GSU Blogger - Dr. S. Kahrs
Monday, September 28, 2015
Teacher Observations - AP/Department Chairs
I am in a bit of a bind when it comes to teacher observations since both the Assistant Principal's over the department observe for the Brief's and the Formatives. The Department Chairs of each department help the AP with one brief per semester which is 2/6 observations for the entire school year. My situation is this: In both of the departments I support, ESOL and Foreign Language, my department chairs are very generous in giving Exemplary for many standards. We have a total of 10 standards to rate and usually only 3-4 of the standards are observed in a ten minute brief observation. I am one who is very cautious of giving the Exemplary rating as Proficient is the expectation for all teachers and that teachers grow throughout the year. The more you observe them and the actions become constant, the more Exemplary would be deserving. As an example, I observed one of my ESOL teachers a few weeks ago and gave her proficient's in 4 categories. This week, our department chair gave all Exemplary's. I have set up a meeting to discuss this situation and that if an Exemplary or Needs Development is to be given, we should discuss before sharing the observation with the teacher. I feel like I am going to find myself between a rock and a hard place when it comes time for my next observation and they want to know why they are not Exemplary and "only" Proficient. My other concern is that the department chairs spend countless hours with our teachers, more than the AP's do at least. They see them leading and sharing instructional strategies, etc. I feel that AP needs to be in the loop and therefore the observations need to be discussed before sharing. Does anyone have any other suggestions about how to be on the same page in completing observations?
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We had this same issue at my school. Even though I personally do not "officially" evaluate other teachers, I do evaluate new teachers to my school. We do this as an informal process where I come in, observe their lesson, rate them on the standards, and then we discuss my ratings. I did attend an evaluator TKES training session and this exact problem you described was talked about quite a bit. The problem is INTER-RATER AGREEMENT OR RELIABILITY. This is a hot topic right now with TKES evaluations. It basically means that no 2 humans will see the exact same thing even when observing them together. The training session shows teachers teaching lessons and we have to rate the lesson on the standards. The results were crazy. Very statistically different from person to person. Our administrators are trying to combat this by all 5 of them observing the same lesson, rating the lesson, and then talking about their scores. I would first read this from the GADOE:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gadoe.org/School-Improvement/Teacher-and-Leader-Effectiveness/Documents/FY15%20TKES%20and%20LKES%20Documents/QG%20-%20TKES%20-%20Inter-Rater%20Agreement%20or%20Reliability.pdf
Then I would meet with the department chairs and have them read this same document. Maybe all of you can observe a lesson together and rate what you saw. Then discuss your rating differences.
Ashley, I SO understand your situation. I was in the same position last year. I support our Social Studies department and went into many classrooms. At first, I was doing walk-throughs, merely observing without actually completing the assessment tool.I met several times with the department chairs and we discussed each of the standards and look-fors. Our department chairs complete the brief assessment and I the formative. With one of my teachers, the department chair gave her exemplary on one of the standards. In my evaluation, I gave her needs development. I saw no evidence of meeting the standard and when I ask for documentation of how she was meeting the standard, nothing was provided. As you can imagine, the teacher was quite upset with me. The teacher and I were able to work through it and by the end of the year she was proficient.
ReplyDeleteThis year, during pre-planning, I met again with the department chairs to discuss standards. They felt that their department gets "cheated" when it comes to observation and not enough credit for all they do. Our department chairs have 2 planning periods. So I have set up a schedule where I go into classrooms with the department chairs and the 3 of us complete brief observations together and then meet to discuss what we each see. It is time consuming but it is important to make sure we all are on the same page. We have completed many observations together and I will tell you that it has helped tremendously. I listen to them, they listen to me, we discuss, share opinions and it has been beneficial for us all!
I agree with JP and Paula. In order to be consistent across the board, observations should be done together and discuss the various categories(exemplary, proficient, etc.....). The inconsistency tends to also have an impact on rapport building and morale within the school. We have also struggled with this at my school. My principal often holds faculty meeting to address the various components and then the teachers team up and look at each of the categories and what they look like in a class. He has said exemplary does not come from one observation but consistency over several observations. I really think observations should be done by at least two people, when possible. I am an instructional coach, which I feel helps me with my observation, because I am to see my teachers on a consistent basis. For example, I observed a teacher that is normally great! However, yesterday was the first day I did not see her teaching at her potential. I immediately knew something was not right and I spoke to her. My only concern is that other observers only get to base their observations off of 10-20 min, which I think contributes to some of the discourse with observations. Observations to a certain degree are subjective, which I why I like what the speaker(Jim Knight) at the Principal Center suggested, which is video taping teachers. I had a teacher that would dispute all of your feedback and last week she came up to me and apologized. She video taped herself and saw all of the things I and the other administrators had given her feedback on. As a another suggestion, maybe one person can videotape and you guys can sit down and view the lesson and discuss the observation before providing feedback.
ReplyDeleteI had the same issues when I first began conducting walkthroughs at my school and providing feedback to teachers. So what the instructional leadership team did was that we all went together into each teachers' classrooms and we used that as a way to calibrate our walkthrough document so that we were all on the same page when we rated our teachers. This allowed us to have candid discussion what was exemplary vs proficient vs ineffective or needs development.
ReplyDeleteAt my school, Department chairs are allowed to conduct brief 5 to 10 minutes observation. These observations are recorded on a tool that we built based on the GTES standards. Because evaluations and performance have the ability to be linked to human resources and tenure, we keep formal evals to the administrative team.
ReplyDelete