Patrick- Teacher Evaluation Days

On Thursday we had subject evaluation in English, which meant that I taught two classes with my three English teachers, and we were observed by the school principal, the English department head from the board of education, and two teachers from the school. After the classes, we met for two hours to discuss what they thought we could do better.

Although in general it has been my experience that teachers refrain from criticizing each other, the point of these meetings is apparently to take a hard look at what can be improved, and that they did. I won't go into specific details, but it was a long, productive discussion.

Of course, the main teachers glamoured up the classes a little, as we did more creative things than we would usually do, but this actually backfired, as it became apparent that the students could not (in the second years' case) compose a newspaper article from scratch in 50 minutes.

Anyway, I was surprised at the accountability and seriousness of the meeting. I thought that the accountability was generally handled through test scores, which in each subject area are administered and passed along to the board of education every few months.