Teacher Evaluation

I would like to start out by saying I could never be effective at evaluating teachers by using the rubric method.  It seems as though every standard is actually made up of three or four standards, so I had no idea if they passed or failed.  However, I did think the UMF designed rubric would be more effective, since it did break up the standards and allowed each of them to be evaluated differently.  I know that I’ll feel better in the field knowing that this more effective rubric exists.

                We also talked about the importance of self-reflection.  This aspect of evaluation is the most important piece for me.  It just doesn’t seem to make much sense to label a teacher as a failure without telling them why or consider ways of improving their lessons.  The face-to-face conversation needs to happen in order to fully justify the evaluation process.  This conversation could also lead the teacher to discovering new ideas on how to improve their lessons.

                Tyler pointed out a piece of observations that is equal parts frightening and upsetting.  He told us that most observations last for 15 minutes or less.  This doesn’t seem like enough time to fully evaluate a teacher.  It seems wrong to judge a teacher based on about a third of their lesson, when you have no idea what is taking place in the other two thirds.  This statistic allowed me to self-reflect on the fact that my group had harshly judged the instructor in the video based on two minutes of footage.