It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…..
Teaching is really hard the first few years. I was good at about 20-30% of all of the components of teaching and a mess for the rest. But when I would talk with other teachers, students, parents, administrators they would always focus on the things I did best. I was exciting, gave good explanations, motivated students, had good relationships. They would avoid looking at the amount of student engagement I had, how I ran discipline, how I graded, what instructional methods I used. And deep down I always knew that they didn’t see me at my worst moments. I knew that I was a fraud. When I switched schools teachers and students were less inclined to ignore my shortcomings. I was fraudulent and people were ready to let me know. It was really hard going from a school where I felt valued and important to one where I felt like I was a disappointment and a joke. I was better at teaching by now and I was excellent at some parts of teaching, but I still had my weaknesses and I still knew about it. It didn’t help getting pink slipped six times and while we all understand that getting laid off is usually not a personal attack, it still feels like that at times.
My first teaching job I was surrounded by great teachers that were constantly helping me get better, but I was the only chemistry teacher. I lucked into meeting some all star teachers from around the area and I learned from them as much as I could. And gradually I got better. My weaknesses became areas to improve and my strengths became areas to share with other teachers. Last year I ended up winning the award for Michigan Science Teacher of the Year. I was really excited, but I could not shake my feeling of being a fraud. I knew there were things I did well but I also was aware that there are so many teachers that are better than me and some by a wide margin. I still had things that I didn’t do well. So I decided I was going to work really hard at improving until I didn’t feel that way anymore. The award gave me the confidence and the motivation to become worthy of the award I was given. I started really tracking what were the worst things I did and trying to improve them and trying to use my strengths more creatively and I am really proud to say that this year I was not a fraud. I taught my heart out. I taught better than I have ever taught. From my methods to the results it was all there. And this all culminated in our IB senior banquet last night where I was able to watch my students that have been in my class for three consecutive years. They were amazing and I helped with that. I told my senior students today on their last day of high school, “It wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough.” It was a beautiful culmination that I will always remember fondly.
In Michigan our teachers are to be rated either ineffective, minimally effective, effective or highly effective. Our district laid out their criteria for what would constitute highly effective this year and my jaw dropped. I hate our evaluation system. All evaluation systems have flaws but ours is particularly mean-spirited in my view. Our district started by saying that in order to achieve highly effective a teacher has to apply to go through a separate process with 5-8 observations instead of 2. There are extra goals, data analysis and teaching artifacts. I put in my application first of all teachers in the district. I used a piece of flash cotton to simulate me putting my name into the Goblet of Fire when I turned in my form. Next our district requires that in order to get highly effective the teacher must be rated highly effective in all 22 components of the Charlotte Danielson rubric and never be observed at a level below highly effective in any of the 22 components during any of the observations. This is of course impossible. Mr. Feeney, Mr. Keating and Jaime Escalante couldn’t do this if they team taught a single class of 12 students with five hours of prep time. It’s basically the equivalent of me telling my students that if they feel they’ll deserve an A they must apply and then if they get any question wrong ever in the semester that they will end up at a B.
I don’t know if I met the criteria in the original intent, but if not, I sure as heck went down swinging. I spent time compiling all of my evidence that I had for my highly effective teaching for all twenty two criteria. I met every single one of them. I did it. I matched the impossible and I feel great about my teaching this year. It took so many different components of my teaching that I do well but I feel confident in my work that it is all there. I was rated as effective. I am still fighting, but it is a battle I will lose. It feels like the school district is putting in writing for the entire world to see that I am a fraud. I am not a fraud anymore and I deserve better than that. I didn’t in the past, but I do now. And I sit at lunch and I watch teachers that are far better than I am and they don’t apply and it makes me furious. They are highly effective teachers and they don’t deserve to go through the miserable process that I went through. But they also do not deserve to choose between that and being disingenuous about their talents. They are highly effective teachers that are labelled at a lesser level than they are. And why? Some of them are new and I see how much further ahead of the learning curve they are than I was at that point. And they should be encouraged by what they do. They are amazing, inspirational and wonderful and they deserve to know that and not be told otherwise. I don’t understand what we get from these evaluations that make them worth this.
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