I have been teaching for 26 years and the teacher evaluations are...um...questionable at best. And I am telling you this whether I have gotten a good evaluation or, not so good. I've never received a "bad" one. Which kind of gets to my point...define good and bad here even?
Anyway...
I mean, how do you measure a good teacher?
Is it student success?
Is it student success in future?
Is it doing their job and controlling their classroom?
Right...it's hard to evaluate a teacher.
I had someone tell me once you cannot evaluate a teacher based on a business example because if you're making ketchup and someone sends you a bunch of bad tomatoes...you send them back.
But in education, we often have to make those bad tomatoes be the best tasting ketchup ever.
Teachers are measured as Highly Effective, Effective, Improvement Necessary and Ineffective.
Let me share some of the wording for these lovely subjective words.
Creating an atmosphere of respect and rapport:
HE (Highly Effective): Students and the teacher have highly positive personal interactions.
E (Effective): Interactions among individuals are respectful.
IN(Improvement Necessary): Students and the teacher rarely treat each other with respect.
IE (Ineffective): Classroom has negative interactions.
This is just one, but you tell me what the difference is in "highly" and not highly are? And how do you define negative interactions? What some see as negative others may see as positive.
Organizing Physical Space
HE: Physical environment is highly conducive to high levels of learning.
E: The Physical environment supports learning.
IN: Classroom use of space partially supports learning.
IE: Classroom environment has poor use of physical space.
We get no numbers or how "highly conducive" to "high levels of learning" is vs. just "supports learning" to "partially supports". What do these words even mean? Are there numbers or boxes we can check?
Nope.
Planning:
HE: Extensive content knowledge.
E: Solid understanding of the content.
IN: Moderate understanding of the content.
IE: Little understanding of the content.
Again, define extensive, solid, moderate and little to me and if I know what is necessary to get those first two, I will do them, but I have never been given a number or even what an admin is looking for.
Throughout a teachers evaluation there are words like significant, suitable, moderate, little, meaningful use, productive use, some use, flexible, ridged, highly developed, high ethical standards, genuine sense of professionalism, accurate reflection, and on and on and on.
All of those words have meaning, yet how do you measure them in evaluating a teacher?
There should be a known number to measure each of these, and it would allow us to reach the more subjective words.
But we don't know what it takes to get those things.
So we teach, we get evaluated, we meet and are not given feedback that help us to reach higher levels of effectiveness.
Here is what I do as a teacher:
In 26 years, I have never been late.
Always in class teaching and keeping students under control.
When I miss, it’s for a good reason, and I give plenty of time. I think in 26 years, I have called the morning of missing; twice.
Grades are updated four times a day, almost every single day.
Schoology which is where we put our lessons for students who miss school or need to go back and see what we do, updated every day.
Never say no to meetings, or covering students, or allowing students to miss for field trips unless I have something that cannot not be done.
Behave in a professional manner while at school, sure I have fun, but I am not unprofessional.
Represent the school positively in the community, this is probably most subjective.
Students don’t hate me, but I am sure some don't like me. We all have personality conflicts.
In 26 years, I have sent 5 students to the office.
Do hall duty in the morning when it’s not my responsibility.
Keep track of articles about my school and post them when I have a place to show them.
Help with basketball and am considered an integral part of the program.
Clean the gym floor regularly.
Here on weekends making sure stuff is ready to go, just like tonight while typing this.
Love my students, co workers and my school. I guess this could be subjective, too.
Serve on committees when asked.
I have organized a Friday morning prayer group.
Voluntarily participated in basic Spanish class to try and know my Latino students better.
Will defend any co-worker in public and online if they are being maligned wrongly.
I volunteer to sponsor the club, FCA.
In 26 years, I have not missed my duties when I am supposed to do them but maybe 5 times.
Multiple former students email and speak with me saying I have prepared them for college.
When observed by admin, I am who I am, not trying to do different things just for that day to show off.
Now, I may be wrong and biased, but the things that I have listed that I do, can be measured with hash marks and can show if someone is a good teacher or not.
And I can tell you, that being a good teacher does not always mean they're doing the new ideas, they're collecting data (you mean like grades and graduation rates? Unfortunately, no), and doing everything that an admin can smile and point to.
Sometimes, a good teacher is someone who does their job, doesn't create unnecessary problems for admin or co-workers, does favors, has good rapport with most students, and is seen as a benefit to the school.
But how about this and I genuinely support this:
Allow students to evaluate their teachers.
Allow students to evaluate their administrators.
Allow admin to evaluate their students and teachers.
Finally, allow teachers to evaluate their students and...
their administrators.
Maybe the feedback for all of us from every direction would be eye opening data that we could look at and make changes.
But it would probably all be subjective making it hard to really understand or improve upon.
So...this barely effective teacher will continue on working for what matters and it's not the data, it's not the admin, and it's not for my co-workers.
It's for the kids and that is all that matters to me.
