One joy of parenthood is a surprise from your children. More than once I have come home to a miraculously clean kitchen, or a “restaurant” in my honor. I love it when my kids make big plans behind closed doors. They worry I will ruin the surprise by peeking. But I like surprises! I go out of my way not to spoil the fun, and they know it.
However, some things should not be a surprise, namely a teacher’s evaluation and next steps. Having changed schools three times in the past seven years, it has become very important to me to receive ongoing feedback from my evaluator.
I never worried about evaluations for my first fifteen or so years of teaching. Like everyone, I felt the pressure to plan a great lesson for pre-scheduled observations, and I did get butterflies. But I never really worried about the outcome, because I felt valued and worked hard.
My assistance and feedback came largely from my peers, the people from whom I would beg, borrow and steal so that I could try their ideas in my classroom. Those were the days. Career ladder is long-gone, and the time and freedom it takes to develop authentic critical friends groups has been replaced in many schools by more prescribed data teams and Professional Learning Community models. Still, my colleagues provide much needed guidance and resources.
In the past, I never worried about the evaluation process, because I worked hard, but also because evaluations were somewhat of a formality. During those years, the only times anyone came by to give me feedback were the scheduled observations and minimum number of walk-throughs. Unless I had completely alienated myself from my students and colleagues, I could predict that I would end up “effective” (three on a four-point scale, proficient) like pretty much everyone else.
Things are different now. Administrators are encouraged to make the evaluation process more meaningful and more evidence-based. They are held more accountable for this, and I’m guessing they feel pressure to make sure that not everyone has the same “effective” score. I’m guessing that in this age of continuous improvement, administrators feel that they need to do more to use data to show improvement over time. The idea is to help teachers develop professionally, and also I suppose, to weed out the very few teachers that really shouldn’t be in the classroom.
None of this is really a problem, and in fact, most of these changes are probably good things, provided that one crucial piece is in place: Ongoing feedback. Having been through a variety of evaluation processes, I know what it feels like to have an administrator who springs an individual plan of improvement on me without having ever let me know about his or her concerns. I felt how a student in my class might feel who is working day and night on my classwork, hands everything in, does not receive any graded work back, and then receives an “F” on the report card. It felt like an ambush, especially when questions or concerns could have been addressed early on.
Our mindset frames how we see situations. Who knows how many observations in my classroom were framed within the concerns and questions this person had never voiced to me, thereby denying me a voice and an opportunity to improve? I certainly don’t know, because those conversations never happened, at least, until I was forced into backflips to document my effectiveness.
Take that same situation, and insert ongoing feedback, beginning back when the administrator’s first concerns occurred. It is hard to say how the situation would have played out in the end, but I would bet that I would not have felt betrayed. I bet that I would have had a more positive relationship with the administrator in question, with my academic coach, with my department, with my principal… and probably even with my students. Because when a teacher has her legs cut out from under her, the blow to her confidence must have a ripple effect on her practice.
I bet that if I had had feedback early on that year, I would have chosen to stay at that school.
This year, I have had the benefit of ongoing feedback. If my evaluator does a walk-through, he drops me a note. If my evaluator has questions about the way I handle a discipline issue, he asks me. I have even asked that if there are any concerns, I would really appreciate a conversation. And so far, no surprises. I know there must be incredible demands on the time and attention administrators can devote to these processes, but I am more convinced than ever that ongoing feedback for teachers is crucial. For me, every year teaching is a year of personal and professional growth, and all the people around me contribute to those processes, if they choose to.
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Amethyst Hinton Sainz
Amethyst Hinton Sainz is National Board Certified Teacher in Adolescent and Young Adult English Language Arts, and is constantly trying to live up to that standard! This year she will begin teaching at Westwood High School in Mesa, Arizona as an interventionist. She has taught junior high ELD and high school English in Arizona for 25 years. She has been a Stories from School blogger since 2012. Amethyst’s alma maters are Blue Ridge High School, the University of Arizona and the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Her bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Philosophy led her toward the College of Education, and she soon realized that the creative challenges of teaching would fuel her throughout her career. Her love of language, literature, and culture led her to Bread Loaf for her master's in English Literature. She is a fellow with the Southern Arizona Writing Project, and that professional development along with, later, the National Board process, has been the most influential and transformative learning for her. As a board member of the Mesa NBCT Network, she works with other NBCT’s to promote this powerful process throughout the district. She supports candidates for National Board Certification, and loves seeing teachers realize and articulate their teaching and leadership power! She enjoys teaching students across the spectrum of academic abilities, and keeping up with new possibilities for technology in education. Last year she had the privilege of running our school garden, and will really miss that this year. She is currently learning more about social and racial justice and is striving to be an antiracist educator. She lives in Mesa, Arizona with her family. She enjoys time with them, as well as with her vegetable garden, backyard chickens, and the two dogs. She also enjoys reading, writing, cooking (but not doing dishes), kayaking, camping, and travel, among other things.
Comments 1
I can honestly say that outside of my first year or so, I’ve never had a meaningful evaluation,I get no ongoing feedback from any administrator who observes me. I don’t blame the admin team – they are swamped putting out fires – often related to problems in other classes, and I pretty much have control over my teaching and classroom. But still in nearly thirty years, it’d be nice to have someone come by and watch and coach.