So much for "best intentions"

Good morning!


You know, there's this thing with me and my intentions . . . I had intended to "blog" about last week's class the day after the class and one week later . . .  I guess work happened . . . =(.  I actually wanted to blog about it right away because I wanted to keep all the thoughts flowing.  UGH!


Speaking of work, I'm in my office now, so I'll have to keep this short.  Much to your relief, I'm guessing.  I know I have a tendency to ramble . . . like I'm doing now!


I actually appreciated the time I got to spend with my group to discuss our projects.  It forced me to think about what exactly it was that I wanted to focus on for my project and Leslie and Cindy (I hope I got their names right) gave me lots to consider.  I may not have narrowed down a concrete research question, but I now have some ideas and that's a start.  This is all part of the process, right?  Think, write, rethink, revise, evaluate, and tweak as we move closer to the finish project.  


So, I am definitely interested in focusing on teacher evaluation here in Hawaii -- more specifically, in the DOE.  The department is currently revamping its teacher evaluation process as part of its Race to the Top grant.  As I have shared in class and in previous blogs, the current teacher evaluation tool is really basic and does not provide much information about the teacher -- How is the teacher effective?  What does the teacher need to improve on?  What supports are needed to help the teacher be more effective?  The state is currently looking at a number of teacher evaluation tools that are being used across the nation.  At the forefront is Danielson's work.  When I was first introduced to Danielson's evaluation rubrics five years ago, I thought, "This is what we need!"  The descriptors spell out everything for you.  Of course, there are different rubrics for different focuses and that in itself would become to cumbersome.  The ideal would be to develop an evaluation tool similar to her rubrics that was more user-friendly.  I could actually go on and on about what I think should be included in the evaluation tool and how it should be handled and I said I would keep this short.  As you can tell by what I have already written that I am going to have difficulties keeping my personal opinions and biases out of this project.  


Anyway, I was thinking of approaching teacher evaluation through grounded theory (Is it "through" grounded theory?  "With" grounded theory?  "Using" grounded theory.).  I was thinking of approaching teacher evaluation using grounded theory.  This would allow me to find out what teachers and administrators believe should be included in teacher evaluations.  Possible research questions that I was thinking about, with the help of Leslie and Cindy, are:
    
     What is the purpose of teacher evaluation?  
     What criteria should teachers be evaluated on?
     How should teachers be evaluated?


I still need to think about them and develop them more.  I know I have to really start putting time into this project with all the deadlines coming up.  The point is that I want to find out what teachers thought teacher evaluations were all about and what they thought they should be evaluated on and how they should be evaluated.  I also want to find out the same from administrators who evaluate the teachers -- what they thought teacher evaluations were all about and what they thought teachers should be evaluated on and how.  Their responses could lead me to a common understanding (or central phenomenon) of the perception of teacher evaluation, as well as the desired components/criteria, of those directly related to teacher evaluation -- the actual  practitioners.  


What do you think?  I know it needs more work and I need to think about it more, but this is the start.  Am I way off in my thinking?  You can be honest.  I know sometimes I can be "off"!  =)


Have a good Thursday!  I'll see you in class later this afternoon!

Researcher Identity Memo

I'm not sure if this is what was expected, but here goes . . . 

Researcher Identity Memo:

Evaluating Teacher Evaluation

I became an administrator to support teachers to better support their students.  I wanted to be able to see our students succeed in school as well as beyond school.  I knew that teachers play an important role in “molding” our students’ futures and I wanted to see that our students were being “molded” in a way that was beneficial to all of them.  I believe one of the ways to ensure our teachers are doing what needs to be done in the classroom to benefit our students is through teacher evaluations.  However, I do not believe the current teacher evaluation tool effectively facilitates improvement in teaching.  

