Having kids answer surveys is important on many levels. It provides feedback for teachers, gives us an insight into student perception, and provides kids a voice.
So they should fill out such forms. The tricky question is how those forms are used. They should mostly be for teacher info only. But I can see trends being taken into account, if kids often kid is saying the teacher doesn't provide help or is cruel, then that should be looked in to.
This is a bad time to ask me this question. If pete wasn't in gifted, I'd be all over his teacher's ass. Not a day goes by that homegirl isn't passing out group punishments for minor infractions up in that bitch. Pete manages to get out of them because the shit goes down while he's off in gifted class.
Maybe I'm an asshole or ignorant but if every single day you are making your kids write I will not talk in class 200 times ersumshit, maybe you have a classroom management problem.
It's given pete a bad taste in his mouth for this lady.
Post by UMaineTeach on Sept 25, 2012 19:35:45 GMT -5
I can see getting student feedback as a formative assessment for the teacher to use for reflection. Not super excited to have students' assessments of me as a summative assessment.
I really can't get behind group punishments. I felt bad enough today making the whole class re-do a fire drill, missing some recess time, after 80% of them messed it up and I was legitimately scared if there was a real fire they would all die.
But I can see trends being taken into account, if kids often kid is saying the teacher doesn't provide help or is cruel, then that should be looked in to.
This is something I've never quite understood about the aversion to student evaluations of teachers. Wouldn't administrators be looking at patterns and trends rather than random individual complaints?
But I can see trends being taken into account, if kids often kid is saying the teacher doesn't provide help or is cruel, then that should be looked in to.
This is something I've never quite understood about the aversion to student evaluations of teachers. Wouldn't administrators be looking at patterns and trends rather than random individual complaints?
That's what I've always thought too. My grad students do evaluations of my classes and it's glaringly obvious when students flat out hate me vs. when they are actually offering insight into how to improve my class and teaching skills.
The dept. head has never addressed the one or two evals where it's obvious the student had an axe to grind. And I really try to take the critiques to heart and improve my courses.
Post by rugbywife on Sept 25, 2012 20:23:30 GMT -5
We do climate surveys too but they don't identify teachers at all.
I ask kids for anonymous feedback sometimes, I use it to get an idea of what they like and what they don't. The reality is that I am never going to make all my kids happy, it's the nature of teaching. Some kids hate working in groups; sorry, it's a life skill. Some kids hate working alone; sorry, it's a life skill. I look for overall trends, like all students hating one thing or loving another.
As for teachers with poor classroom management skills; I would be very surprised if an administrator wasn't aware and even more concerned if they weren't doing anything about it. Generally parents go to the admin when they feel as though their child is being done wrong by. A survey isn't the right venue for this kind of thing, if a parent genuinely feels as though the classroom management techniques being used are inappropriate they need to talk to the teacher, then the admin, then higher than the admin if need be.
I have no problem with using surveys to improve my practice, so long as they are being viewed by me alone and not being saved in some sort of evaluative file. But I don't need anonymous surveys to let me know if something is up, parents tend to be fairly vocal.
IDK, rugby. I tend to not mess with teachers at all unless their fuckery is prolonged, mean spirited, or sucking the very life out of my kid. In my experience, the more level headed parents are less likely to go to the principal than the hot messes.
IDK, rugby. I tend to not mess with teachers at all unless their fuckery is prolonged, mean spirited, or sucking the very life out of my kid. In my experience, the more level headed parents are less likely to go to the principal than the hot messes.
Why though? I don't get this. If you genuinely feel as thought the education of your child is important and if you genuinely feel as though you are getting the whole story/real story from your kids and if you genuinely feel as though what is going on doesn't rub you the right way, why wouldn't you go?
I listen to you (general, not you habs) all complain SO much about the state of the education in the states, about how horrible the teaching is, and I am genuinely beginning to think that the administration is partially to blame. Maybe it's because I am gearing up to become a VP and have these things on my mind but the admin sets the tone, and they are there to listen to your concerns, investigate further and intervene as needed.
I can't speak to the teacher in your son's case (although, I have used those kinds of techniques before, sparingly and never with the whole class, only with the kids in question - I had an awesome 'gum' essay at one point) but if I were a teacher (oh wait, I am), I would always want a parent to come to me first. But as an administrator (not there yet!) I would at least want parents to feel comfortable sharing their concerns with the admin.
