TeachNow, Teaching and Learning With Processes in Math

In my previous post, I talked about teacher evaluation at my school and what I would assess to make it more practical. I mentioned that there were factors unique to SPiS that made implementing the types of evaluation systems described by the TNTP and NEA reports difficult, but that they were outside the scope of what my assignment required. This post discusses the factors. The first factor is the absence of support bodies that are present in the USA. No body represent teachers, and there is no school district (SPIS often operate separate from local educational districts due to diplomatic concerns) There are networks of schools for the purpose of organizing athletic tournaments and/or pooling PD resources, but nothing collectively representing teachers. The missing levels of support mean that administrators and teachers have additional work to do, which lessens the time available to conduct meaningful teacher evaluations. Many administrators also have to perform a Marketing role as ...

I’ve been teaching in Small Private International Schools (SPIS) for all of my teaching career and have had little useful evaluation of my effectiveness as a teacher. The driving force for evaluation has often been pending accreditation visits, getting evidence for dismissal, or appeasing influential parents who complain. Occasionally, there was concern for improving teacher practice to improve student retention, but the evaluators were spread too thin, making that the process erratic and infrequent. Teacher assessment in a SPIS can be described the same way as in the The New Teachers Project (TNTP) report: infrequent, unfocused, undifferentiated, unhelpful, and inconsequential  (The New Teachers Project, 2010) . In proposing a solution, the TNTP report has six Design Standards that schools should follow when creating teacher evaluation systems and the National Education Association (NEA) has six Key Principles.  I will analyze my school’s teacher evaluation protocol usin...