21. Surviving Evaluation Season

Brittany 0:00

Your classroom door creaks open, and you glance up to see who's entered. It's your administrator. And it's time for your observation. How do you feel? Is your stomach queasy? Do your palms start to sweat? Or are you as calm as a cucumber? Are you eager to see your administrator and happy to have them in your room? Welcome to the teaching toolbox Podcast. I'm Brittany, one of your hosts. And I am here with Ellie.

Ellie 0:37

Hello there.

Brittany 0:39

Today we're going to chat about teacher evaluation time, share some of our experiences and give you some tips to help you get through observation time. As we dive into evaluation ideas, let's first think about the types of evaluations we might have.

Ellie 0:59

So we had formal observations twice a year, after you've been teaching for about three years, I think it was four times a year for new teachers. So we had the formal observations we had drop in evaluations. And then some years, we had the opportunity to do things like peer coaching, so you weren't officially observed by an administrator at all. And then we also had a portfolio option at one point, so not an official classroom observation about you.

Brittany 1:31

We had formal observations with new teachers had three per year. And those were held much earlier in the school year. And then those people who had been around longer than two years only had an informal and a formal observation. Those were usually in October and March. Some years we did drop ins in addition or peer reviews. But those were always in addition to our regular observations, never instead of and then one year, we had a portfolio required along with our observation. But that quickly came and went.

Ellie 2:11

sure that's hard for administrators to keep up with. Yes.

Brittany 2:14

a lot to look at. So let's talk about Poppins Poppins are just that it's when your evaluator pops into your classroom, with no advance warning, completes a short evaluation, usually 10 to 15 minutes, they often complete it on like a half sheet of paper, and leave it for you on the spot or give it to you later that day. These were my least favorite evaluation styles, not because I was doing anything wrong or sitting too long or anything like that. Although evaluators do have a tendency to catch us as soon as we sit down. It's like they have a magic power. Absolutely. But because they literally just surprised or scared me. Suddenly, I had another person there who was observing, often wanted to participate in the lesson was talking to my students and getting them off task, right. And I had to adjust for them.

Ellie 3:14

So Right. I agree those were not my favorites. It can be a little bit nerve racking to look up and see someone else in the room. And as you said, somebody else who wants to participate, maybe in a way you weren't expecting. So it might throw off your train of thought because of what they're saying or saying to the other students. One year, when I was teaching fifth grade, I walked into my room after recess with my students streaming in and my principal was sitting in the back of the room. She had kind of snuck in there while I was getting the students from recess. So that was a little bit nerve wracking, but I was never so grateful that I had established routines in my classroom, and stuck to those routines. Because the students came in and did what they were supposed to do. They knew what they were supposed to do. And we got into whatever the subject was like, I honestly can't remember what subjects we worked on at that time. But I remember that I was okay with how it went because my kids came in and they did what they were supposed to do. The most memorable part of that was the fact that she was sitting right there. But I don't remember what we did after that, but the kids did a really good job.

Brittany 4:23

Routines are so helpful.

Ellie 4:27

And we do have an episode about that if anybody wants to go back and listen to routines. Now for our yearly observations, because you know, that was a drop in or a pop in for the yearly observations. As I said, we had two formal observations, and those were always scheduled ahead of time. So there was paperwork to fill out where you filled out your objectives, your lesson, plan information, any special notes about things in the classroom, that type of thing. And then we would typically meet with the administrator before the observation and then again afterwards as a follow up after they had completed the observation, how about you?

Brittany 5:05

For those Did you typically create like an extra special lesson plan? Or did you go with your, your normal plans for that day,

