The National Education Association (NEA), in 2010 stated that the primary purpose for evaluation teachers should be to improve the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and classroom practice of professional educators. The reality is teacher evaluations continue to be flawed. Each administrator, each district, each state may interpret the purpose of teacher evaluation differently.
Sadly, rather than using it as a source of ongoing teacher training, identifying areas of growth, and to enhance teaching practice, evaluations are used to sort teachers, rewarding the top and firing the bottom. (NEA, 2011)
Another issue is the subjectivity of the evaluator. Although a rubric may be followed to rate the teacher, subjective opinions come into play. Another conundrum of implementing meaning evaluations is that not all teaching dispositions are not easily measured objectively.
Just like there are different learning styles, we all vary in our teaching style. A more animated energetic teacher may be just what is in order for a student who thrives in high energy and fast paced learning environment. However, to another student who gets easily distracted and needs a slower paced calm learning environment most likely would not thrive with the same teacher. So does this make the teacher a "good" teacher or a "bad" teacher? A better question is, is he an effective teacher? The answer would be "it depends".
Reality is like any other profession, there has to be a way to assess the quality of the educator. Do we meet the various dispositions that research and observation have deemed necessary to be effective in the classroom.
Here is a great source explaining Dispositions and Examples.
In my opinion the key component of determining if you are an effective teacher or not is Relationship building or Unconditional Positive Regard. Are you able to connect with all of your students? Do you even make an effort to make that connection? Are you able to turn every student even the challenging ones into allies?
Is the culture in your classroom one of collaboration and encouragement? If you answered YES to those questions you are on your way to being a highly effective teacher. You know the old saying "Students don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care".
When I think of my favorite teachers growing up in the 70s and 80s I don't remember what they taught me. I remember how they made me feel about myself.
When I get evaluated I need it to be a productive tool to highlight my areas of shine, my areas of growth, and areas that need to grow. I need it to be an avenue to prompt open dialogue with my evaluator of how to become a good teacher to a great teacher.
I need the evaluation to be an objective measurement that has some subjectivity included to help guide me in self reflection on things I can celebrate and areas I need to improve.
References
NEA Teacher
Evaluation Resource Guide - NEA - NEA Home. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2017,
from
http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=4572440A26184DF2861AB669147640CD&CID=119782FB8C3963CA0CA389EF8D3F6245&rd=1&h=KIIASAaYGCkSKGiwHrIHCc4oZaIAGfNEdHVNlTffNxM&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nea.org%2fassets%2fdocs%2fteacherevalguide2011.pdf&p=DevEx,5066.1
Web.utk.edu.
(n.d.). Retrieved October 07, 2017, from http://web.utk.edu/
