By Kristin
I've got a problem. The previous owners of our house didn't seal this window enough. Luckily, there's this – my chop saw.
Before I knew how to use a chop saw, I couldn't fix problems like the stained trim on my leaky window. I couldn't mitre corners. I owned one of those mitre boxes, but I wasn't skilled enough to use it.
Years ago, when I had to figure out a way to replace all the baseboards and quarter rounds in my house without going into debt, my friend Amy loaned me her chop saw, showed me how to use it by cutting a few pieces, and within a week or two the job was done. I learned to use the tool because I was seriously motivated to do so, and I mean seriously.
Now, with a chop saw of my own, I look at that window and the only thing standing between me and beauty is a measuring tape and a trip to the lumber store.
Public education has a few problem areas right now. I'd say classroom instruction is one of them – only one of them, but one I can do something about. Teachers can do a lot to help each other, and we should. But monitoring and evaluating the performance of a teacher is really up to one person (or three, if you're in a high school like me) - the building's administrator.
As far as I'm concerned, any evaluation tool that is satisfactory/unsatisfactory may be the chop saw of firing, but it's useless when it comes to the real challenge administrators face - improving classroom instruction.
Seattle's union agreed to a really fantastic tool to improve classroom instruction – they basically borrowed a chop saw to get the job done. The tool is the rubric used in the PG&E – the Professional Growth and Evaluation system. It's adapted from work done by the ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development). It's a tool available for administrators to use with their new teachers (within the first four years of teaching), with the whole staff if the whole staff agrees to "opt in" to the rigorous new evaluation system, or with individual teachers (like me) who opted in.
My concern is that administrators aren't seriously motivated enough to use this tool, and I don't know how to change that. I learned to use a chop saw because I was poor, desperate, and had a friend who nudged me toward mastery. What do administrators have?
The rubic clearly defines what good teaching is, without leaning on test scores, and I aspire to hit its top descriptors. It's a great tool. Principals eager to improve instruction are going to see this thing and think, "Dang – this can help me solve problems I couldn't solve before!" Teachers eager to improve instruction will think, "Okay, that's where I want to go." Unmotivated principals and teachers are going to look at this and then stop, because it's wordy and layered and needs studying.
Tools without trained users get dusty. When powerful tools are used incorrectly, people can get hurt.
I'm wondering how many other districts have amazing tools to help teachers improve instruction, but the training and the confidence to use the tool are lagging behind? How do we motivate teachers and principals to use existing tools to improve classroom instruction?
I say relieving of other duties. What is the administrator’s most important job? I tend to think it is the supporting of effective teaching. Other obligations, from student discipline to organizing schedules and room assignments, could easily be taken on by another non-admin position (such as dean of students) or by teacher leaders (department heads). I’m sure this happens already in some places–which leads me to wonder how many hours of an administrator’s day is spent sitting in meetings.
Or do some of them just avoid the task of evaluating teachers altogether because they don’t have the guts to have the difficult but necessary conversations?
What about hiring one admin per X number of teachers–and that admin’s ONLY job is to evaluate instruction?
So how do we get administrators more time to coach and supervise classroom instruction? Is it by relieving them of other duties? Is it by having more of them? Is it by asking them to be more efficient?
I think Mark nailed it: TIME
My administrator is fantastic, but if he had a clone and they each had 48 hour days, he’d be perfect!
How do we motivate teachers and administrators to use these tools? Give them time not just to sit in trainings, but also time away from other obligations to reflect, consider, evaluate, adjust, and apply.
That rubric is intriguing, though as with any rubric, the big difference between rankings is the degree of a a certain modifier or two, which is highly subjective. That said, I still like it better than the binary S/U. The rubric also advances a specific philosophy about education. I find it interesting that it talks about using assessment data to guide the tailoring of instruction…since too much of the trend I see locally right now is to take the power to tailor instruction away from the teacher and to shift toward the lock-step lesson progression which supposedly guarantees curricular uniformity amongst all teachers in the same course. Not much room for tailoring instruction if you are also obligated by your PLC to be on a certain lesson on a certain day, or else.
I’m going to beat the old drum I always do: all these tools and evaluation approaches are not worth anything unless administrators have the time and capacity to implement them properly.
I wish I knew how to motivate administrators to use the tools they have to improve classroom instruction (as well as school environment). I still haven’t seen last year’s evaluation (done with a shiny new form adapted/adopted from Charlotte Danielson’s impressive tome), but my supervisor got merit pay anyway…