Ellie 5:16

I'm early in my teaching career, I would go with something like extra extra special, I try to plan something really, really unique and different and creative to try to look really good. But as the years went by, I felt a little less inclined to do that for a couple of reasons. First reason was sometimes the observation got canceled last minute, and then I'd have to decide, oh, do I put that lesson off, even though it kind of fits with what we're doing right now? Or do I come up with a new one for when it's rescheduled, and then have to fill out new paperwork potentially, because it doesn't go with what we had talked about in our pre observation meeting, or they would come in late, the administrator would come in late, and then they'd missed that great anticipatory set that you had set up. And then, you know, you'd be disappointed because they didn't see that part that you wanted them to see. Sometimes I know, people would wait for a few minutes and wait for the administrator to get there kind of killing time until they got there. But you can't wait too long, you have to start and then you know, then they miss something that you want to see. So that's one reason I kind of stopped with the extra extra special. And then I really felt like it was more important for administrators to see what the normal workings of the classroom were, how well did students stick to our routines and class expectations? How did I interact with the students? How did the students interact with each other? How did I actually teach the concepts, so it didn't want it to be something out of the routine, I wanted it to be something a little bit more normal. Yeah. Now, that's not to say that I never did anything special. Like it's not like I had students sitting in their seats the whole time working on their out of their math books all the time, because that wasn't normal for my classroom anyway. Instead, I would typically use activities that required students to be a little more active sometimes be in groups so they could discuss and move around the room, which was part of our normal math routine, like I normally had kids discuss, I normally had them moving around the room. So I tried to incorporate that. One of my favorite observation times, was when I had students first work on collaborative problem solving in their groups. And that again, was one of our normal activities. So students knew how to discuss the problems, and they knew how to interact with each other. That was something they had done and practiced. And then when the groups were done with their problem solving, they moved into completing their Footloose task cards, which just involves moving around the room working independently and silently. And I remember during my follow up meeting with my administrator, he said that when he heard the kids really talking about the math problem solving, he thought he would hear them talking about non math things. He just figured there's all this noise because it was a little noisy, because they're all discussing. He thought with all this noise, they're not talking about math. But as he walked around the room and listened, he was really surprised by the fact that they were actually discussing math, like, how did you get this answer? How did you What did you do here? I got this and it doesn't, it doesn't match, what did you do differently. So he was really surprised by that. And again, like that's not because he was there. And he was observing. And because it was special. It's just because that's what we were normally doing in the classroom. And that's what I wanted him to see. And then he said, as the group's finished up their problem solving and started doing their Footloose, everything just got quiet, the room got completely quiet. They were walking around, they were doing their work. And he was surprised by how silent they became. So first we had all this noise of discussion. And then suddenly everything was quiet. And I didn't have to say anything to make that happen. Because that was part of our routine, they knew that that's what they were supposed to do. So I feel like observation time is a time to show how effective your routines are, how you interact with students, how you explain concepts, how you begin an end class, that kind of thing. And I think once I adopted that philosophy, I was less than less nervous when I knew I was going to be observed because I was confident in the way we were doing things. How about you? What were your formal observations, like?

Brittany 9:25

Our formal observations were very much like yours. And I pretty much followed the same path that you did. I used to do the dog and pony show. And then after a few years, I started just, you know, it's not worth it because it was so frustrating when they were late or missed and stuff. But our new teachers had to have three evaluations. And all three had to be done before the winter and holiday vacation, so that they knew Whether or not they were being non renewed, or whether or not they were being retained. And so if they needed to start looking for a job, they could start doing it over the winter holidays if they needed to.

So if they weren't going to be retained, would they have been done in December?

No, they would finish out the school year, but then they could start doing a resume and everything, you know, over the Christmas holiday, if they wanted, they could start looking for a job whenever they wanted to. Okay, most new employment. Well, the coveted jobs were done in February, March and April, in our city. So by the time the rest of us were done, and doing our final evaluations, which were usually April, a lot of the great jobs were gone. And so schools wanted to make sure that new hires had the best chance to find a new job if they weren't being retained. So they wanted to, they wanted to give them the best chance to go out and get something different if they weren't being retained.

Interesting.

So and if you wanted to switch positions, you of course, could look, you know, anytime of year, you didn't have to wait till your evaluations were over.

Did you find that often, observations would get pushed off till almost the very end of the time period? And it would be the time when the kids were

squirrely?

Yeah, we'll get squirrely easier off task, you know, we'd have to have the first one was in the first semester. So often, it would end up being December. By the time we'd have that observation, or May.

It depended on the school and the principal. But yeah, that could happen. Yeah. Yeah. Very frustrating. So depending on our principal, and their, like, agenda for the school year, we had other types of reviews built into the school year that I kind of mentioned earlier, some years, we were required to do a peer review, each quarter, we had to go do a peer review of another teacher in the building. Oftentimes, we were not allowed to do someone in our grade level,

Oh, okay.

Someone else in a different grade level, or a special or something like that. One year, we had a portfolio required. And then almost every single year that I taught, we also had to complete self evaluations. Did you have any of those evaluation methods in your schools?

We did do the peer coaching, there was a period of time where the peer coaching was very popular, and that could be done in place of the formal observations.

Wow.

And I really liked those. You know, we did have to write something up, something had to be submitted, there had to be documentation. You couldn't simply say, oh, yeah, I did that. Yeah. But I really liked that, because we would choose something that we wanted them to focus on when they came in. And so maybe they were focusing on observing student engagement. And so they would make very specific notes about what they saw different students doing because you know, you can't see every student and what they're doing when you're teaching your lesson or helping another student. So it was nice to have that other set of eyes saying, like, this person was, was working on this, this person was really attentive, this person was looking around in their desk for something, that kind of thing, or where they could focus on our questioning skills, what types of questions Did we ask that type of thing? So I really liked that because it allowed you to really have a focus for that observation.

Ours were more like Poppins. Okay, so we would just pop into somebody's room without any notice or anything. And then we had like some guiding questions to help us decide what to focus on. But they were more like Poppins.

And did you do the portfolio? Like, did you personally do the portfolio?

I did the portfolio one year.

Did you like it?

