling the common sense test.

The good news? Both these students scored “5s” on both parts of their Advanced Placement Physics exam that year — an outcome much more important than a misleading comment written at the bottom of a sheet of paper!