Evaluation

Evaluations took up way too much time when Ohio decided to do OTES. The Ohio Teacher Evaluation System was designed to "help" to standardize teacher evaluations. A rubric must be followed with ratings of accomplished, skilled, developing, or ineffective. On paper, this was a good idea. Realistically, this was a commander of my time. Teachers having a complete evaluation had two in-person thirty-minute evaluations, one by appointment and one by a drop-in. They also had to have two walk-throughs throughout the year (add six more on top of the twenty-six), a professional growth plan, data showing the growth of students, and a survey of their professional development needs. Multiply this by my twenty-six teachers who were up for evaluation last year. The system ate up my time on the job and at home. The duties of a principal roll all day long, and your intentions were sometimes only wishes. I miraculously made it to almost every evaluation with an appointment time set. Getting the assessments done in the winter/spring was easier because I could go on my own timetable. Once in the classroom for the evaluations, the unexpected would sometimes happen to even the best lesson plans and strategies.

One of these times was when I was a first-year teacher. I was doing a cut-and-paste activity with opposites and was explaining the directions to my extended-day kindergarten class. All of a sudden, I heard a shrill scream. I looked in the direction of the scream and low and behold, a spider's silk had dropped down from the ceiling with the spider attached right in front of my little student. My stomach sank to my toes, and my heart beat out of my chest. I looked at my aide, and she grabbed a Kleenex as I calmed down the student. She handed me the Kleenex, and I captured the spider and silk and gave the Kleenex filled with spider back to the aide while continuing the lesson about using scissors. Oh, it didn't stop there. One little boy decided he already knew how to use scissors. He had cut slits in his shirt (four to be exact) while I was explaining! The lesson I learned in the first year during October was not to pass out the scissors until the directions were given and the children were ready to cut the paper. I also made sure to glance at the ceiling to ensure we didn't have any visitors during class.

As a principal, another incident happened in a stellar first-grade teacher's classroom. I came in and sat at the kidney table to observe while the teacher did a whole group math lesson. She had everything in this lesson that principals only dream of seeing in an observed lesson. I was enjoying watching her do active formative assessment with the students when suddenly I saw something on the floor that looked like pebbles---a lot of pebbles. THEN I SAW IT. The student was pulling IT out of his pants...those pebbles were indeed poop. I pointed to the floor as the teacher looked up. She looked at the floor and then at me in disbelief. I mouthed the word "poop" to her. She stayed calm and had the boy go to the restroom. Then, she started to clean them up with a paper towel. Oh, my. Talk about a trooper. She continued with the lesson. I told her to call the office and have the custodian clean that floor with disinfectant when I was leaving. I sure didn't write this on her evaluation, but these are the things the state does not even account for when observing teachers. I could have written, "This teacher is calm in all circumstances and is independent with clean-up duty!" You know you have to be creative!

Later...