Teacher Supervision and Evaluation: How I Got Better

In my last post, Is Your District’s Teacher Evaluation System Stopping You From Being An Effective Educational Leader?, I wrote about my teacher evaluation experiences as a teacher, school administrator, and central office administrator. If you have not taken the Health of Your District’s Teacher Evaluation System Quiz from this article, I encourage you to do so now (HERE IT IS). It will lead you to valuable information and allow you access to the second part of the evaluation system equation, namely, your own practice.

Regardless of the language of the contract around teacher evaluation, there are nuances of implementation that are personal to you. Most practices you no doubt learned in your administrative credential program, others may be from mentors or supervisors. There are likely practices you have developed as you became more experienced and curated a style that works for you. Here is my story…

Back in the Old Days

In my early practice, I would begin the year with a meeting to distribute the timelines and forms (we’re talking 1971 Stull Act practices). The teacher would have a deadline to submit their goals and objectives, which I would typically approve upon receipt. Next, we would schedule the first formal observation and pre-observation conference. Sometimes the teacher would bring a lesson plan to the conference or place it in my mailbox (I know, this sounds prehistoric now that we have emails). Usually, I would be pressed for time and would end up having a hallway conversation with the teacher that answered two questions: what is your lesson about, and is there anything you would like me to focus on? 

I will admit that there were times when there was no pre-observation conference. I would walk in the classroom (usually later than I wanted to), sit in the back, and furiously write down everything the teacher and students said and did (Try to imagine a time before laptops or tablets…it was just you, a yellow legal pad and a pen). I missed a lot that was going on because I was trying to keep up with my “script-taping” as it was called.

Making Some Improvement 

The post-observation conference typically started with “So how do YOU think the lesson went?”, followed by a reading of my script-tape, which basically was the retelling of what happened during the lesson to a person who was there and already knew what happened, ending with both positive and negative feedback. I worked with an administrator who used to say she would give “two glows and one grow” to summarize her post-observation feedback, which I thought was catchy. Some sort of written report of the observation would be generated and both the teacher and I would sign it. Sometimes, I would be able to cruise into classrooms for informal observations, walk-throughs, and visits before the next formal observation. 

A couple of months later, the whole process would repeat itself. In the spring, the teacher would receive their original goals and objectives paperwork to fill in their own assessment of the level of achievement of their goals. Then before a designated date, the summative evaluation would be “reduced to writing” (formal contract lingo here) and a final meeting would be held. The summative evaluation report included a final rating (usually one of 3 levels – satisfactory, needs improvement, or unsatisfactory) for one or more aspects of the teaching practice.

Everyone Deserves Grace

I cringe when I think back to how I evaluated teachers as a newer administrator. I did what I thought was right and what was expected of me by my supervisors and the teachers. It was familiar, teachers knew what to expect, even though the practice had little to no value for all concerned.

When I became a BTSA director, I saw the light! I received continuous, in-depth information and training around the practice of teacher support and evaluation. I now understood that site administrators could be and should be trained in some of these practices to make their feedback to teachers more formative and still generate the required reports and summative evaluations.

I was inspired to learn more about effective teacher supervision and evaluation that supports growth in practice. My doctoral dissertation was all about that. I want to share this with you to help accelerate your journey. The quiz and follow up resources (see below) were crafted to include some of the best practices I found through my research. I encourage you to take the quiz to find out if your practice is Emerging, Exploring, Applying, Integrating or Innovating,  just like the levels of practice in the Continuum of Teaching Practice. 🙂 I would love to hear from you about what you think and would like to share.