First Year Teaching Evaluations

First Year Teaching Evaluations

Improving student learning and school effectiveness are thought to be dependent upon implementing quality teacher evaluation programs and policies. The selection, training, certification, hiring and retention of good teachers in Alberta’s public school classrooms are a result of these important teacher evaluations. Teaching is being reshaped through the constant and continuous process of evaluating teachers throughout their educational and professional careers (Mazurek 2009). Administrators, principals, and school boards are just a few given the task of evaluating teachers. However some argue that teacher evaluation practices tend to increase stress, anxiety, fear and mistrust amongst teachers, and limit growth, flexibility and creativity (Larsen, 2009). Although some teachers may feel that they are “scrambling” to keep up with the demands of such evaluations, I feel that teacher evaluations may certainly serve for many valid reasons. Research argues that teacher evaluation can be a fair process but the question that arises is do evaluations benefit the teachers, schools, and students?
First we must take a look at why we evaluate. According the ATA, teachers should be evaluated on different aspects of their teaching style and evaluations are especially important for new teachers. In the first two years of teaching the principal purpose of evaluating teachers is to determine if a teacher qualifies for teaching certification and also for employment purposes. Since first year teachers have a tendency to become overwhelmed and “burned out” observation and evaluation offers early intervention. Evaluation, therefore, helps the first year teacher improve on their skills. Most first year teachers embrace feedback and see observation as a way to grow rather than a tool used to criticize. In a first year teacher evaluation, for example, Principals usually observe knowledge, skills and attributes pertaining to things such as time management, discipline...

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