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How are they going to evaluate gym – art – music – elective classes?  So in September I can only draw a stick figure person and by June -or by February if it is only a one semester class- I become Picasso?  The SED and The DOE are composed of such ignorant losers – there will never be a fair way to analyze everything they want to analyze.  I am surprised they are can get to and from work without getting lost – they are so dumb.

In the real-world is a person allowed to say “f**k you” to an officer?  Is a person allowed to break the laws of the land and the courts are supposed to let it slide?  Is a person allowed to threatened his boss and the boss will allow him to keep his/her job? 

So teachers prepare students for the future and we work hard to instill and inculcate good citizenship besides the academics.  Therefore, we do have different aspects of the real-work conditions and teaching-learning conditions.

kid, i feel sorry for you for the future unless you do like the doe wants you to do and that is to quit before you can earn tenure…..your just a lamb in line following what you are told cause you dont know any better…what, you graduate from college all the drinking and then suddenly you are teaching kids…what a joke,,,you will learn kid…and,,,if you get tenure your pension will be paid out to you in marbles kid……but hey look at the bright side, bloomdoe says no smoking, drinking soda and breast fed so you will live long but just with no money..sorry..you will learn kid

You may not be able to live up to the standards you set for your students, but some of us have exceeded them.
What you are is a wet-behind-the-ears newbie who has yet to make any major sacrifices for your career.  If you weren’t you wouldn’t make statements like, “Those who are most afraid of being observed must be guilty of something… “.  We are not AFRAID of anything.  Most of us spent our first 10 or 15 years in schools that would make you wet yourself.  Now, with 20 or more years of hard won experience under our belts, and the ability to effectively control classrooms with 35 or more students and actually teach, instead of trying to be “friends” with them, we will not stand still and watch our careers destroyed by some egomaniac with a Napoleonic complex.
We have invested our time, our health, our mental well being for almost a quarter of a century.  We accepted salaries well below what our peers in other industries were making and subsidized our classrooms from our own pockets.  We taught without the eye catching useless technology flooding our schools and produced students with real talent and skills.
We created families, raised children, contributed to our communities, and met all our obligations.
And now, we demand that when someone comes into our classroom to evaluate us, they have the commensurate level of knowledge and skills to do so. 
As for the 20K, that’s what many of us made as a salary, BEFORE TAXES, when we were at your stage.  We also had supervisors who were qualified and had guidance to offer.  THAT is why we KNOW that the supervisor who has to rely on Danielson and threats is a buffoon.
For your edification, as a 20+ year teacher, I have invited anyone to visit my classroom anytime, I have welcomed video cameras to be installed permanently in my classroom, and I would challenge any teacher, administrator, superintendent, mayor, chancellor or secretary of education to accomplish what I do in my classroom if I thought they had the courage to do so. 

I just earned my tenure after five years (no thanks to the union might I add), going from one of the worst schools in the city to the best.  Gee, I wonder how I here?  Must be a coincidence right?  Because with our union we certainly don’t value hard work and success.  We just protect everybody.    

Yes Michael is right.  If an AP or Principal wants they can formally observe you every single day of the year.  (I think they only rule is that you cannot be observed twice in the same day.)  Also as pointed out by Guest, unless you request one in writing, they do not have to give you a formal pre-observation if you are a tenured teacher. 

Your opinion is important to us. Please write again.

Yep! You’ ve made an excellent poiny, Guest. You got it! There is absolutely no processes for weeding poor teachers out of the building. Also, there is no supervision, there are no standards that colleagues hold colleagues to, there were no measures for growth before the APPR came about so there was no way we could figure out who the bad teachers were.

In fact, there is currently no evaluation system in place at all!

I will grant you this, Guest: It sounds like YOUR teacher was horrible. THAT person probably would have benefited from the APPR.

That’s (doe)-nuts: 100%

Mirroring real world situations would require performance reviews to be scheduled -like they are in the real world. It would require explaining the employee’s goals and what the supervisor is looking for in terms of growth from the review (by way of a conference) – like they do in the real world. And it would carry with it an implication that the employer -after investing time and resources- wants the employee to do good.

The world isn’t Stalinist. I get a little tired of non teachers using the term … “real world” as if it’s some type of bludgen -ignoring even it’s meaning and any facts associated with it that may not fit their own small minded argument of the moment.

Nuts

Tim,

Brief observations are usually informal, and may or may not result in written feedback from the Principal. A letter containing informal feedback does not have to be signed by the teacher, and is not placed in the teacher’s personnel file. A formal observation report, satisfactory or not, is to be signed by the teacher- they can refuse, but then a note is appended saying they did so – and placed in the file.

I’m unaware of a Principal explicitly combining what they’ve seen in a short visit with the report of an extended observation, but it’s a huge system that employs many people, so who knows? My sense is that it might be grounds for a grievance – although, short of arbitration, that’s a rather pointless endeavor since the DOE dismisses virtually every grievance – if a brief visit was referred to in a report as the primary cause of an unsatisfactory report based on a visit to a different class.

However, if during an intended short visit a principal observes teacher behavior or practice that they believe to be unsatisfactory (or exceptionally good, for that matter), there are no obstacles to writing a formal letter for inclusion in the file. A principal or AP who knows their business and observes noticeably poor or unacceptable practice would presumably stick around to document it further. 

Contrary to the legends you hear about tenure providing lifetime employment, incompetent teachers can be gotten rid of if administrators are knowledgeable and capable. The DOE has a legal staff that instructs Principals on the proper way to build a case against tenured teachers, the successful pursuit of which requires frequent detailed classroom observations.

