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Posted by:
Joseph Buczek
Research/tech assistance org
Edgewater, FL
Topic:
Teacher Evaluation
Message:
I have found teacher evaluation to be a most tenuous affair. If a really good teacher evaluates a weak teacher she/he can find many faults in the weak teacher. But, the question that presents itself is "Will this weak teacher eventually become a good teacher if I keep her on?" Will the weak teacher develop into a good one through her perseverance and depth of understanding of her subject? I have found that it is wrong to judge of another person. Nobody is that smart that she/he can criticize another. I was criticized in elementary school for being stubborn. And, yet, that same stubborness made me successful in my business because I had a rare perseverance when it came to analyzing difficult electronics problems in equipment. So, who can judge of another? Also, suppose you have a really good analytical teacher who knows her/his subject extremely well. Now, very often a weak teacher evaluating that strong teacher will not be thinking along the lines of the strong teacher and write a poor evaluation of the strong teacher. I have seen this happen many times. There is a lot of jealousy among school administrators and often they resent good teachers and, so, write poor evaluations on them.
A good teacher does not need any evaluation. A good teacher does have the degrees and has put in the working time to learn her/his craft well. A music teacher will, hopefully, have performed on stage hundreds of times before large audiences, been to auditions, understands stagefright and ways to overcome it, how to move the fingers over the instrument to get elegant sounds, and how to get audience appeal, etc. A good math teacher will have worked in engineering, or accounting for several years and understands what the math is for and how it is used, etc. It is only when you have lived with, and know how to use your subject that you can explain all the intricacies of the subject to students. A good teacher does not need an evaluation and will get insulted when someone of lesser ability tries to evaluate her/him.
A good teacher is known by the clarity and depth of understanding she/he presents and by their ability to motivate the students. You can evaluate a teacher on this basis but, not by trying to critique the teacher's methods unless you are very well versed in the teacher's subject. Rather than evaluate a teacher, I prefer to provide all the assistance that I can to help the teacher become a better teacher.
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