Evaluating Programs & Human Performance

Evaluation Methods

As I started to write this blog it kind of amazed me how many evaluation models were out there to evaluate my teaching style.  I knew of a few that my colleagues had discussed with me but nothing in too much detail.

The first method that I chose was the Marzano Evaluation Model I have used Marzano teaching methods for vocabulary in my classroom and have found it to be very beneficial to my students.  So if he can create a good method for students, he must have a way to creating something for the teachers to be more successful in the classroom. There are four parts to this method of evaluation, the first step is to identify classroom strategies and behaviors that you want to see happen during your lesson. The second step is how well did you plan or prep for the lesson.  The third step reflecting on teaching, which gets you think that if you lesson was not successful in class then what type of professional development will you do to grow as an educator, it also includes setting goals for yourself as a teaching to accomplish your professional growth in your area of need. The forth step requires you to find a mentor or ask a colleague to come watch your lesson to get a second pair of eyes to evaluate what they saw during your lesson.  I can see me using this method in the classroom because it is really easy to follow.  It also brings out my need to have others see me teach, I am very self-critical about my teaching tend to be harder on myself than other people when they come and observe my lesson.  So this method could have me reevaluate perhaps my level of engagement with the students, because it does bring in that outside view.

The second method that I chose wasn’t as good as the Marzano method but it still provided an interesting approach to evaluating your teaching.  The method was called The Framework of Teaching, and like the Marzano method it also had four steps to evaluating your progress. There process starts with you planning and prepping a lesson that you will be teaching, and evaluating how you prepped for that lesson. Second step is to evaluate the classroom environment that you have placed for your students. The third step is to given instruction and evaluate how you gave the instruction to your students. Then lastly you are to evaluate areas of growth so that you can attend professional growth. This would be good for me when I am giving instruction to my students when it comes to independent practice.  I can give instructions and then evaluate how well I gave the instruction to my students on who to complete their assignment.

Reflection on Evaluation

As I was researching the different evaluation methods and reading this week’s chapters I really did enjoy this week’s reading.  My school this year adopted an evaluation method for students, but I did not really think about this in relationship to teachers.  However, when looking at the different method I think that one thing that needs to be address in any of the education models, and that is engagement of student in the classroom.  I know that some might think that this is implied in the learning outcome but to me I do not think that it is implied, and that needs to be address.  A good lesson might teach the students something but if there is no higher level engagement occurring then the lesson will not be retained very well.  Now to answer the question:  Should return on investment and management of resources also be considered in evaluations of instructional programs?  I think that classroom management should be included because if you have a class with a lot of misbehavior then this can harm the learning.  I had a class that I would teach in different ways to and because of a few students no learning would be achieved.  I can always remember who was in that class, but I tried everything but still no results.  I had a teacher come observe my lesson to see if it was the lesson, ultimately the teacher evaluated classroom management.  We discussed this and I changed some things up but still the class was just the wrong people together. But I would have kept changing my lesson over and over again, if she did not evaluate the management as well.  So this is important when evaluating and reflecting upon yourself.

 Human Performance

I never thought about non instructional solutions to human performance.  One performance problem that I know that I have at work is the amount of emails that people send on a regular basis.  Most of these do not pertain to education or the business and even if they did most of the teachers are going to hit reply all.  If you are going to reply to the person then all you have to do is hit reply, not everyone on campus needs to see the congratulations.  I think a solution to do this is a policy change that states that you need to keep emails professional.  I think that on standard I delete half of my emails because they do not pertain to the business of education.