Guest Post: Teacher Evaluation to the untrained eye

My TLN blogging collaborator this spring, Lana Gundy, creatively responds to the recent teacher-written report from CTQ's Denver New Millennium Initiative on teacher evaluation. Picking up on their recommendations for qualifications of teacher evaluators, Lana offers an Xtranormal video depicting an interaction between teacher and evaluator gone a little wrong.  

Note: I am often wary of evaluators who are unduly narrow-minded or critical of aspects of teaching they do not understand and cannot themselves demonstrate effectively. Lana shows the other extreme... an entertaining as well as thought-provoking watch!

~Ariel

Teacher Evaluation to the Untrained Eye

 I always find it reassuring to read reports about education reforms that are written by educators.  Educators have the experience in the classroom that gives them the insight to find solutions to the problems teachers face daily.  Teachers know what is not working in the school systems, they live it each day.   Educators may also have the solutions for educational changes that would have a positive impact on our nation’s schools.  One of the solutions proposed by the Denver New Millennium that really made sense to me focused on the people who evaluate teachers.

            Denver’s recommendations for qualified evaluators

• Peer Evaluators should  be practicing teachers
• Evaluators should have extensive training and work as an evaluation team
• Evaluators should be assessed and monitored

            Denver’s suggestions for improving the quality of evaluators for teachers are exactly what we need to make evaluators accountable for their observations.  If evaluators are accountable for what they are observing, they may take more notice of what is not happening in a classroom.  Evaluators must be properly trained to look for teaching that engages our students. 

            Below you’ll find an animation that shows what happens when evaluators are not properly trained.  (This of course is a fictional dramatized account.) 

The name of this video is: Teacher Evaluation to the Untrained Eye

 

Download Movie Maker Xtranormal3

 

~Lana 

 

Comments

[Randy]

Teachers should be evaluated by performance and their principal. Principals should be evaluated by performance, their superiors, and the teachers under them.

In some corners of industry, superiors and subordinates evaluate each other. Education should be handled in a similar way. School administrators are not all-knowing, and in some cases can negatively impact the performance of top performing teachers.

A lead teacher should supervise, evaluate and support teaching staff. Principals should be involved in administration (money, the campus infrastructure, etc.) and not the daily activities of teachers. Many principals have not taught in a classroom for five or more years, and for many, the burden of their jobs makes the role of "co-teacher" an unreasonable demand when you look at all of the other responsibilities that those in administration must cope with on a daily basis.

As a transplant from industry (engineering) to teaching (I am going into my sixth year), my impression is that most of the problems in public education are due to a lack of parental support, a lack of student discipline, educational politics within and outside of the educational system, poor fund management, crazy demands on educators, and the Federal government.

We need a major overhaul.