Evaluating Teachers

[Ed Hitchcock]

One of the duties I hate as an administrator is evaluating my teachers - not because of the process of discussion and constructive criticism, but because the tools I have at my disposal for assessing the teachers are so, well, wishy-washy. The instruments that have been used for evals forever at our school, and that I have inherited, are far too open ended and subjective. I would like to revise them, but since all my spare time is currently being used for sleeping at night, I was wondering if anyone here knows of a good resource for doing evaluations that are thorough, but most of all relevant and useful for the teachers?

[JFD]

Hi Ed:

We are implementing a new standards based teacher evaluation system this year. I have attached them below.

I hope this helps.

[Ed Hitchcock]

Wow, very thorough! There's some great stuff in there!
Thanks!

[Connie Weber]

Hi JFD and Ed,

I find the document stiff and top-down, doesn't encourage alliance and learning together. Doesn't encourage dialog, doesn't set up the conditions in which a teacher would openly reflect or be even be open to learning.

Forgive me if I haven't studied the document closely enough to be saying this, but it seems primitive, something to be used in a rather militaristic (too strong a word, but right idea, very hierarchical) environment.

The people who end up in the "additional assistance" category: it sounds like they're to be "punished by learning."

What about another way around to get to high-quality teaching? What about creating the feeling of a collegial community of learning? Overall, for everyone, all the time? Is that considered unrealistic in the setting? Is that going on at the same time, and the evaluation process just doesn't reflect it?

Ok, those were just some notes from a "reflective teacher from afar."

Hey, congratulations to the Seton Hall people--hope you are doing well, and are happily being launched into the educational settings you crave. Tell Mike Parent hello!

[Ed Hitchcock]

I wasn't actually looking at the doc as an evaluation package, but as a collection of criteria.
I have stated before that I am all for "self similarity" at different hierarchies within an educational setting, so the more criteria I have that I can share with teachers for their own benefit the better.

[Kelly Christopherson]

Ed, I just saw this and you might start by checking out this link to my wiki that has some tools. I believe that embedded in some of the discussions are links to more tools. This might give you some ideas for some different supervision models and forms.

[Connie Weber]

Hi Everyone,

Kelly, your wiki is a great resource. Got it bookmarked. Lots of potential models there.

This one holds promise, IMHO:

"1. Emphasize the function of teacher evaluation to seek out, document, and acknowledge the good teaching that already exists.

2. Evaluate to reassure teachers and audiences (parents, legislators) that good work is going on.

3. Place the teacher at the center of evaluation activity.

4. Use more than one person to judge teacher quality and performance.

5. Limit administrator judgment role.

6. Use multiple data sources to inform judgments about teachers.

7. Use variable data sources to inform judgments about teachers.

8. Spend the extensive time and other resources needed to recognize good teaching.

9. Correctly use research on teacher evaluation; examine "research based" claims.

10 Attend to the sociology of teacher evaluation.

11. Use the results of teacher evaluation to encourage personal professional dossier building. "


I guess the key here is that you might not be starting in an emergency situation; you would already have somewhat of a good starting point to begin from such a positive platform.

What I think as a teacher is that I'll do my best work by being recognized for what I'm doing well, and building upon that. This is what teachers do with students all the time: Find, promote, support, nurture what's positive. As awareness of what's positive grows--and student or teacher strength grows, so does the willingness to reflect upon what needs improvement. Actually, isn't it true that students and teachers can be terribly hard on themselves... ? That vulnerability is something to quietly and safely open up, after establishing a supportive context for learning, through recognition of the many strides forward...

Creation of a collegial context of trust, openness to learning, safe reflection upon practice, valuing of what's working...

Does that all sound just too idealistic?

[Laura Gibbs]

Hi Ed, as an instructor who really WANTS to be evaluated (because it would help me improve), one of the things I have been lobbying for is an official process for SELF-evaluation by the online instructor cohort at my school, where we could share the self-evaluations together via something like ning.com, or a wiki or something like that.

My own feeling is that every teacher needs to find their own teaching style, just as every student needs to find their own learning style. Self-evaluation is one of the best way I know to work on my own teaching - it's just a matter of finding the time and having my institution say, yes, it matters: we want you to improve your teaching.

Then, if teachers can share their own self-evaluations, I can benefit from "peeking over their shoulders" - I have a few online teaching colleagues with whom I do this informally, but I know if my school had every single one of the 60+ online teachers do self-evaluations every six weeks or so, I know we could learn so much from each other!

I encourage my students to do self-evaluations about their learning every week... as I teacher, I know I would benefit from doing the same - I just need my institution to prod/require/reward me for doing so! :-)