I hated?

Sorry, so much work.

What kinds of things did you include? Or were you required to include?

We were required to include a few of our assignments that we had assigned throughout the school year, an example of a study guide and a test. Some lesson plans that we had created over the school year, some teacher parent interaction like communication, okay. Some student communication, like some instructions and stuff we had given students. We had to include contributions we had made to our team, okay. So like, for example, I was the grade level leader for 10 of the 11 years I worked at that school. Okay, so I made like a calendar, like a planning book, actually that all the teachers could use. So I included schedule pages out of that I included a literacy database sheet that I had made back when that kind of stuff was not on the computer. I used to invite all the sixth grade families, teaching families, not all the students and stuff, but I used to invite all the teachers and their families to my house for a barbecue before school started. So I included that invitation. So those are some examples I included in my portfolio, we had to include a resume, I don't know if they were like trying to prepare us to leave or something. But that was pretty much our portfolio, but it was a lot of paper, just probably 100 sheets. And then we also could include other stuff that we thought might be beneficial for our cause. And every year I used to make a video of my class. Okay, those were pretty popular back in the day. Yeah. And so I would include a CD DVD of my class and our pictures and stuff throughout the year. So that was all in my portfolio. Did you ever do a portfolio?

It did for a couple years, I do not remember all the things that were in it. I do remember that my focus one year was teaching math a little bit more conceptually and pulling in some of the resources that I had found the website YouTube with Joe is a bowler Baylor, I'm not 100% sure how to say her last name. And like the mathematical mindset stuff. So I did incorporate a lot of that type of stuff into the portfolio, like different assignments that were related to that, and the different resources and that kind of thing. But it was not as detailed or as as big as your portfolio.

So you said you hated the portfolio?

Yes.

What was your favorite type of observation or evaluation method?

Peer Reviews, were probably my favorite, because I just felt like it was another teacher who knew what it was like, in the trenches. giving me feedback.

All right,

so Well, how about if we do a few quick tips for observations?

Yeah, that sounds great.

You want to start?

Sure,

I would recommend don't do the dog and pony show.

So just focus on your normal classroom routines, and your normal classroom habits, maybe spice it up a tiny bit,

just make sure you're fine tuning everything. Make sure you're using those routines in your classroom and establishing them well. Make sure your kids have those routines and habits down.

Try to get a good night's sleep the night before, so your brain is is refreshed and clear and thinking clearly try

to eat breakfast or, or something that morning, you know, like a NutriGrain bar or something so that you, you have some sustenance to go off of,

if you can try to use the restroom beforehand. I don't know about you, but I had to run all the way down the hallway to do that. But if you can, that's super convenient.

prep everything beforehand, have it ready, like laid out on a table or something so that you don't have to look around for anything, because that signals to your administrator that you're disorganized and not prepared. So have your copies out, have your sticky notes, have your pens and pencils, tissues, band aids, if you need you know, if you have a clumsy class, have everything ready.

established a good rapport with your observer. And some observers want to be ignored when they come in. Others want to be part of the class. So that's something to know ahead of time if possible. You know, do you want me to include you? Do you want me to address you? Do you want to talk with the kids? Or do you want me to ignore you? So that's something to know. And find out from your observer? Yeah.

And ask questions. Talk to your administrator. If there's anything you're unclear of, ask questions, make sure you know what they're looking for. You know what you need to do? Don't be confused before you go into it.

And as a last tip, do we want to let our students know that someone's coming in? Or do we not tell our students that someone's coming in?

Oh, that's such a good one.

I usually told them I think, but I didn't say now they're coming in beyond your best behavior.

There are a couple of years I did that.

I think early on I did but then eventually I was like they're coming in an NF I know that they want to be included and it's okay for students to I talk with them that I would let them know that if they want to be ignored, then maybe I would say to students, so and so it's coming in, you can just pretend that they're not there. So it's kind of, you know, maybe good to set the kids up with the expectation there of how it's gonna go. Yeah.

And you could also be a little bit vague, like, we're gonna have a special guest tomorrow, please be on your best behavior. I tended to get the really rough boys. Because I had a way with them, I guess. Yeah. And so I would tend to do the, the more vague, we're going to have a special guest tomorrow. And then I would take my two or three rough boys outside, because, again, we were in modulars. Right? And I would have a little chat with them. And just, we're going to have an administrator in the room tomorrow, can you please behave? You can earn some tickets or something? If you can manage yourself tomorrow, you know, and we'd have a chat about behavior and that kind of thing.

So all right, these are great ideas. So listeners, which ones will you add to your existing observation, success strategies?

Whether you have a formal observation, a drop in a peer observation, or maybe a portfolio, take some time to think about what tips would fit best into your situation. Think about what you most want your observer to see and remember about your classroom and you.

We hope this episode gave you a few new ideas that you can add to this aspect of your teaching toolbox. See you next time.

Bye.