Receiving Advice

I've written a lot about how teachers can improve their practice after their first few years on the job.  In particular, something I've wondered is how teachers could hold one another accountable for improving their teaching.  Today something happened that reminded me how hard it can be to receive advice from a colleague, when all you really want is sympathy/empathy for something that's going wrong in your classroom.

Some students recently transferred into my math class and I am having trouble making the math accessible/getting them to work up to my expectations. Today I tried getting tough with the students about their performance, and it didn't go well.  I expressed my frustration to my colleague and basically got rebuked for going about the situation incorrectly. Of course, she was right. I did handle the situation poorly.  But, it was still really uncomfortable to hear it from a colleague.  It's fine now, but I don't think I'd scale up my situation as a model for helping teachers become more effective.  Making someone feel bad usually doesn't make her want to change.  It just makes her angry and defensive (like I did with my students today...).   I don't think our nation will get anywhere by making teachers feel bad about the jobs their currently doing.  Evaluation needs to be more productive than that.

What are my take aways? 1. There are situations where colleagues can critique one another.  They include weaknesses that a teacher has asked for help in addressing...in situations where help is being solicited.  They probably don't include teachers simply going into one another's classrooms and giving suggestions on how to improve.  They could very well include honestly recognizing one another for things we're doing well.

2.  Sometimes evaluation has to be uncomfortable.  Teachers have weaknesses that they themselves can't easily identify, and there need to be situations where it's OK to broach the subject and expect that teachers make changes in their practice.  It's very possible that such criticism could come from a principal or other administrator - as long as the teacher respects and trusts the administrator's knowledge of instructional delivery.

3. Changes in teaching - the thought process and the creation of new resources - actually happen outside of teaching hours.  For this reason, I don't think that teachers' contracted hours of work (given the current structure of a school day) are sufficient for really improving teaching.  Teachers need structured time to talk to one another and to meaningfully reflect on their teaching.  The best teachers most likely put in a lot of extra hours doing this on their own time.  But, if the nation hopes for more effective teaching in general, teachers need more time and greater expectations for examining and improving their teaching practice.

Unions Still Mulling Harkin ESEA Bill

Unions Still Mulling Harkin ESEA Bill

Evaluations seem to be the hot topic in my state as well as on Capitol Hill lately. Is it useful to talk about evaluations without asking what happens to teachers who receive poor evaluations? Or without asking whom will be evaluating teachers and how highly trained are they in this area? I don't really think so. I guess it speaks to the fact that I've been in education for a while now that I'm thinking, "this won't really change things in my classroom." Unless my district and school supervisors take these evaluations very seriously and put a plan in place that goes far beyond what this bill says, things will continue to proceed as they are now. I guess the idea is that data doesn't lie; that having data will preclude principals from simply checking "satisfactory" for every teacher. I'm not sure, though. If teachers and administrators don't really trust the data, then it doesn't matter.

That said, I've been given the opportunity to do some evaluations/observations for one of my colleagues. I found out yesterday, and I've really been mulling over how to make my evaluations meaningful. Potentially, I think that teachers could evaluate and help one another in ways that administrators couldn't, since they are out of the classroom. I am sure that I'll be able to give some valid feedback, but if the person being evaluated is not asked to immediately act on that feedback, it will fall to the wayside. That's at least what happens to me. I've been observed, had a debrief session, nodded my head about the ways that I could improve my practice, and then not done anything about it - because I was too busy to actually make a change. It's only when I was asked to demonstrate something that I'd done differently as a result of my observation, that I actually changed my practice. But how can I pull that off with a colleague? I guess we'll see. I'm going to try.

Daily Wonderings on Teacher Evaluations and Data

Yesterday I attended an event to discuss current ideas about effective teaching and the recommendations for NM's future teacher evaluation system.  Here are the recommendations.  For the record, I'm OK with student SBA performance making up 50% of my teacher evaluation.  I do think, to a great extent, that although test scores aren't perfect, kids who score well on the test also tend to possess even the skills that aren't tested and that will help a student be successful later in life.

What we didn't have a chance to talk about in our discussion, and what I wonder about day-in and day-out, is the "so what?"  What if a teacher gets a bad evaluation?  The evaluations may play the useful role of identifying teachers who are more and less effective, but most schools kind of already know who's who.  Will the evaluations be the documentation that convinces the teacher herself that she needs to be developed?  That gets the ball rolling?  And then WHAT WILL THE DEVELOPMENT LOOK LIKE?  Is there any consensus out there about what types of development will actually make teachers more effective on a day-to-day basis?  Who is going to hold the teacher accountable?  Colleagues?  Principals?  How can teachers help one another become more effective?

It's not going to happen that once I realize that my value-added test scores aren't equivalent to 1 year's growth, I think "oh, I'd better start doing my best now."  I think MOST teachers are already doing what they think is best for their students.  And it's really going to take some work to make a difference in the practice of those teachers who are doing their best and still aren't making 1 year's growth.

I also wanted to remark on something that happened today at my school: one of the college engagement directors ran a report that highlighted all of the students who were failing 1 and then 2 or more classes.  And I was astounded.  Never before, despite having had electronic grade books for years now, has someone in one of my schools run an analysis of students' grades.  How simple and how silly that this is the first time something like that has come across my desk.  And I bet there are many other schools out there that have never run a similar report, or really any report that helps teachers meaningfully look at student data.

Although SBA data has been used as a reason to blame the teaching profession for the ills of the world, data in and of itself is not something to be feared.  As long as we keep in mind that students are people and not just numbers, we shouldn't be afraid of data.  It can help us see the forest from the trees in a way that day-to-day teaching just can't.