As a teacher, I have never been evaluated through the Professional Evaluation Program for Teachers (PEP-T).  I began teaching for the Department of Education (DOE) in School Year (SY) 1999-2000.  The PEP-T was implemented in SY 2002-03.  By this time, I was already tenured.  PEP-T calls for tenured teachers to be evaluated once every five years and the schedule is according to the last digit of your Social Security Number.  Mine ends with 6, which put me in the last cycle.  I was not slated to be evaluated until SY 2006-07.  SY 2006-07 was my first year as a vice principal; I was no longer a teacher.  What is important to note here is that I was only evaluated my first two years of teaching (through the Program for Assessing Teaching in Hawaii, or PATH).  I was not evaluated from Fall 2001 through Spring 2006.  The principal had never observed a class I taught in the seven years I was there and a vice principal observed once my first year.  How did they know I was doing what I was supposed to be doing in the classroom?  How did they know what supports I needed in order to be a more effective teacher? 

As an administrator, I have used the PEP-T to evaluate a number of teachers.  Teachers are evaluated on five duties – designs and implements effective strategies to develop self-responsible/independent learners; creates and maintains a positive and safe learning environment; uses assessment data; demonstrates professionalism; and reflects on practice – on a three-point scale (satisfactory, marginal, and unsatisfactory).  The first four duties are based on observations; the teachers submit a written reflection for the fifth duty.  At the intermediate school in which I was a vice principal, the administrators were encouraged to observe classes on a daily basis.  While this was not always possible, we did try to observe as often as we could.  I have seen teachers with a range of abilities, some highly effective teachers and some in desperate need of improvement.  These groups included both new non-tenured teachers and veteran tenured teachers.  While it was easy to evaluate teachers who excelled in the classroom, it was not easy to evaluate teachers who needed to improve in their teaching.  I had to interpret the duties according to what the teacher’s deficit was and had to explain to the teacher what improvement I felt was needed in order for the teacher to be rated satisfactory for that particular duty.  The PEP-T allows for too much interpretation.  What I may view as marginal, another administrator may view as satisfactory.  Also, tenured teachers are evaluated on a five-year cycle.  Thus, if a tenured teacher needs to improve to be effective in the classroom, the administrator can ask for the teacher to be placed on the evaluation cycle but needs the appropriate documentation to do so – conference notes and attempts to assist in improvement (offering professional development or mentoring) – and needs approval from the complex area superintendent.  The PEP-T, however, does not allow an administrator to document what improvements need to be made nor does it allow an administrator to document what the teacher excels in.  These documentations need to be made separately in summaries of conferences.  What is turned in to the district is the evaluation form and teacher reflection.  The summaries of conferences stay within the school. 

What I would like is to determine the effectiveness of the PEP-T in evaluating all teachers and ensuring our schools are staffed with competent teachers.  I would also like to determine how effective the PEP-T process is in helping teachers to become better teachers.  To me, the purpose of evaluation is not only to judge, but to determine what supports are needed to improve performance. 

I believe my experience as a teacher as well as my experience with teachers will help me to better understand what teachers need in order to be effective in the classroom and how teachers approach being evaluated.  I am able to see teacher evaluation from the teacher’s perspective.

My experience as an administrator as well as my experience with administrators will help me to better understand how administrators approach teacher evaluation and the constraints that are present in effectively evaluating a teacher and supporting a teacher.  I am able to see teacher evaluation from the administrator’s perspective. 

What I believe I need to be able to do is to set aside my biases regarding the current teacher evaluation tool.  I need to keep my idea of what a teacher evaluation tool should consist of out of the study and view the PEP-T more objectively.  I know this will be difficult for me because I have all these preconceived notions that I need to get rid of.  

"Sigh"

