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Sunday, June 1, 2014

NYC Educator: Lazy Administrators Do Whatever

NYC Educator: Lazy Administrators Do Whatever:



Lazy Administrators Do Whatever

I've been receiving a lot of complaints from teachers about ridiculous observation reports that declare them developing or ineffective with no evidence whatsoever. Has this happened to you? You get rated poorly and the comment is something like, "Goes to meetings only when physically dragged there," or "Fails to accept my word as tantamount to that of deity?"

Actually that's unacceptable. Aside from being lazy, it's actually just using a random quote to buttress the administrator's highly subjective opinion. How does it help you to hear that? If you were really doing something unacceptable, there'd be evidence. Rather than saying, "Questions are of low rigor" the administrator ought to quote the question. Your actual behavior in the class ought to be described.

If you're falling asleep in front of the class, the administrator ought to be saying so, and then tying it to some piece of Danielson. If you aren't, the administrator ought not be quoting Danielson to suggest you are. Danielson should be used to highlight what you actually do, not what the administrator thinks you do, in his or her fertile imagination.

It's not your fault if the administrator doesn't know how to write, and therefore opts not to. It's not your fault if the administrator has happily spent the last decade ignoring everything that goes on in classrooms. Nor is it your fault that administrators now has to write 4-6 observations a year, and no longer has time to sit in an office and ponder the mystery of what they are actually supposed to do in there. (However, if you fail to point out the lack of evidence in a response, that is your fault.)

The job of the administrator is to support you. It's not the job of administrators to plot vengeance against you for not sharing a vision, NYC Educator: Lazy Administrators Do Whatever: