Making a new story with the best kind of Teacher Evaluation

The best kind of teacher evaluation is looking at a teacher holistically from all angles. In other words taking a 360 degree look. A teacher should not be evaluated by the administrator from just a one-sided perspective. First the administrator should get to know the teacher as a person and then the evaluation should be something not to penalize the teacher but to promote the teacher or prompt the teacher toward growth. This leads to the value of the teacher's own self-reflection of his/her teaching practice. The administrator should consider how the teacher views his/her own performance and what questions the teacher raises to promote individual growth. The other part of the 360 degree evaluation should also involve how the students, parents and other colleagues see the teacher's effectiveness. The teacher evaluation should be a living, evolving process which is a shared discovery of the teacher's performance by the teacher and the administrator. The ultimate goal should always be the end product which is improved student performance because every good teacher knows that as he/she grows the student grows.

Quote for the minute: “Changing who you are now to who you think you ought to be is the decision to write a new story about your life.” Taken from the book, Leading Change in Your World by Smith and Lindsay.

COURAGE

MEMO MINUTES

COURAGE is creativity and confidence unleashed upon new situations, bringing about a new self-awareness of inner strength. Oftentimes the circumstances may be scary and challenging but when courage is unleashed, it is rewarding! When courage is unleashed, it may confound others who wonder at how well one is coping with sudden occurrences.

Astound them!

When courage is unleashed, it may appear to others that one is crazy.

Amuse them!

When courage is unleashed, one will be identified as someone who takes risks.

Amaze them!
As educators, we are courageous. We are risk takers. We constantly try new ways to help students achieve. As educators we take risks daily as we build relationships with students as well as with parents. We take risks as we creatively and confidently look for ways to astound, amuse and amaze students about learning. When we take risks, we sometimes feel as if we are going out on a limb and we wonder who is going to catch us if we fall. My encouragement to us today is to LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR.

Have courage. Have courage to always move forward to evolve; to resolve; to transcend heights; move barriers and accomplish what we know in our hearts to be true----that as educators we are the motivation of the learner. We motivate a thirst in learners to learn as we astound, amuse and amaze them. So we should always take that Leap to Teach in season and out of season because the net of accomplishment will always be there. As educators we must continue to act with courage, fidelity, patience and excellence in our job performance. Experience the inner strength. HAVE COURAGE UNLEASHED. Shelia Burlock, educator

Quote for the minute: "What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?"-------Vincent van Gogh

Running with the Goal in Sight

MEMO MINUTES
Volume Three, January 2010
Each day we begin a new chapter in our lives and we have the choice to decide how we want to handle change. No two days are the same. We can choose to cultivate passion or mediocrity. We can choose to cultivate resiliency or complacency. We can choose to be hemmed in by obstacles or we can choose to seek out opportunities. Nonetheless, it all depends on how we set our sight on the goal. Running with the goal in sight makes the accomplishment seem that much nearer. It makes the goal a reality because we can see it, hear it, touch it and taste it. When we visualize the goal, we become formidable in our intensity to conquer the odds. Staff our goal for Petree is to raise our student achievement by increasing the rigor of our learning community. This task is obtainable. We are presently centralizing the fortitude of our combined vision; of our creative ideas; of our professional and personal development; and of our district support in order to make this happen. Let’s run with our goal in sight. It is obtainable. It is near. It will happen.
Principal: Shelia F. Burlock

Quote for the minute: “Changing who you are now to who you think you ought to be is the decision to write a new story about your life”. Taken from the book,

Leading Change in Your World

by Smith and Lindsay.

