Evaluation

Assume you are a school principal and have the opportunity to develop your own teacher evaluation system. Outline the process you will use to evaluate the teachers in your school so that you will have full, factual, objective evidence of the teacher's performance. You will need to be selective in the elements of your plan because you will have a limited amount of time to spend with each teacher on your faculty.

Direct Observation – I feel that each teacher would need at least one direct observation, on top of any casual observations I could fit into the school year.  The direct observation would include the use of the state mandated evaluation form.  Along with the direct observation would be the opportunity for both a pre-observation conference and a post-observation conference.  I feel that this would give the teacher and me an opportunity to review the criteria that would be utilized in the direct observation.  The pre-observation conference and post-conference would take approximately 20 minutes and the direct observation/formal work-up should take approximately 1 hour.

Personal Portfolio – I would like for each teacher to create a professional portfolio which would include such items as professional learning opportunities for the current year, work towards advanced certification, and other activities that would show their continued motivation in the teaching profession.  The other activities could include extra-curricular school activities or activities in which they have taken a leadership role (Vacation Bible School, scouting leadership, coaching, etc).  This would require the teacher to present a notebook outline their activities.  It would take approximately 10 minutes to check the portfolio for each teacher.

Student Work Portfolio – I would like for each teacher to present me with a portfolio that contains student work – a minimum of eight examples.  In the examples, I would like to see how they evaluate student work, projects that have been assigned, and possibly how they give students an opportunity to re-work items that have been corrected.  While I would not be “grading” the assignments per se, I would like to see the teacher’s feedback and how the students have progressed throughout the year.  I would also be looking at the variety of activities that were included in the portfolio.  I think it would take about 15 minutes to look through the examples and verify that a variety of students and activities were represented within the portfolio.

Videotaped Lesson/Reflection – Each teacher would be required to videotape 20 minutes of at least one lesson per year.  The lesson should be viewed by the teacher and anyone else they would feel comfortable viewing the lesson with, including myself as the administrator.  I would then like for the teacher to write a reflection on the lesson, including the type of lesson, class (demographics), strengths and weaknesses of the lesson, and how they would change it if they taught it again.  If a teacher would like for me to view the lesson with them, it would take approximately 30 – 45 minutes to view the lesson and then about 15 minutes to read through the reflection that is presented to me.