That being said, I agree that there are hot mess parents, the ones that always have issues, every year, regardless of the teacher. The reality is that as an administrator they would still be my responsibility, even if they are high maintenance and hard to please. Such is the reality of public school teaching, we don't choose our clients, they choose us.
I don't know, I just think that if our only effective manner of communicating our concerns is through these kinds of surveys we have larger problems. I mean, we use them, and we get an idea of what the kids think, and what the parents think (all parents, kids grades 4-8) and we do use that data, particularly in terms of our safe schools goal (read: anti-bullying) but I would like to think that a good administrator will have established an atmosphere within the school community where parents feel comfortable voicing their concerns when necessary.
Post by RoxMonster on Sept 25, 2012 20:36:04 GMT -5
I use anonymous surveys at the end of each semester (I teach HS), and like some of you have said, it's really obvious when a kid just has something out for you or earned a bad grade in your class and therefore, hates you, etc. versus students who really care giving constructive feedback and suggestions. I do adapt and change things based on real suggestions I'm given by students. I ignore the odd one or two that just obviously have an axe to grind.
I would be concerned with administrators looking at them and handing out consequences based on them. I suppose looking at trends would be fine, and that will work if you have a level-headed and logical administrator. That is not always the case, however. I would hope that if a student/parent had a serious issue with a teacher, it would have been addressed long before the end-of-class survey, which is not really the place to air serious issues either.
Post by 5thofjuly on Sept 25, 2012 20:38:17 GMT -5
I'm a professor who gets student evaluations every semester. On the whole, I find them fairly useful. However, I also get comments like "I love your shoes." and random drawings (my favorite so far was a fist smashing a boat) which are meaningless. None of my supervisors have ever commented on mine. That said, I've had colleagues in other departments whose chairs/deans ignored the 73 great evals and instead used the 2 that said things like, "You didn't help me enough on the paper" (when students were told verbally and in writing to bring a draft to office hours or stay after class for help or make an appointment if needed) and "I didn't think it was fair that we didn't get a study guide" (when there were outlines on the board every day) to deny merit raises, make tenure threats, etc.
So, if you have a good supervisor who knows how to read and interpret data and gives you an opportunity for explanation (e.g., if your parent died mid-way through the semester, I'd imagine you weren't exactly perky during most classes) they're great. If you don't have such a supervisor, they can be the bane of your existence. Then it's this constant game to try to figure out how to get rated more highly on things like, "Grading criteria are clearly identified" (which I always get ranked the lowest on of all of the items on the list, despite the fact that I include really detailed paper rubrics in their syllabi and referred to them often) and "Professor encouraged us to develop a more comprehensive picture of my personal values" when I want them to do the opposite (show empathy and an understanding of cultural relativity.)
There's also some evidence that students consistently rate young, white, female professors more highly, all other things considered. I wish there was a better way to control for that.
I do love in this article the idea that students "get it"---if teachers control the classroom, challenge the students, and really want to be there, that reflects well in their evaluations. The students can tell if, on the whole, those things are true. In that way you can be the "hard teacher" but still get great evals if you're also supporting students while challenging them.
Here is why I like surveys: if you rely on people to step up and comment on their own, you will generally only hear from the extremes. I personally want to hear from everyone.
I use anonymous surveys at the end of each semester (I teach HS)
Now that you mention it. I remember doing a survey for a teacher in HS. I only remember doing one, but it must have been school wide, because this was not the kind of teacher who would come up with it on his own.
I remember that I wrote paragraphs to explain my negative answers and let him know that I understood why he did some of the douchey things he did, but that he should really, really re-think it for the next year. I put my name on it. I owned it. He was impressed with my thoroughness, but I am not sure that he took anything to heart. He was a first-year, second career teacher, who had a rocky marriage, was cheating with the secretary, and was an alcoholic. Not sure that good teaching was his biggest goal.
Post by basilosaurus on Sept 25, 2012 20:48:34 GMT -5
I think if it's ok to use as a subjective measure. If your admin is capable of weeding out the outlier kids who just obviously hate you, that it's fair.
However, if you average scores to obtain metrics, and use that as your only evaluation, it can be rather harmful, and not necessarily an adequate picture. I know it's dissimilar to the classroom in many ways, but my old job assessed us like that. So, what would happen is that my monthly average would be fairly low if I were on a schedule of teaching the more difficult classes, or the ones where people tended to score lower (a room full of engineers were the worst!). Let's face it, people are going to have less fun in a challenging database class than in a fun powerpoint one, and scores reflect that, but not necessarily my teaching ability.
