I promise I will write more when it's not 10:41pm and I have a full day of teaching tomorrow. Let's just say that this past weekend can be characterized as the following:
Memorable
Relaxing
Blood
Wine
Family
Good Friends
Football
Heating Pads
75 degrees
Cuts and Bruises
Fireplaces
Late night chats
Pictures
Food
Golf
Parents
Bliss
Tears
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
3 down, 3 to go and the weekend ahead
As you might have read in the news, in TN there has been quite an upheavel in the teaching world. Instead of going into the very long of it, I'll give it to you in the shorter version .
TN got $501 million from the federal gov't called Race to the Top money. TN made a lot of promises including a very aggressive new evaluation program. The program involved 4 evaluations for teachers on their professional license (3+ years) and 6 for the apprentice license (less than 3). A humongeous rubric is used, 12 indicators on one and 4 on the other...and within each of those indicators is 6-10 necessary items.
The amount of time doing the paperwork, preparing for the lesson, pre- and post-conferences, more paperwork, more conferences...principals were spending a lot more time doing evaluations that dealing with the day to day challenges of running a school and working all night after leaving the school to work more on evaluations. This was in no way their choice, it was simply the effects of the new evaluation system.
So less than a month and a half into the the teachers' unions and non-affiliated teachers pushed to have professional teachers reduced to 2 evaluations (1 announced, and one unannounced) by combining into 16 and 16 indicators, and the apprentices would have 4 (2 announced, 2 unannounced). A step in the right direction...but did I mention that we only learned the specifics of the evaluation system this fall? I was trained as an evaluator, and I have to tell ya that it was overwhelming for us just going through the training. Now I'm all for teacher evaluations, but I believe it needs to be effective, efficient, and fair.
Anyways, I had an evaluation last month, and then today I had an unannounced evaluation covering 16 indicators. Pretty sure I rocked it....I better have considering I put more than 15 or so hours outside of the school day into planning the in-service I did today! I'll have an unannounced in January/February and then another before the end of the year. So I'm 3 for 6 or 2 for 4. Halfway.
Tomorrow we'll be attending the Thanksgiving Gathering with Seth at his school, Nature's Way Montessori. Shortly after that I will be departing for a Girls Gone Wine weekend in the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. I'm stoked. I'll be spending the weekend with my girls Amy and Kendra and will be meeting 4 new and rumored to be very fun ladies!
We'll be tasting at 4 different vineyards on Saturday and having lunch at my favorite, Sanders Ridge. Here's a great video of Sander Ridge: Sanders Ridge on the News
Stay tuned.
TN got $501 million from the federal gov't called Race to the Top money. TN made a lot of promises including a very aggressive new evaluation program. The program involved 4 evaluations for teachers on their professional license (3+ years) and 6 for the apprentice license (less than 3). A humongeous rubric is used, 12 indicators on one and 4 on the other...and within each of those indicators is 6-10 necessary items.
The amount of time doing the paperwork, preparing for the lesson, pre- and post-conferences, more paperwork, more conferences...principals were spending a lot more time doing evaluations that dealing with the day to day challenges of running a school and working all night after leaving the school to work more on evaluations. This was in no way their choice, it was simply the effects of the new evaluation system.
So less than a month and a half into the the teachers' unions and non-affiliated teachers pushed to have professional teachers reduced to 2 evaluations (1 announced, and one unannounced) by combining into 16 and 16 indicators, and the apprentices would have 4 (2 announced, 2 unannounced). A step in the right direction...but did I mention that we only learned the specifics of the evaluation system this fall? I was trained as an evaluator, and I have to tell ya that it was overwhelming for us just going through the training. Now I'm all for teacher evaluations, but I believe it needs to be effective, efficient, and fair.
Anyways, I had an evaluation last month, and then today I had an unannounced evaluation covering 16 indicators. Pretty sure I rocked it....I better have considering I put more than 15 or so hours outside of the school day into planning the in-service I did today! I'll have an unannounced in January/February and then another before the end of the year. So I'm 3 for 6 or 2 for 4. Halfway.
Tomorrow we'll be attending the Thanksgiving Gathering with Seth at his school, Nature's Way Montessori. Shortly after that I will be departing for a Girls Gone Wine weekend in the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. I'm stoked. I'll be spending the weekend with my girls Amy and Kendra and will be meeting 4 new and rumored to be very fun ladies!
We'll be tasting at 4 different vineyards on Saturday and having lunch at my favorite, Sanders Ridge. Here's a great video of Sander Ridge: Sanders Ridge on the News
Stay tuned.
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