Your breakthrough approach to top-notch teacher evaluations! This hands-on professional development guide provides concrete, proactive teacher evaluation strategies to help school leaders: Create and sustain a supportive, honest, and collaborative school culture Foster effective communication and build teacher-principal trust Conduct evidence-based teacher observations and evaluations Hold effective follow-up conversations that nurture teacher growth Promote teacher self-assessment and reflection Includes absorbing real world vignettes, reflection questions, and ample modeling examples for quick success. You’ll find quick nuggets of wisdom you can reference again and again. Use this informative guide to transform the teacher evaluation process today!
Most Americans agree on the necessity of education reform, but there is little consensus about how this goal might be achieved. The rhetoric of standards and vouchers has occupied center stage, polarizing public opinion and affording little room for reflection on the intangible conditions that make for good schools. Trust in Schools engages this debate with a compelling examination of the importance of social relationships in the successful implementation of school reform. Over the course of three years, Bryk and Schneider, together with a diverse team of other researchers and school practitioners, studied reform in twelve Chicago elementary schools. Each school was undergoing extensive reorganization in response to the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which called for greater involvement of parents and local community leaders in their neighborhood schools. Drawing on years longitudinal survey and achievement data, as well as in-depth interviews with principals, teachers, parents, and local community leaders, the authors develop a thorough account of how effective social relationships—which they term relational trust—can serve as a prime resource for school improvement. Using case studies of the network of relationships that make up the school community, Bryk and Schneider examine how the myriad social exchanges that make up daily life in a school community generate, or fail to generate, a successful educational environment. The personal dynamics among teachers, students, and their parents, for example, influence whether students regularly attend school and sustain their efforts in the difficult task of learning. In schools characterized by high relational trust, educators were more likely to experiment with new practices and work together with parents to advance improvements. As a result, these schools were also more likely to demonstrate marked gains in student learning. In contrast, schools with weak trust relations saw virtually no improvement in their reading or mathematics scores. Trust in Schools demonstrates convincingly that the quality of social relationships operating in and around schools is central to their functioning, and strongly predicts positive student outcomes. This book offer insights into how trust can be built and sustained in school communities, and identifies some features of public school systems that can impede such development. Bryk and Schneider show how a broad base of trust across a school community can provide a critical resource as education professional and parents embark on major school reforms. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology
Your breakthrough approach to top-notch teacher evaluations! This hands-on professional development guide explores the critical ingredients of communication and trust for success in the new age of teacher evaluation systems. Recognized expert Shelly Arneson provides concrete, proactive strategies to help school leaders: Create and sustain a supportive, honest, and collaborative school culture Foster effective communication and build teacher-principal trust Conduct evidence-based observations and evaluations Hold effective follow-up conversations that nurture teacher growth Promote teacher self-assessment and reflection Includes absorbing real world vignettes, reflection questions, and ample modeling examples for quick success. Before heading into an observation or post-observation conference you’ll find quick nuggets of wisdom you can reference again and again. Use this informative guide to transform the teacher evaluation process today! " An absolute essential for any bookshelf of the novice or seasoned administrator. . . . Really hits home on how trust is essential for effective evaluations. . . . The book covers all angles of why trust and evaluations go hand in hand." —Jason Eitner, Superintendent The Lower Alloways Creek School District, Canton Salem, NJ "In order for student growth to make a positive impact you, as the instructional leader, need to make a positive impact with your teachers; this starts with trust and building a better teacher via evaluations. This book will lead you in that direction!" —Elizabeth Alvarez, Principal John C. Dore Elementary School, Chicago, IL
The results are in: observations are not improving teaching and learning. Pertinently, the Gates Foundation’s recently completed effort to improve student outcomes through enhancing the teacher evaluation process failed to achieve substantive improvement. The way observations are currently designed serve as an obstacle to teacher risk-taking. Teachers fear negative evaluations when their pedagogy is rated, and they lack faith in being supported by supervisors because a trusting relationship between them and their observer has not been built. Trust-Based Observations: Maximizing Teaching and Learning Growth is a schema changing evaluation model that understands people perform at their best when they feel safe and supported. It begins with twelve, 20 minute observations per week followed by collegial conversations driven by reflective questions, sharing observed teaching strengths, and the building of safe and trusting relationships with teachers. Add the elimination of rating pedagogical skills and replace it with rating mindset, and teachers trust. When teachers fully embrace risk-taking and innovation, it leads to remarkable teaching transformations and improved student learning.
