Activity Description And Summary

Activity Description and Summary For this activity I was responsible for performing a teacher evaluation. I conducted the evaluation on Carol who is one of our middle school math teachers. She has been a long time aid and switched over to being a classroom teacher a year ago. After watching her teach and filling out the district evaluation rubric alongside my mentor we came to the conclusion that she needed to work on her communication with students. When comparing scores we both felt that she was ineffective with using the proper language with the students and don’t allow them to vocalize with each other. My mentor suggested Ruby Payne’s book A framework for understanding poverty: A cognitive approach. This is something she was familiar

I have experienced a much more difficult process the past six years in Arizona. In our district you have one scheduled evaluation and one unscheduled evaluation. At our school we have one evaluator and that is the principal Jill Brack. The two formal evaluations are documented and placed into the FCCSC Teacher Evaluation spreadsheet. You are graded on a 100 point scale. Your two formal evaluations are worth 87 points of your grade. Student growth/achievement is worth three points based upon the mastery on the end-of-the-year assessment. The school grade, school improvement, corporation improvement goals are each worth three points. The final point is achieved by mandatory core professionalism. This is can be met by showing up to work on time, dressing professionally, and not missing an excessive amount of work. The goal of the district is to have all staff members receive an effective rating or higher on their evaluations. If you receive a rating of effective or higher you receive a raise the following year based on our pay scale ladder. If you are unable to achieve a score of effective you will be put on a plan to be monitored and provided more help from the administrator. After two consecutive years being rated under effective you could be dismissed from the

In the past few years Laurel school has increased its school rating by three letter grades in the past three years. “Teacher professional development and the implementation of PLC groups this year will help us continue to raise our school rating” (Jill Brack, personal communication, February 25, 2015). The evaluation data of the teachers has been higher than usual the past few years according to my mentor. The recent spike in scores can be attributed to more professional development activities. “Decisions about curriculum and instruction are often made without reference to real problems of classroom life. Teachers are ‘developed’ by outside ‘experts,’ rather than participating in their own development” (Roseler, 2013, pg. 621). This quote has helped show the shift in our district. We are implementing PLC’s in our school and this allows us to take on leadership roles. I think having these roles will raise our own evaluation scores and I will be interested in seeing if scores are higher than last year at the end of the school