Sunday, August 19, 2012

Teacher Effectiveness Rubric 8.13.12


Last Thursday, I went through registration as a father and spent time with two of my kids lugging books around the school while trying to find rooms and lockers.  We did fairly well with the B and C rooms, but struggled finding A rooms.  How can A300 rooms be across the hall from A500?  Where did you hide A400 rooms?  And even those elusive A400 rooms were easier to understand than the numerical order of the A lockers.

Eventually the organization of the building began to make sense.  Some great kids and teachers pointed us in the right direction, and Charlie explained about the history of the locker numbers.  We found a bank of lockers hidden down in the music area, dropped off books, and discovered the A400s just to the north of the A300s.  (I take back all the things I said under my breath and admit there is a method to the madness.)

I suggest to you that what two of my children and I experienced last Thursday is a bit of what you will experience this coming year as we begin the new teacher evaluation process using the HSE Teacher Evaluation and Development System (TEDS).  At first, the experience will seem daunting or even overwhelming.  As you work your way through the process, however, you will start making sense of the system.  You will get some help along the way, and you will begin to see the method to the madness.

What I would like to do over the next few weeks is give you some guideposts that I hope will help with this journey.  Today’s post is an overview of the TEDS process, and in the coming weeks I will spend time writing about specifics and how this might impact you.

As you get these emails with the subject line: “From B106,” feel free to read them immediately, save them for later when they become more applicable, or delete them if they aren’t helpful. 

TEDS: The Major Components

One key to student success in your classroom is to make sure that each student has a solid grasp of important academic vocabulary and to use these terms with consistency.  TEDS also has common vocabulary. HSE administrators are learning these terms along with you and working to use the terms precisely.  This part is review—I hope.

     Teacher Effectiveness Rubric (TER): This is the most significant part of the evaluation process.  I will go into more detail below.  It counts for 75% of your overall evaluation.
     Student Learning Objectives (SLO): You will have two of these this year.  In the first semester, you will work with one of your classes to assess student progress, and in the second semester, you will identify a handful of students and monitor their growth.  Warning: The class SLO may seem especially overwhelming, partly because much of the work needs to be completed right at the beginning of this school year.  Don’t panic.  Think of Stuart Smalley in the old Saturday Night Live skit saying, “I’m good enough.  I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”  Keep repeating this to yourself regularly.  We will get through this.  SLOs count for 20% of your overall evaluation.
     School-Wide Learning (SWL): This is the easy part.  It is figured by the State of Indiana at the end of the school year based on the school accountability measures.  You impact this score by helping HSE students pass End of Course Assessments, attend regularly, graduate on time, and succeed in Advanced Placement or college credit classes.  This counts for 5% of your overall evaluation.

In The Teacher Effectiveness Rubric (TER), the most important terms are Domains, Competencies, and Indicators.  Domains are the largest categories and are divided into Competencies.  The Competencies include Indicators that give teachers and evaluators examples to help with scoring. Even though there are three Domains in the TER, they do not have equal weight.

     Planning: This Domain includes five Competencies which deal with data, goal-setting, unit planning, lesson planning, and tracking student progress.  For HSEHS teachers, this “counts” for 10% on the Teacher Effectiveness Rubric. 
     Instruction: This is the heart of TEDS.  The Instruction Domain includes nine Competencies and “counts” for 75% on the Teacher Effectiveness Rubric.  By the weight given, you can see that this is the key Domain.  In the coming weeks, I will break down each of these Competencies and their Indicators.  The big questions: What does it look like in the classroom?  What should teachers do, and what should students do?  What evidence will evaluators need to see? 
     Leadership: This Domain includes five competencies and “counts” for 15% on the Teacher Effectiveness Rubric.  This domain is about contributing to school culture, collaboration, professional growth, advocating for students, and engaging families.

Depending on how familiar you are with TEDS, right now you may be feeling like I did last Thursday trying to figure out the building layout, or you may be feeling more like Charlie, who can tell you a story about each room in the building.

Either way, school is about to start.  Students will stream through the door next Wednesday, and when the first bell rings, we also start the new evaluation system.  Next week, I will spend time on the Instruction Domain and try to help clarify what it means.  I am confident that you will discover several things: 1) The rubric really is about good instruction, and 2) You will find many, many connections in the rubric to your current instructional practice.  Feel free to repeat the line from Stuart Smalley here.

Let me know if this is helpful.  Let me know if I can alleviate some of your concerns.   Let me know if you have questions that I might be able to answer in the next few weeks.  (You don’t have to let me know if you just hit delete after the first paragraph, of if you programed Outlook to automatically send my emails to the Recycle Bin.)

Have a great first week, HSE.

Phil

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