This hands-on guide is a valuable resource for both current and aspiring school leaders. Written in short, easy-to-read chapters, The Trust Factor, 2nd Edition presents real-world examples and relevant research to help you develop the essential skills you need for building trust with staff, teachers, students, and parents. The Trust Factor provides updated versions of over 50 practical strategies that will help you learn to: Recognize and avoid behaviors that damage trust Repair trust when it has been broken Navigate challenging situations, such as teacher evaluations, student discipline, parent complaints, or scarce resources Establish and sustain trust with faculty, staff, students, and community Approach social media in a way that builds trust with the community. The guidance in this book is explained with simple, easy-to-implement steps you can apply immediately to your own practice, and are accompanied by reflection questions and self-assessment tools to help practicing or aspiring educational leaders succeed.
How can you fairly evaluate your teachers' day-to-day teaching style a nd classroom management on the basis of sporadic classroom visits? How can stress be alleviated for both the principal and teachers? Effecti ve Teacher Evaluations is a must-have reference for all principals. It is a 192-page how-to handbook that helps reduce tension at evaluation s, and provides better methods for assessing performance. This easy-to -read guide supplies models and suggests creative ways to constructive ly criticize. Plus, it discusses legalities that will protect you and your school from potential lawsuits.
For the first time, school districts around the country are being required to adopt formal accountability measures to assess teacher effectiveness. In a radical shift, teacher quality will be based on outputs (student achievement; teacher observations) rather than inputs (years of service; degrees attained). This change in school culture and practice is an attempt to improve everything from individual student learning to national economic competitiveness. It also requires that administrators implement new and rigorous teacher evaluation programs that align with state and federal guidelines. Busy administrators lack the training and experience necessary to quickly and efficiently craft a teacher evaluation system that successfully meets the needs of their district. Questions like “What is the best program for my district?” or “How do I get the teachers on-board?” are being asked by school leaders across the country. This book provides real-world answers by highlighting 10 diverse model programs from around the country.
Many, perhaps even most schools, are not reaching their potential to be places of collective learning. The authors believe that one of the greatest impediments to realizing this vision is the deleterious effect of traditional systems of teacher evaluation. Rather than infantilizing teachers, we need to empower them. Traditional forms of teacher evaluation have failed. They are riddled with negative expectations about teachers and what motivates them. Taken together, these underlying assumptions form a pernicious cloud of counterproductive expectations that many teachers will "live down to". Inadvertently, the traditional system of teacher evaluation has created a vicious cycle of "self-sealing logic." It is now time for teachers to reclaim their profession, the process of which involves a relentless focus on adult learning: professional learning that is self-directed. The more dynamic and stimulating the culture of adult learning, the more dynamic and stimulating student learning will be.
Moving beyond the expectations and processes of conventional teacher evaluation, this book provides a framework for teacher evaluation that better prepares educators to serve culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners. Covering theory, research, and practice, María del Carmen Salazar and Jessica Lerner showcase a model to aid prospective and practicing teachers who are concerned with issues of equity, excellence, and evaluation. Introducing a comprehensive, five-tenet model, the book demonstrates how to place the needs of CLD learners at the center and offers concrete approaches to assess and promote cultural responsiveness, thereby providing critical insight into the role of teacher evaluation in confronting inequity. This book is intended to serve as a resource for those who are committed to the reconceptualization of teacher evaluation in order to better support CLD learners and their communities, while promoting cultural competence and critical consciousness for all learners.
This essential text for prospective school leaders enrolled in instructional supervision and evaluation courses provides the knowledge and practical tools to improve teacher effectiveness. Melding theory and practice, this book is a definitive guide to successful classroom observations, pre- and post-observation conferences, and approaches such as action research, peer coaching, and mentoring. The fourth edition of this text has been thoroughly updated to meet the needs of school leaders in today’s educational climate. Features new to this edition include: Additional and updated tools to support school leaders in conducting effective classroom observations and assessing teachers’ professional learning needs; New case studies, suggested fieldwork, and extended reflections to outline practical applications for the strategies discussed; Suggested readings to supplement the information included in this book; Expanded discussions of professional learning communities and the topic of motivation; New chapters on teacher evaluation and instructional strategies that support personalization and learning technologies. This book offers strategies to work with teachers at all stages in their careers, laying a strong foundation for effective instructional supervision in PreK-12 schools. Many of the templates and tools in this book are also available as free eResource downloads from our website (www.routledge.com/9781138649347).