So, here is what I have decided after trying to figure out Blogger.com last night.  I was having such a "frustrating" time trying to figure out how to add attachments to the blogs, as I did with the Blogger on Laulima, and thought that it was a pain to have to upload the documents into gdocs and then copy and paste the link to Blogger.com (unless there is an easier way and if there is, please share it with me).  The Blogger on Laulima lets you attach the files easily (you just have to remember to click on that "Add to document" button in the Text tab before switching to the Files tab -- lesson learned the hard way).  However, last night, I didn't fix the "Take 3 . . . " post on Blogger.com and upload the attached files, thinking I would do it this morning.  This morning, I decided to check the website (wmke.blogspot.com) to see what it looked like and I found out that the links that are attached to the blog after I copied and pasted from the Blogger on Laulima actually take you to the files that are attached on Laulima.  So, I'm going to continue to post on Laulima, but copy and paste to Blogger.com.  I would rather do that than do the upload to gdocs and copy and paste the link (as I did with the "My first attempt at a blog" post -- I ended up repasting the links to Laulima on that post because the files look nicer this way).  I am not the most "technologically savvy" person and my patience is not the greatest, so I tend to end up doing things differently just to save my sanity.  However, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  =)   So, with that out of the way, I am attaching my observations to this post.  I ended up doing my 30-minute observation at Dave and Buster's this past Saturday.  I had lunch there with friends and thought that would be a great opportunity.  I had expected to see a lot of families with children, but there seemed to be more adults than children there and they did not look like adults who would be playing games upstairs later.  Of course, I'm making assumptions.  Maybe they did go upstairs later.  I think it is interesting how you can make assumptions based on what you observe (as the gentleman at the back of class, I really need to remember names, had done with his observations at Campus Center . . . I also need to remember places.).  When I wrote up my observations, I tried to keep my assumptions out.  In my notes, I had husband, wife, mom, dad, but I replaced them with general terms -- woman, man -- because I thought we had to be more objective and just write what we saw.  However, during the observation, I made lots of mental notes.  For the man and woman who ate quietly and did not make eye contact, I assumed they were either upset or on a first date.  For the woman who was not paying attention to her son as he played with the knife, I assumed she rarely paid any attention to her children and was more concerned about herself and her best interest -- I know he was not going to slice his arm off or anything with it, but still.  For the lady who was watching her boyfriend, I assume, talk to the waiter for 20 minutes, I could hear her thinking, "Can you just shut up so we can go?"  I think it is important to recognize what is really there and what you are bringing to the scene; however, I think it is also important to be able to read people.  If someone is anxiously looking around the restaurant and trying to catch a waiter's attention, you can assume that is someone who needs to be attended to.  If someone is grasping at his throat and gasping for air, you can assume that he is choking.  I suppose being able to read people is more important for evaluative purposes, though.

D&B map.doc
30min.observation.docx
 

Educators tend to observe a lot, whether they are observing students, teachers, or administrators.  As an administrator, I have had to observe teachers for evaluative purposes as well as to offer support.  In order to determine how a teacher is doing, I have to also observe the students in the class.  This is where, I think, it is important to be able to read people -- who looks bored, who looks lost, who looks engaged, who looks like they are up to no good.  However, I cannot just base my evaluation on observations alone, I need to support my observations with interviews.  I need to speak with students and I need to speak with the teacher.  This will help me to get a more complete picture of what is going on.  What would give me an even clearer picture is to look at student work and student assessements to see what learning is actually taking place.  In thinking about teacher evaluation, I know I would need to observe classes in order to get a better idea of what teachers should be evaluated on.  Teachers should be evaluated on what is observable, but not only on the data collected through an observation. I did appreciate the suggestion for my project for the class -- looking at teacher evaluation through the eyes of a teacher, an administrator, and a state-level personnel.  It actually made me think about looking at the current teacher evaluation tool and using that as a starting point towards what an effective teacher evaluation should look like.  The current teacher evaluation tool does not help in offering teachers the support they need to be more successful in the classroom nor does it even indicate how well a teacher is doing in the classroom.  The process in which teachers are evaluated also needs to be looked at.  Teachers are evaluated once every five years (unless non-tenured) and by one evaluator.  I'm just thinking aloud . . .  I guess the good thing is that I'm thinking about it.  I was also thinking about how grounded theory -- since that was our framework yesterday -- could fit into the picture . . . since there is no true performance-based teacher evaluation tool being used here.  I'm not even sure if teacher evaluation has even been really studied here.  I'm sure there's data . . .  It would be interested to talk to personnel at the school-, district-, and state-level to hear their thoughts on teacher evaluation and see what the "central phenomenon" is.  That may help to determine what teacher evaluation should center on.  Something to think about . . .   Sorry.  I know my thoughts are all over the place.  Thanks for getting me thinking!

