Students Evaluating Teachers
July 7, 2011What would happen if your students graded you?
Next year in Memphis, Tennessee students will be providing feedback on their teaches which will be considered in the teachers evaluation. At the end of each term I had my students evaluate themselves and evaluate me. Not because anyone said I had to do this, it was because I wanted to. I learned more about my teaching from those evaluations and made changes to my teaching because of what my students said. How many of you give your students the opportunity to evaluate your teaching?
Read about the public schools in Memphis and their plan for next year. This is from the Ed Week blog called Teaching Now and the post is written by Francesca Duffy. Click here for the article.
I find it hard to believe that this is suddenly a new thing as I have collected anonymous student input on my teaching (high school level) since the mid 1980’s. It has always just seemed to make sense to have partners in the teaching/learning cycle assess one another. The formative assessments might be more direct and face to face during the critique process, such as, if I am to severe to a student directly they may shut down and I need to interpret their reaction through expression and body language, or in a group critique, having a student thank me for positive comments about work that they hadn’t really been focused upon. The summative assessments come to me at the end of a class, when one of the last things I ask students to do is fill out a survey monkey or a hand-written sheet with questions about preparedness, clarity of instruction or demonstration, organization, accessibility and such. I believe our school kind of expects if not requires that we do this, and I’ve found it to be especially helpful with new or difficult classes. Students are very insightful and usually very kind about your teaching practices.
Thanks for your thoughts and comments Charlie. On several occasions during my 30 years of teaching I’d made small and sometimes large changes to a lesson or unit. I also received feedback on my communication with students that was very helpful!