Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Teacher's Opportunity to Evaluate Admistrators

In this era of high student and teacher expectations and seemingly perpetual change, school leaders must do more than maintain the status quo. Schools, and thus administrators, must learn and evolve if we are to see improved student performance.

Like most of you, administrators and teachers in our school are working through a new teacher evaluation system that focuses on student achievement.  While I believe our school has done a good job of adapting and embracing the new evaluation system, I know my role as an administrator has changed significantly.

As an assistant principal, I strive to build a trusting environment that minimizes teacher stress and reduces their sense of vulnerability. Ideally, creating such an environment will enable our school to tackle educational change.

But, have I created a trusting environment? Have I empowered teachers? Have I communicated effectively and openly? What about incorporating data to guide instruction?

To find out, I’ve asked teachers to complete an evaluation of me (I gave the same survey last year, but I’m curious to see how the results differ).

The principal evaluation survey will:
  1. guide me as I continually seek to improve
  2. assist me in determining whether I'm meeting my goals
  3. spurn discussion 
  4. set the tone for and model reflection  

Here’s a link to the survey. It's a Google form. Feel free to copy and share.

The survey is also shown below.

What questions am I missing?


2 comments:

Tim Slack said...

Thanks for posting this! We talk about formative and summative assessment with students. Why not admins? I think we always have an idea of how we are doing. However, it would be very powerful to actually see the results of a survey. I believe that teachers would really appreciate this and it would provide great feedback!

Reed Gillespie said...

Tim,
Thanks. I think you're exactly right. As much as anything it's about demonstrating an openness with the staff and showing them that you really do value their opinion. I'll share the results with them (and on this blog).