I'm doing as recommended

Megan has convinced me to switch over to Blogger.com since I was the only one on Laulima.  She claims this is going to be easier, so I'm going to take her word for it.  She must have sensed my frustration last night (or was it the other night?).  I'm going to post my Laulima posts here . . . as soon as I figure it out . . . so that they are all in one place.  Thanks for bearing with me!

Take 3 . . .

Okay . . . apparently this is not working for me this week.  This is the third time I am writing this “blog” regarding last week’s class activity.  In response to whether we should post our class activity to Laulima, Dr. Collins suggested I post some of the results on my blog.  So, I have been trying to do this now for the past hour.  I don’t know what I am not doing this week that I did last week, but it’s not working. So, I have decided to write my blog in Word and then post it to the site.  That way, if it fails to save for the third time, I don’t have to type all of this out . . . again.  I know, sorry for the frustration. This is probably going to be more condensed than my second attempt, which was more condensed than the first.  So, this may be a good thing for you. HyoIn and I asked people to list 10 vacation destinations.  What I found was that my participants were a little taken aback by the lack of directions given.  We are so used to specific instructions – list 10 places in America where people like to go on vacation; rank the 10 places in order of popularity; sort the 10 places into three groups:  places single people would most likely visit, places couples would most likely visit, places families would most likely visit – that we are not used to having free reign over an activity.  The easiest was for participants to list the places they wanted to go or enjoying going to and ranking them in that manner.  However, they sought more direction in the sorting – “What three groups?” or “How do you want me to group them?”  My response?  “Up to you.”  That would not have sat easy with me.  I like to know what is expected of me when I do things.  Although the groupings tended to vary quite a bit (as you can tell by the spreadsheet attached), the pilesort surprisingly grouped the 10 places into three distinct groups (plot is attached).  The non-US countries were on one end and the United States on the other.  The cities of contiguous states were towards the bottom and the “non-contiguous” states were towards the top.  Of course, they could have also been grouped as countries, states, and cities and that could have played a role in the creation of the distinct groups (more than one way of grouping the places into the same groups). What I was interested in was how the participants (or respondents) would be grouped.  I was expecting a distinction between HyoIn’s group and mine, but the plot was all over the place (attached).  My participants are one-six and HyoIn’s are seven-twelve (on the plot, one is under eight and four is under seven).  There didn’t seem to be any distinct groups.  The group appeared pretty random.  I guess that’s what you would want in a sampling (which I just realized now and didn’t notice in my first two attempts at this.  Maybe me writing this for a third time does have its benefits . . . ).  The data would be more convincing if the sampling is more random, I suppose. So, I guess if I was to use this to collect data, I would need more specific instructions to yield more distinct results and I would need to ensure the randomness of the participants included.  Maybe I don’t need more specific instructions . . . just a clearer topic . . . .  In my “productive classroom” trial, the responses were pretty similar, but then again, the group was not very random.  Something for me to think about . . . I hope this finally works!

Vacation compiled(1).xlsx
vacation pilesort.labels.BMP
vacation pilesort.respondents.BMP
 

I know what I did wrong in my first two attempts.  I didn't click on "Add to document".  Now I know!  I will erase the first two attempts.  =)

An addendum to my first attempt at a blog

Sorry, just a short "addendum" regarding the pilesort program.  What I liked about it that I didn't mention in my first blog (although I attached the file) was the plot on the respondents.  I was just explaining to a friend about how it would be interesting to have a larger number of teachers and administrators or even a large number of school-level, district-level, and state-level personnel do the pilesort activity (having them group the 10 characteristics of a productive classroom into three) and use the Visual Anthropac Pilesort program to plot the respondents to see if they would end up in distinct groups.  If they do, it would indicate a disconnection in what the different groups view as a productive classroom as well as what they believe is an effective teacher.  If the groups are not on the same page, something is wrong with the system.  The biggest complaint about the DOE is the lack of communication from the Superintendent's office at the state-level all the way to the school-level.  The chain of communication is missing more than a few links.  Sorry.  This was much longer than I expected.  Have a great weekend!