So, your art teacher vs a math teacher, it's not going to be comparable. Even within disciplines, there's going to be variety in their classes, so a direct comparison may be difficult.
A good survey will minimize some of those differences (such as my teacher helped me when I struggled vs this class was easy/hard). But I'm still wary of inappropriate application.
Here is why I like surveys: if you rely on people to step up and comment on their own, you will generally only hear from the extremes. I personally want to hear from everyone.
ITA with this. It's like people who review products on Amazon and Target. There's always a wide disparity because it's only the people who love it or hate it that take enough time to comment.
I think you can get a lot of valuable info from the middle from surveys they have to fill out. Maybe you see people bringing up the same thing and realize it needs to be addressed, but it wasn't something that they all felt was worth bringing up with you or the administration.
Personally, as a parent, it's hard to know exactly what is true when you have a young kid because they just aren't clear about much of anything. And I imagine as they get older, it gets harder in other ways because they are smart enough to keep some info back if it's not favorable to them. IDK - I'd just have a hard time complaining over a lot without a good idea of the full story, but I might mention it in a survey.
I really like Jackson's teacher this year, and so does he, which is great, but I also have the time to be the room mom and volunteer in his classroom which gives me more insight (part of why I'm doing both) into what is going on. I have an opinion of her but it's not extreme in either way, so she'd never get feedback from me without something like a survey. Nor would the administration.
Rugby, this isn't snarky, but how on earth would your admin usually know about bad classroom management if they only evaluate every 5 years?
1. They may evaluate once every 5 but they should be dropping into classrooms more often than that. My principal has been into my classroom at least 10 times this year alone.
2. They should be able to get a feeling, between those drop ins, watching me with students in the hall/lunch, etc, what my relationship is like with students. Do I have a good relationship with my students? Do I speak to them appropriately? Effectively? Do they respond well to the techniques I use? This can be as little as watching a teacher take the kids to the gym, or watching a teacher speak to a student about an issue in the hall. Or when they walk into the classroom, what are the students doing? What is the teacher doing? How does the teacher react to the admin entering? How do the students react?
3. A teacher with poor classroom management will have more student discipline issues and these will inevitably end up in the office. A teacher with poor classroom management can take a class of angels and screw it up. There will be visits to the office on the part of students and the administrator will hear what is going on. They will, at least initially and depending on the student in question, take these with a grain of salt. But when a pattern emerges, or if the claims are serious, they will begin making more drop ins to the classroom, and they will watch for ongoing visits to the office...are they always made by one student or by multiple students? Students who have previously had issues or students who have never had issue with a teacher before?
I can tell you that my previous principal (of 8 years) knew my classroom management skills very well even though in my 8 years of working for him I was only evaluated twice and never by him. He knew that I had a great relationship with my kids because even when I had some of the most challenging students I only sent them to the office sparingly because I believe that discipline is my responsibility. I also believe that in 99% of cases I don't have to use active classroom management skills because I a) know my students and program for them effectively and b) build a relationship with my students that allows me to work with them through problems rather than against them.
He knew all that (and has said as much in my presence to other teachers and to parents) just from being my admin, not from any formal evaluation process. That's his job. It's my job to know my kids. It's his job to know the kids AND his teachers.
Ok I think we just have different views of Evals and such. Your description here seems much more like the states than how you described it in the other thread. That informal system is a form of evaluation
Or maybe it was just how I read it lol. I could have just misunderstood.
Post by rugbywife on Sept 25, 2012 20:53:43 GMT -5
I would actually have no problem with my grade 8s (I taught grade 8 for the last 5 years, now I teach grade 5) evaluating me at the end of their grade 9 year! I often have kids come back and say that my high expectations and hard line was great in retrospect, just not at the time!
I've always heard that female professors are ranked lower than male professors on student evals, and young female professors get the lowest average scores, in part because they are seen as less authoritative than male colleagues.
I also think it really depends how the surveys will be used. As a grad student I had an undergrad accuse me of sexism in his eval. If my advisor had not know about my problems with this student throughout the semester (including a complaint that I graded too harshly when his friend liked his paper!) it could have been a major problem for me.
Ok I think we just have different views of Evals and such. Your description here seems much more like the states than how you described it in the other thread. That informal system is a form of evaluation
Or maybe it was just how I read it lol. I could have just misunderstood.
Yes and no, there is no paperwork for anything I just talked about. There is no formal aspect to it. It is an ongoing analysis of the teachers within your school but there is no evaluation as such.
