Effective Supervision: Supporting the Art and Science of Teaching

Good book

I truly learned a great deal from reading this book. It helped coach me through how I should evaluate.

Be sure to take notes and use the supplements in the chapters. Very helpful.

CAUTION: I am a practicing administrator with extensive experience observing and providing feedback to teachers.Teacher evaluation is a hot topic right now. I get it. We all do, and while I appreciate the depth of history about teacher supervision that is covered in this book, there is not much here to help practitioners of teacher evaluation get better at providing meaningful feedback to teachers. For instance the authors write, "If student achievement is not linked to teacher evaluation, teachers have little incentive to develop into experts." They got that one wrong. This is simply not true.Teachers don't need a ranking from a state test in order to be motivated to be an expert. There is not a one-to-one correlation between expertise as a teacher and student scores on large scale, summative, standardized tests. The large scale tests that districts and states have been using lately to call out the effectiveness of individual teachers is a completely flawed model. Those tests were never designed to measure the expertise of individual teachers. They were designed to measure the overall quality, progress, and improvement of the system (school or district) in general. The fact that states are using these tests for high stakes (diploma requirements) is not an good excuse or a best practice. However, the recent practice has increased student motivation to do their best on the state tests.Side note: Interesting.Expert teachers inspire their learners, and inspiration is hard to measure. The seed of inspiration doesn't bear fruit in less than 9 months. However, even experts need meaningful feedback to improve, and experts are always improving. Intrinsically motivated teachers are no different. They will seek out feedback and training. Student learning is an important part of the effective teacher equation, and any teacher worth their salt can rattle off (and show you) a variety of ways (summative and formative, formal and informal) they measure student learning, achievement, and growth. The key to developing teachers into experts does not rely on more or better tests that "link." It relies on finding people who care and providing them exceptional training and support. FYI: that equation works for other school leaders as well.

Very nice