Would you go to Doc?

We had one dentist in my hometown - Doc H.  Doc was the only game in town and if you went with a toothache more than likely you would be missing that tooth by supper.  It seemed his remedy was to just pull the offending tooth - I suspect that is all he really knew.  I think Doc did his best, but I never got the feeling that he was consistently trained in cutting edge dentistry.

What kind of doctor do you want?  The one that has been doing the same thing for 20 years, or the one that continually learns and improves?

What kind of teacher do you want?   The one that has been doing the same thing for 20 years, or the one that continually learns and improves?

I caught part of Diane Sawyer's interview with Chris Christie - the New Jersey governor about his battle with the state teacher union - specifically over tenure.  Sawyer made the comment "Isn't tenure not having to prove yourself anymore?"  I immediately thought of Doc; he never had to prove himself - he was a fixture.  I'm sure people got adequate dental care - but it's a stretch to say we got premium services.

It seems to me that all of us should prove ourselves (or improve ourselves) everyday by working to get a little bit better.  I don't buy that at some point anyone in a field has all the knowledge and skill - there is always room for improvement.  Why would Tiger Woods hire a swing coach if this weren't true?  Athletes and coaches constantly preach the "get a little bit better" and "continue to improve" mantra.

Do we preach the same in education?  Is professional development mandatory - that is, are teachers expected to continually improve, and yes, change their teaching practice?  As I've said before - the good teachers continually examine their practice and on occasion completely re-vamp what they do.

So, what kind of doctor do you want?  What kind of teacher do you want?

Doc might have been acceptable in his time - but I doubt if I would go back today.

Toby

Formative Assessment - For Teachers

I think we can all agree about the value of formative assessment.  Learners gaining continuous feedback about their level of proficiency makes a profound difference.  Formative assessment typically applies to students - but why not teachers?

Since teachers have the greatest impact on student achievement wouldn't it make sense to provide formative assessment so teachers can improve as well?  Principals will need to ratchet up their ability to supervise instruction, through both formative and summative assessment.  Most principals try to conduct walk-through observations of teachers, which can provide ongoing conversations leading up to a summative evaluation. 

Some suggestions to using formative assessment of instruction include:

• Develop and use a common language of instruction. You can't discuss instruction without vocabulary.  Name the strategies so they can be replicated.
• Get feedback from the teachers about the formative assessment.  Let them test drive the instrument on themselves so they have a better understanding of what will be collected.
• Provide a variety of assessment methods. Self observation, peer observations, as well as principal walk-through observations should be used.  People will see trends if the information comes from a variety of sources.
• Set goals.  Teachers should use the formative assessment data to set goals for instruction, as well as new strategies to try.
• Get out of the office.  Set weekly goals for classroom visits; the benefits to the principal go far beyond observing the individual teacher.  Students will see the principal from a different perspective and the principal will have a keener understanding of curriculum and instruction.
• Utilize technology to make gathering the formative assessment data more efficient.  Good principals try to have the information collected by the time they leave the classroom.  Needing to go back to the office to write up the formative observation prohibits frequent visits. For example, Google Forms can be used to gather and send the data on a variety of devices.
• Follow-up.  Have teachers respond to reflective questions, discuss what was observed and what can be changed.

Committed teachers generally want to improve their craft and formative feedback only makes sense.  The principal doesn't need to know everything about the content or even all the strategies, but they do need to provide a process for reflection and improvement. 

Special thanks to Mitch at Dorchester and Jen at ESU 6 for their work on developing quality processes.

Toby