Mirror Image

Memo Minutes
Volume Two
Mirror images are often a welcoming embrace of something pleasant to see. Mirror images are the surface image; the shiny outside; the outward appearance; sometimes able to depict what is really at the core. Our Petree students have at the core of their academic experience the values of Success, Teamwork, Attitude and Respect. They know that Success means to be a finisher. Teamwork means to be a listener. Attitude means to be a learner and Respect means to be a leader. These core values are woven throughout our school’s vision, mission statement and commitment statements.
Our students look forward each day to coming to school. When they come, they look daily into a mirror. This mirror is the teacher. The image of learning, perseverance, caring, responsibility, and leadership is the reflection given to our students which shapes the core of their academic experience.
Teachers, you hold a precious and fragile mirror within your persona of teaching. You hold a valuable commodity within your implementation; your style; your presentation, and communication of learning to your students. This priceless mirror is you! Imagine everyday that your students will see in you the reflection they need to catapult them closer towards becoming lifelong learners. When you imagine yourself as the mirror they are looking into, the desire to polish that mirror becomes instinctive. Continue to be a polisher of your mirror—a polisher of your profession. Continue to prepare yourself daily through the deep study of your craft so that when you teach, your students will see the image which will be the welcoming embrace of something pleasant ----- a student of high academic achievement and a student of lifelong learning and knowledge. Continue to be the mirror image your students need to see in order to achieve. Keep it polished. Principal, Shelia F. Burlock

Quote for the minute: “There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.”
Marva Collins, American Educator.

Motivation

Motivation relates to the areas of affect, interest and focus. Each individual student who walks through our door comes with his/her own unique affective domain and interests—both of which play a pivotal part in keeping the child focused. The affective domain relates to what is going on in the child’s personal environment which has an adverse effect on how this child performs in school. The area of interest of the child directly correlates to differentiating instruction for the child. What does he/she like to read? What kind of genre? What sports, hobbies or pastimes prompt attention? What kind of music, movies? Who is their hero? What do they dream of becoming when they grow up?

As educators we need to suspend all assumptions. This is part of our Guiding Principles of our PBS program called STAR STATUS. As educators, we cannot make the assumption that we “know” all there is to know about our students the moment they walk through the door. To make this assumption will hinder us from putting forth sincere effort and time to get to know our students as individuals. However, when we approach our students’ areas of need by learning their affective domain and interest, we begin to build a relationship with them. It is this relationship which plays a key part to motivate them and keep them focused on the rigor and relevance of learning.
Building relationships means having a sincere and strategic plan of action to put forth the effort to really, really get to know our students.

TIPS:
1. Take 2 minutes for 10 days to talk with a student one on one about an area
of personal interest to them in order to begin to build a bridge of trust.
After the ten days, begin the process with another student. Continue until
you have completed the process with every student in your class.
2. Volunteer to participate in our Fall and Spring Neighborhood Walks.
3. Volunteer to attend non-academic events involving our students. This requires a major sacrifice on our part, especially when it means giving up some of our own personal time, yet our students really feel valued when they see us outside our regular educational routine.

These are just a few among a variety of things we can do to build bridges of communication and trust in order to motivate our students. The most encouraging comment I once received as a principal is when a teacher said to me, “Mrs. Burlock, I wake up now every morning and smile because I like coming to work.” This teacher communicated personal motivation which she later confirmed to me stemmed from how our school’s PBS program was beginning to take off. After her comment I thought, what if every child at our school woke up and smiled and thought “I like coming to school.”

As educators we all know that daily we play a big part in this motivation. And even though we are not the only ones influencing this motivation, how we interrelate and communicate with our students is a significant factor in this motivation.
So as we begin our new school year, let’s think of what would make us say to ourselves, “I just like coming to work” and let’s work together to promote this same motivation in our Petree students.
Mrs. Burlock, Principal

Quote for the minute: “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt Disney

