Chris tried to comment on the thread below but got 404’d so as I do when that happens I just publish the comment as an article:
I’m commenting here to try to resuscitate this discussion that originated here:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/05/08/request-from-chris/
The initial meeting that took place as an entire county thing didn’t go well. Our Director of Achievement (also the curriculum director) and our union president didn’t like it. So our district is splitting off and doing it’s own thing in order to come up with a good teacher evaluation system. I was on that original committee because I expressed interest in it to my union president and she invited me to go. Now, our Director of Acad. Achievement/Curr. Director has sent out invitations. At the original county meeting, it was a committee comprised of ALL of the districts in our county, one teacher from each building. So I was representing the middle school. Now our district is doing it’s own thing. The director has invited 19 people from our large district, and I’m one of them. And I’m not the only middle school person on this committee this time, so I probably won’t be expected to represent the middle school year. In fact, there are 3 middle school teachers and our principal. Then there are some other teachers from the other buildings in our district and some principals and asst. principals. However I am the only foreign language teacher invited to be on the committee. Yahtzee! Here’s a quote from the invitation: “You have been selected to serve on this committee to provide input into the design of the District Teacher Evaluation/Student Growth Measure system.” So I emailed the person in charge of this, asking if this is the first of many meetings to come, and to state that I don’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach and that it would be most beneficial to students and teachers if teacher evaluations were modified according to content area. I asked her “Will we have different evaluations for different content areas? I have a tendency to think that, like with students, there isn’t really a “one size fits all” approach. I think it would be most beneficial to both students and teachers if teachers in different content areas were evaluated slightly different based on their content areas. I can think of many ways that foreign language teachers could be evaluated that differ from how a math or phys. ed. teacher could be evaluated. I know that there are many constants that are evident in all teachers’ instruction regardless of content area but I think that there should also be additions to the evaluations based on content area. What do you think about this?” She said: “ Yes. This is the first of many meetings that will take place throughout this year. This first meeting will be an organizational meeting to discuss the framework and how we can best meet the needs of various content areas. I am in full agreement that the “one size fits all” model will not be the best practice in this important work.”
I personally think this is great. So right now we’re not only looking to improve our Spanish curriculum but I also have a hand in changing our teacher evaluation system. Can you feel how big this is? How interrelated these two things are? I for sure will be pushing for “The teacher speaks the target language in a manner that is comprehensible to students for at least 90% of the class period” Not only because this is incredibly CI/TPRS friendly, but also because I want to be held accountable to this.
So I think this discussion is worth bringing up again, at least for me. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic but I feel like I’m in a great position to be an agent of change here in Ohio. If the curriculum meeting doesn’t go perfectly, here’s where it can all be redeemed. I also find it interesting that our Director invited only me, out of the whole FL dept., to be a part of this, at the same exact time that we’re looking at improving our curriculum. It may all be a coincidence, but regardless.