2001-09-27
Portfolio evaluation, posted at 7:55 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Yesterday was incredibly stressful.The all-day inservice consisted of a two-hour morning session in which the city schools' portfolio evaluation system was explained to us. To say it's a huge hassle is an understatement. All teachers had to choose two goals to work on for the semester, which is fine in and of itself but not that great once you realize it can't be actual goals you have for your teaching, but the district pre-prescribed goals. Then, I have to choose six students randomly from one of my classes, and save nine pieces of work from them each in order to prove that my goals were successful. Yup, that 54 pieces of work. I also have to trace how I deal with attendance (both good and bad), how I deal with parents, and a bunch of other crap. Then, there's the analysis of the data, the narratives describing each piece of the student data that you used to exemplify my goals, and a lot more crap.
Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with the concept of this portfolio evaluation system. After the portfolios are completed, they are looked over by the department head, the principal, and then the state. It probably helps my principal, for example, evaluate teachers a bit, since he's got 80 to evaluate. My problem is with the manner in which the information about them was conveyed, and the sheer magnitude of the project. It's about a month into the school year, and I just was told what my goals were supposed to be yesterday. If I had them before the school year started, I could have formulated my assignments and assessments to match the goals. Now, I've got to start from scratch in creating assignments that will provide student data to show that my goals have been reached. I can't believe I found out about it a month into the school year. And it's not just me - all the veterans are feeling the same way I am. I couldn't believe the anger and frustration at the meeting yesterday, coming from everyone.
With me, I feel like I'm barely keeping up as it is. The only problem with the portfolio system is that I have to teach kids, too. To say I feel overwhelmed is understated it. I'm still pretty much going day by day; I have skeletal, larger plans in my head, but my daily lessons I pretty much plan during my planning hour every day or at home every day. While I've been keeping up in terms of teaching, and feel like my daily classes are fairly strong, I have been sagging badly in other areas - especially paperwork. I have take-home essay tests from last week that still are not graded. Progress reports are due on Monday. I struggle when I have to teach things beyond the literature, like the crummy vocabulary component of the English courses or practice on grammar.
In short, I have no idea how I'm going to complete the portfolio. I feel like it's shitty that they're giving it to me now, on September 27, rather than a month ago. And it's even crummier that the portfolio only covers this semester, and not the next one - it needs to be completed by Jan. 15.
Sucky, sucky, sucky. This is the type of shit that chases good people from the profession, and the type of shit that makes it necessary to do massive recruiting of unqualified teachers every summer. I suppose it may help to weed out the crappy teachers, but there's gotta be a better way.
Thank god tomorrow's payday. And how crummy it is that the extrinsic rewards of this job are starting to outweigh the intrinsic ones.