One of the huge aspects of administration is constantly taking the 'pulse' of your school. What are the parents thinking? What are the kids doing? What are the teachers teaching? How are the teachers teaching? How do the parents know what's going on? Are the students engaged?
The list is endless and I truly believe it is more of an art than anything else. A good administrator does it seamlessly and makes it look easy.
A poor administrator acts reactively. They only find out about a teacher who is struggling when it has been going on for a while, and then they may not have built a relationship with that teacher that allows them to support them effectively. A poor administrator wouldn't know what the pulse of their school is. They may be the type of administrator who is more of a manager, overwhelmed by paperwork and to do lists but unaware of the larger picture.
I only get a piece of paper saying whether I am a 'satisfactory' teacher every five years but my administration should always have an idea of how effective of a teacher I am and if my effectiveness is ever in doubt, evaluation year or not, they should be looking for ways to support me towards improvement.
Are you guys on the British system in regards to grades? For example, are grade 8s 12/13 year olds?m(our 7th grade)
Just curious. I always assumed it was the same as the UK.
Same as US I think just org'ed differently. We do birthdays from Jan - Jan though
Elementary Panel:
- Schools are either JK-5, JK-6, 6-8 or JK-8. All newly built schools are JK-8, only older schools are the other groupings.
JK (must be 4 at some point in the calendar year) - some programs are half day, some full day, all full day by 2015 SK (must be 5 at some point in the calendar year) - some programs are half day, some full day, all full day by 2015 Grade 1 - 6yrs... Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6 Grade 7 Grade 8 - 13 years...
Secondary Panel Grades 9 - 12 (plus a victory lap as needed)
Post by rugbywife on Sept 25, 2012 21:08:26 GMT -5
They can turn 17 at the end of their grade 11 year or in the beginning of their grade 12 year. ETA: They must be 17 by December 31st of their 12th grade. Unless they were held back, which essentially NEVER happens here. Although, it looks differently in high school because it's based on credits.
Oh, and because of my union I can't teach high school, which is pretty much the ONLY thing I hate about our unions. There is an elementary union and secondary union...I took my first job in elementary and I would have to give up all my seniority (which is like gold here, there are NO jobs) in order to switch panels. So I have been a classroom teacher for grades 4-8 and I have also taught 'coverage' (1 period a week) for JK - 3.
In my experience, most teachers and admin aren't going to do shit to change it unless you are all hot and bothered. Although, even then they tend to stick to their guns.
I found in the early years that my minor complaints were explained away without taking into consideration any change that might be implemented. I'm not saying teachers don't give a shit as much as well, they're educated in these things, and good or bad, they believe their education justifies what they are doing in the classroom.
Bottom line, aside from the parameters I mentioned earlier, I think most parents and teachers see the minor issues as a difference in opinion.
I also figure that teachers deal with so much bullshit and principals even more so, that commenting on something that's really a difference in opinion is just clogging up time spent on real issues.
So I don't like group punishments. Big whoop. I'm sure there's another parent whose kid is being bullied. How about I let the teacher deal with that instead. After all, if these kids would shut their damned mouths, they wouldn't have to worry about group assignments. LOL
In my experience, most teachers and admin aren't going to do shit to change it unless you are all hot and bothered. Although, even then they tend to stick to their guns.
I found in the early years that my minor complaints were explained away without taking into consideration any change that might be implemented. I'm not saying teachers don't give a shit as much as well, they're educated in these things, and good or bad, they believe their education justifies what they are doing in the classroom.
Bottom line, aside from the parameters I mentioned earlier, I think most parents and teachers see the minor issues as a difference in opinion.
Okay, so, if you feel that way about your complaints, do you genuinely think that a survey would be taken any differently? Or is it more that if everyone was doing the survey and everyone was commenting on the same things then they would HAVE to take it seriously?
I can see what you mean about hot and bothered parents getting their way, and how you might feel like your issues/complaints were over-looked/explained away (added after).
I also figure that teachers deal with so much bullshit and principals even more so, that commenting on something that's really a difference in opinion is just clogging up time spent on real issues.
So I don't like group punishments. Big whoop. I'm sure there's another parent whose kid is being bullied. How about I let the teacher deal with that instead. After all, if these kids would shut their damned mouths, they wouldn't have to worry about group assignments. LOL
I agree with all of that up to a point. I guess that I would want you to speak up if a) you felt like your child was being wrongly lumped in with those students and b) if you felt as though your child's happiness at school was being affected.
But I think you have already stated that neither of those are the case.