Management hires teachers, has unrestricted power to fire them without cause while they are on probation, and has the means to get rid of them when tenured. Anything said or written contrary to that is simply false.

This system is too simple.  I think they should add three pre-formed informal formal meta-observations (only usable for no more than 26% of the subjective component of a new 15% subjunctive bonus round). 

 Guest, if you appreciate irony, you should stick around for awhile.  In fewer years than you think, all the teaching methods you’re struggling to learn will be considered obsolete, new administrators will be forcing you to change your ways, and some of the new teachers around you will be just as smug and condescending as you are now because you’re not embracing the latest fads.   And once you become really good at teaching, you’ll understand why observations, though necessary, can have a negative affect on your performance if not kept in check.

You’ll even start to realize that 75k is not a lot of money, especially if your children desire a separate bedroom from you.

I was told at a meeting of CLs this fall that only first year teachers and teachers in danger of a “U” rating get an automatic pre-observation conference.  The rest, as guest writes, must specifically request in writing.

Young naive fool.

Now, now, Nycdoenuts, Tim’s right.  In the “real world”:
1) Employees may use the restroom when they need to, not wait until the end of their 3 or 4 in a row.
2) If someone you work with tells you to go F yourself, THEY get punished.
3) You don’t have to buy your own office supplies.
4) Your supervisor actually has MORE experience than you.
5) You have heat and air conditioning in your work space.
6) You generally spend less time doing paperwork at home than you do at work.
7) Generally speaking, your job doesn’t depend on whether your trainees are successful in their tasks.
8) Educated professionals are niot treated like disposable commodities.

I appreciate your response, Michael.

I spent a little time tonight skimming the UFT contract, “Teaching for the 21st Century,” and various FAQ’s and articles on the UFT’s website. You are certainly more knowledgeable about conditions on the ground than I am, but the rules in place definitely don’t seem to encourage principals to make unannounced visits to classrooms for the purpose of formal evaluation.

In particular, The UFT website tells teachers they will always been told about a formal evaluation in advance and encourages them to consult their chapter leader if they feel they are being informally observed ‘excessively’, especially if they perceive they are being observed more than their peers. This stance doesn’t really jibe with the goal of helping any struggling teacher get better.

I know that our teaching corps is a lot stronger than our administration corps, and I don’t want to remove anything that protects teachers from some of the nuts and incompetents out there. However, I feel evaluations should be based on something that best resembles a typical day of instruction. I think any barriers to including ‘pop-in” observations in overall evaluations should be removed. 

Here are the relevant page from the UFT website:

http://www.uft.org/our-rights/observation-evaluation
http://www.uft.org/our-rights/know-your-rights/classroom-observations
http://www.uft.org/faqs?category=38

In these pages and FAQs, the UFT does state that there is no limit on the number of informal visits an administrator may make to a classroom. But then they go on to say that it should be assumed that these visits will not be written up and made part of the official record, and to consult a chapter leader if there is a perception that you are being informally observed at a greater frequency than your peers.

This is perhaps an extreme analogy, but it came to mind after reading the Post editorial about diversity — there are no longer any laws or restrictions preventing blacks and Latinos from moving to some of our region’s wealthiest suburbs, and there are many blacks and Latinos who have the means to do so. Why do so many of these suburbs remain almost comically homogeneous? 

It would be great if a non-charter principal could weigh in here, but it seems to me that an administrator who wants to base a rating on something that happens outside of the prearranged, preannounced observation is heading down the rabbit hole. I understand that teachers need a degree of protection from politics and incompetence and randomness, but I believe evaluations should be based on the type of instruction that happens on a typical classroom day. 

Ken, you can certainly terminate a teacher for “not being good.”  It would just require two years of observation showing that the teacher has not been successful, perhaps accompanied by data to back it up.  However, the principal must also show with documentation that they have done everything they can to help a teacher improve.

I have seen teachers U rated for the most minute and rediculous things, clearly because an administrator wanted to go after them.  Unfortunately teachers can not grive a U rated observation, all we can do is write a rebuddle which is attached when placed in the file.

Also last year at a delegate assembly Mulgrew stated that 99% of all principals who go to the 3020 firing process are successful, because even if a judge rules in favor of the teacher, the Chancellor (or perhaps superintendent) gets the final say.  The only time the teacher wins is when the Principal has literally no documentation against the teacher.  Which is why a real, impartial appeals process is necessary, and no I don’t think 13% of teachers getting to appeal is fair in any way.

Wonderful grief, isn’t it? You get to employee a perceieved monopoly on the “real” understanding of the “real world”, imply that a teacher would have no understanding of that real world, and then, when you’re challenged on it, quote Charlie Brown of all people.

Wonderful.

Look, to answer your question: It’s is not mirroring the real world.

I think I know what’s happened here: when I used the term “real-world”, I wasn’t referring to the world outside of teaching, the private sector, Foucault, Stalin, or anything else like that. My belief is that the formal observation lesson, with its pre-observation meeting and to-do list, is in varying degrees dissimilar to an ordinary, non-observed, “real-world” lesson. 

Does that make sense? 

To loop back to a previous discussion, this is why I’d value student input as a measure. They are there for every minute of every lesson, and while all of the work that goes on outside the classroom is important — PD, goal-setting, lesson planning, etc. — it’s where the rubber hits the road that matters most. 

Yes, tenure teachers must request a pre-obs conf in writing as per article 8J, component B and the document “Teaching for the 21st century”.

If they don’t, then a principal can use any meeting (dept or staff) as the pre-obs conference and he/she doesn’t have to tell the teachers.