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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Teacher Evaluation

So last week, I had my final observation for the year. In TN, they have changed our observations and continue to change what they expect. I can't imagine being a principal and having to observe every teacher in the school multiple times a year. That goes along with my other post on Jobs I wouldn't want! Continuing on with the evaluation....

Monday I was excited to have found out I got 4's and 5's! We have a scale of 1-5. I of course scored myself lower, since in my 1st observation with my principal I was given all 3's. This is average and anyone would be happy with 3's for the 1st observation under this new system we have this year. My problem was that I scored 3's and was told that I needed to let other coworkers look at my lesson plans and help them. So I was irratated because if you score me average why are you asking me to help others!

My 2nd observation was with our assistant principal and I got 3's and 4's from him. It was a good observation becuase our asst. principal came from teaching HS Music and doesn't know very much about what we do in the lower grades, especially kindergarten;) So it's always nice when he gets to come in and see what goes on in my world.

Anyways..... I am thrilled to have gotten better throughout the year, at least that's what my paperwork says. It kills me how many teachers have gotten sick over our new evaluation system. I know at the beginning just hearing everything they were having to do with evaluations was overwhelming, but I have had the same though the entire time. Luckily I am fairly easy going and don't worry about much. My theory this whole time has been that if you are doing your JOB, you should score well, regardless of what the rubric says. I teach kindergarten and it would be impossible to get all the teaching points they want me to do in one lesson for my little ones. Therefore I do what I always do and whatever happens happens. My major thought process was that they CAN'T fire ALL of us! Yes, I know probably not the correct way to think about it but still, that's my opinion.

So anyone thoughts on how teachers get evaluated. Please share.

2 comments:

Unknown

The problem I have with our evaluation system, seems close to yours - is that our principal made it known before the process started who she didn't like and could now let go because she could score them low and the union wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Recently a student teacher related to the superintendent was hired and she has made it known that he will not be laid off at the end of the year, that means one of us will. In a fair world you'd get graded on what you did, but unfortunately the new system allows for this kind of bias, and is the reason for creating tenor in the first place. It's been pretty stressful!

Heather Shelton

I agree. It's sad because it is so open. My principals were scoring everyone lower saying they had to show you improved. Other schools had higher scores from the beginning. It is very judgemental.

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