I recently babysat for one of my grandsons during one of our many snow and ice storms. When Mother Nature finally gave us a break, we decided to go for a walk and see how much snow had fallen. As he put on his snow boots, I casually remarked that I really liked his boots. I said it because I wanted to circumvent any possible delays in our walk with the expected, “I don’t want to wear boots.” But, as children often do, he surprised me with his response. He looked at me and said, “Yes, they are nice. What is it about these boots that you like so much?” Now, I have been known to identify my grandsons (4 of them) as geniuses but this was so unexpected. I said nothing. So, he repeated his question. “Grandmom, why do you like these boots so much?”

How amazing that at his age (5), he knows to collect evidence because saying you like something is not enough of an evaluation. He was asking me for evidence to support my assessment of his boots. Asking for this evidence has become the norm for a 5 year old!

So, how do we help our teachers and administrators understand that they need to collect the appropriate evidence to determine educator effectiveness and give them adequate time to understand the components of the evaluation process and what the steps are to move in the right direction?

It’s a challenge for teachers to “unpack” the core standards and really understand how standards differ from grade to grade. They need to know what each standard means and what their students need to know in order to meet and exceed those standards. Once they know what the students need, they must identify what they need as teachers to move their students towards successful growth. All of this takes time and I didn’t even mention the educator effectiveness process or writing SLOs to name a few.

With the implementation of the core standards, the assessments, and the educator effectiveness process becoming the foci for our teachers and their schools, we miss the most important things… how do help teachers engage and prepare students so that they are college and career ready? How do we help teachers become innovative and creative without fear of being evaluated as “needing improvement” or worse “failing”? How do we help teachers become better teachers if we do not help them plan, deliver, reflect, and adjust their instructional strategies and classroom practices?

One way is for the instructional coaches and other teacher leaders to help plan ongoing professional development, provide opportunities for follow up where professional learning is demonstrated, and help teachers become reflective practitioners where they can talk about their practice and make the necessary modifications to their teaching without fear of negative evaluations. You know the adage, “Learn from your mistakes.” How can we learn from our mistakes if we are not given the chance to make those mistakes in a risk-free environment?