If there is one thing many of us can agree upon, it’s that being evaluated is a stressful and anxiety-filled experience. Knowing the person observing you is watching your every move, listening to your every word and seeing how the students respond to your teaching can make even the most distinguished teacher tense up with nervousness. It’s hard not to respond with anxiety and stress when the process for teacher evaluations is set up in a way that makes teachers feel like they are being judged more than supported. That’s the problem with the evaluation process and something we as school leaders need to change in order for our culture to continue to improve.
If I had to rank my job requirements from most enjoyable to least, evaluating teachers would be close to the bottom. It’s not because of the paperwork, observations or discussions; the reason it isn’t enjoyable is the ingrained mindset that the teacher evaluation is just an opinion of how well someone “feels” another person is doing at their job. That’s why we need to look at how we do our evaluations and change the process so we can change the mindset of those we evaluate and make evaluations more enjoyable for all of us. We can’t continue doing what we have always done, there has to be change. This cultural change of evaluations has to start now.
In my quest to make teacher evaluations more meaningful, I came across the book, “Lead Like a Pirate” by Shelley Burgess and Beth Houf. The book as a whole is a great reference guide for leaders, but the area of the book that impacted my leadership the most was how to act as a coach instead of an evaluator. As leaders we need to flip our mindset of our role when it comes to teacher evaluations. We need to look at the system and process from a different lens and start to understand that our role should move from being an evaluator to being a coach.
Coaching gets greater results than evaluating because the approach and avenue to reach your goals and dreams looks completely different. Look at the famous coaches in professional sports history: Phil Jackson (NBA), Vince Lombardi (NFL), John Wooden (NCAA Basketball). Every day they “evaluated” their players’ abilities, strengths, weaknesses and work ethics. They knew how to push their players and how each player needed to be individually motivated and encouraged. When you coach, you don’t just watch as a spectator and give your opinion on how things are and how they should be. Instead, you take your observations and show them what they can be, how their skills can continue to grow and encourage them with avenues to get there. That is what school leaders (myself included) need to focus on: helping teachers realize where they are and where they can go if they continue to grow in their abilities as a teacher, colleague and leader.
With that said, leaders beware! With guidance comes great responsibility. If you truly want to be a coach, there is much to do behind the scenes. Just as coaches watch game footage, study playbooks and plan strategies, evaluators who want to be coaches have to put in the same work. We need to do our own homework on how to help our teachers grow. We need to create a playbook of resources that we have collected from books, websites, conferences and experts in the field of education. We need to be able to show the way not just through our own opinion but through best practices that have been proven over and over by research and inquiry. Our teachers need to know that we know what we are doing and that we have the knowledge and the tools to help them reach their true potential and are not just shooting from the hip with our own opinions. When teachers believe in you and your message, they trust you as their coach and their leader.
Last year, I started to flip the evaluation process and I have seen some great changes in the relationships I have with many teachers. This change is an ongoing process and even though mindsets won’t change in a flash, we can show teachers we are not here to judge them but to coach them to their fullest potential. We can start to tear down the walls of judgement that the evaluation process has mortared together between us and trust between both sides can start to grow. Our teacher evaluation process is in need of a huge makeover if we want culture to change and all stakeholders to grow. This may seem like a daunting task, but just like the answer to the age old question, “How do you eat an elephant?” You do it one bite at a time. Take your first bite in changing your evaluation process. The first bite is always the hardest, but once you take it, you will see first-hand how good the switch can taste
Have I hit some bumps in the road? Sure, I have. Are there still mindsets and relationships that I need to work harder at? Of course there are. Every day, every conversation, every action, everything I do will either build up that wall or continue to rip it down. This is why every day I choose to put my judgments aside and work alongside my teachers so they know we are in this together. My teachers are worth it and I know yours are worth it too.
Are you willing to lay your judgments aside? Are you willing to look from a different lens? What changes do you need to make today, so that your teachers can reach their fullest potential tomorrow? What articles, books, conferences and professionals are you connecting with so that your teachers know you know how to take them to the next level?
Author Bio:
Roger Gurganus is an Assistant Principal at Brownstown Middle School, a 6-7 building in Brownstown, MI. He has a passion for children and education and strives to ensure that every student is connected and feels part of the positive communities he creates. Along with creating a culture of hope and love in his own middle school, Roger also is committed to bringing hope, love and education to the children of Uganda, Africa where each summer he travels in hope of making a bigger difference in the lives of students who need it the most. Roger believes that teaching is not a job, but rather a calling and hopes that through his work, lives can be changed, dreams can become reality and mountains can be moved.
Written by Roger Gurganus, Principal of Brownstown Middle School & 2017 Middle School Principal of the Year
Follow Roger Gurganus’ educational and leadership journey:
Twitter:@RogerGurganusII
Instagram:@RogerGurganusII
Youtube@BMSWARRIORS67
Resources:
Lead Like a Pirate:https://www.daveburgessconsulting.com/books/lead-like-a-pirate/