Thread: Self-evaluation

Are you talking about self-evaluation in the administrative sense - as part of the mid-year or end of year teacher evaluation or are you talking about self-evaluation in the sense of applying for a job?

I'm not sure I understand the context of your question.

Regards,

David

I mean, self-evaluation is an evaluation that teachers do _anytime they like_ in order to find out their problems or the points that they would like to improve. It is very essential process for teachers'professional develpoment. Teachers can do observations, or ask other colleagues to observe their lesson, prepare questionnairs, do interviews, write diaries/journals/field note/lesson report in order to discover the problem and find out some solution to improve their teaching.

Aliye

Hmmmmm ... I think I go about refining my teaching a bit differently from that.

As a classroom teacher of 17.4 years, I have a good feel for when lessons and units go well ... and when they don't. Normally at the end of each year, I reevaluate my units. I toss out what didn't work and revise the units. Sometimes I try new strategies that I learned from different workshops or from surfing the internet. Sometimes I revamp a unit entirely and restructure it from the ground up - to make it more hands on or to better gear it towards cooperative learning.

These are the things I love about education ... though these are not the things I am doing now.

My current school teaches to the test and everything is so tightly managed that all lesson plans are written by the senior teachers on the grade level. (I am not one of these people). Everyone on the grade level is expected to teach to the lesson plan and I have been told that "no deviation is allowed." I have also been told that there is no room for creativity because then all of the parents would want their teachers to be creative.

I wish this wasn't so - but that's where I am right now.

So my end of year objective is to survive the year and to do as good a job as I can for the students in my class.

At year's end I'm out of here - and off to a school that will hopefully have a great deal of less micromanagement.

David

I used to work in a district that highly valued self-evaluation. Every year teachers were required to write a "professional growth plan" and submit it to their administrator. We had to reflect on our teaching and choose an area we felt we wanted to focus on for the year. We were encouraged to include who we would collaborate with to achieve our plan. We had to outline a timeline of how we would achieve our plan and what indicators would show success. We would sit down with our admin. usually in the late fall to discuss our plan and see how the administrator could support you. We were entitled to one day off with pay to use to help us impliment our plan (visit other schools, collaborate with a partner, etc.) as well as access to our Pro.D money for workshops, etc. This plan replaced teacher evaluations. It was felt that we were professionals and having a principal come in and evaluate every 5 years did not encourage the commitment to learning we wanted to demonstrate to our students.

I loved this system. You were encouraged to evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses in an environment that was supportive. I think it made me a better teacher. Although I left that district 3 years ago (for family reasons - I miss it! ) Every Summer I still reflect on my own teaching and choose an area to focus on for the upcoming year. It is much harder now as there is no support from the district to impliment my plans, but I still find I follow through all the same. This year I am being evaluated by my principal with the old style checklist. He hates it as much as I do! In my opinion principals should be seen as a member of a collaborative team where we all strive for professional excellence and this old fashion type of evaluation doesn't encourage that.

I hope that answered your questions, somewhat.

Catherine