My first attempt at a blog

I am not sure if I am doing this correctly, but here goes . . . I know class is an hour away, but I wanted to do this before I got there.  Luckily, I was able to leave work early enough to have the time to "blog" . . . I am doing the free list, rank order, pile sort activity with HyoIn.  Our topic was vacation destinations.  However, I also wanted to see how this would work with a school-related topic.  So, I did another one on my own.  I asked six people to list 10 things they would find in a productive classroom.  I am interested in teacher evaluation and thought that this might give me an idea of what teachers and administrators thought was important in effective teaching.  It was interesting that the teachers tend to focus more on what the students are doing and the administrators/mentor teachers focus on both what the students are doing as well as what the teachers are doing.  The top 10 ended up being Students working or participating in class activity Teacher monitors students Cooperative learning Accountable talk Student inquiry Students are able to demonstrate/discuss learning Students make connections to learning Classroom environment conducive to learning Positive teacher/student relationships Clear expectations I had grouped some of the responses that were similar so it was easier to distinguish the frequency.  I then asked six people to rank the top 10 (one of the six was also a freelist responder).  You could really see the differences in thought when you look at how people ranked the things you would see in a productive class.  You could see who felt classroom management was more important and who focused more on content and actual learning.  With the difference in thought, I can see why the state is having such a hard time developing a teacher evaluation tool.  Certain people see certain aspects of the classroom as more important than others.  All ten characteristics of a productive classroom are obviously important and they all fit hand-in-hand.  But, how do you really put all the characteristics into an effective evaluation tool?  I know, I'm rambling . . . I asked the same six to sort the ten characteristics into three groups.  After using the Anthropac to plot the groupings, it appears that the groupings tend to focus on what was student-centered and what was teacher-driven.  It would have been interesting to see this on a larger scale, just to get a better idea of what the general thought on the topic was, and I should have maybe asked people outside of the field of education.  That may have resulted in some interesting perceptions of what the general public thinks goes on in a classroom.  As for the Anthropac program.  I had difficulties with it yesterday and could not get it to work as was instructed in the handout.  However, I noticed that there were two application outside of the Anthropac application -- one for freelist and one for pilesort.  That was much easier to use.  However, I had to list the items vertically in a column rather than in a row and it worked fine.  I also used it to average my rankings (I did a separate freelist with the rankings).  I am going to attempt to attach it to this.  I hope it was okay to use that program and I hope this is okay for a blog and that it works . . .  I guess I'll find out.  =) I should really get to class now. productive classroom.xlsx freelist.TXT classroom.freelist.adjusted.TXT classroom.freelist.rank.TXT classroom pilesort.labels.BMP classroom pilesort.respondents.BMP Responses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj8ALj3EUl5zdEdUcDJCMnBFcmtxdWwwUzJXWUMtR2c&hl=en_US Freelist (Visual Anthropac): https://docs.google.com/document/d/18YXVjG04koSZsyvNoNJWKlhKgoKnktQFMpUW7PJaN60/edit?hl=en_US Freelist -- adjusted (Visual Anthropac): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kicf5fZ0NvZIY1G4_RmxduOltOtfnFeGi1lmTMCXJ1w/edit?hl=en_US Freelist -- rank (Visual Anthropac): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VDArSnEJLIT2H5LI0VJmQucYwDkFh1UtDw-L3wA9hC8/edit?hl=en_US Pilesort -- classroom characteristics (Visual Anthropac): https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Bz8ALj3EUl5zZjMyMDM2ODMtMWE5Yi00ZWVmLTg1NDYtOWQwNGE5MDk1ZDll&hl=en_US Pilesort -- respondents (Visual Anthropac): https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Bz8ALj3EUl5zM2VhNDI2MGYtOTUzNC00MjAzLTgzOTItZWFhMzhlNTRjZDI3&hl=en_US