RESILIENT

Memo Minutes

Volume Five. February 2, 2009

Students today live in a fast track society filled with fast food, fast technology and fast choices. Everything comes at them so quickly.
However, success oftentimes comes slowly after multiple attempts and frequent repeats. As educators we have the awesome opportunity to demonstrate to our students how to be resilient. We can teach our students how to be durable, strong and forbearing. We have the remarkable privilege to put an imprint on our student’s lives of what endurance looks like –the endurance to keep on keeping at something. We can show our students the determination to work at the same goal multiple ways, for long lengths of time until the desirable outcome is obtained.
This is being resilient.
There were many in history that was resilient in spite of having frequent disappointments. These are some of the people we speak about and teach about during Black History Month which is America’s History because of the impact their contributions made on all of America. These clouds of witnesses cheer us on because they experienced what it is like to be durable, strong, and resilient against insurmountable odds. They knew how to continue moving forward resisting all kinds of obstacles and oppositions. They were resilient and resistant to the hurdles thrown at them and they found creative ways to navigate around, through, and beyond until they overcame.
And now we can gain encouragement from our history in order to teach this life skill to our students. Here is how:
When we are resistant to low performance, we are being resilient.
When we are resistant to labels, we are being resilient. When we do not allow labels
to define us or limit us then we are being resilient.
We will resist discouragement. We will resist fatigue. We will model for our students how to be resilient, how to forbear, how to be steadfast and always abounding and how to be durable. We will continually seek to differentiate ways to teach our students until they reach the desirable outcome of becoming life long learners.
WE ARE A RESILIENT STAFF OF COMMITTED EDUCATORS! WE ARE PETREE!
Shelia Burlock, Principal

Quote for the minute: "Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire." William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and dramatist

RIGOR

MEMO MINUTES

Volume Four. November 04, 2008

RIGOR can be defined as raising expectations for student achievement. It is a new term revisiting an old theory called TESA (Teacher Expectation Student Achievement). The theory behind TESA was one of RIGOR. In other words, students will achieve more when teachers expect more of them.
However, to truly understand how to implement rigor we must first challenge our own paradigm of thinking because it is our paradigm of thinking which defines the culture (shared meaning) of our school. What do we really believe about the children we teach? Do we really believe all of the children we teach can learn? Do we really believe all of the children we teach want to learn? Or do we think only some want this? Do we really believe all the children we teach are capable of learning “hard stuff”--new and challenging material or do we feel that only a small percentage is capable. What do we really, truly believe about the children we teach?
In order to approach teaching with rigor true efficacy, intensity and intentionality, we must first believe that all our children can and want to learn. We must believe that all our children are capable of learning new, innovative, different and progressive material. We must believe foremost of all that all our children want to be challenged with learning beyond the mediocrity (adequacy) because when we don’t positively challenge them, they will challenge us with their behavior. When we make learning rigorous, we entice our children’s appetite for learning. We give them something to “think about” “look for” and “ask about”. We cause them to stretch their minds and thus they become thirsty and thirsty for more learning. Our students are easily bored with mediocrity (“the same old, same old”) and they “act out” because they are starving for the challenge of learning.
Rigor then can extend beyond just presenting standard based content which is aligned with the high pace performance of where our children should be academically. Rigor also becomes the “way” the material is presented. Therefore, the material itself (CONTENT) is not only rigorous but the way it is implemented (PROCESS) is also rigorous.
According to an old saying, one shoe doesn’t fit everyone the same way. Well, one type of teaching doesn’t fit every child the same way. We cannot expect children to learn the way we teach, we must teach the way each individual child learns. This means that we must become rigorous in our differentiation of instruction. We must find out the interests, needs and modalities or learning styles of our children and teach the way they learn.
UNPACKING THE STANDARDS OR TAMING THE STANDARDS:
We must know the language of the standards we are teaching and use the Blooms Taxonomy key words to unpack each standard. Is this a knowledge standard? Is this a comprehension standard?...application, analysis, synthesis or evaluation standard? We must raise the level of each child’s understanding of the standards through the vocabulary and essential questions we ask as well as through direct instruction. We must train our students to think at higher rigorous levels through the use of the Marzano’s dimensions of thinking --knowledge, organizing, applying, analyzing, generating , integrating and evaluating. Finally, we must raise the rigor in the (PRODUCT) or work we expect students to perform by reinforcing effort, setting objectives and providing feedback. We must help students set individual goals. The use of rubrics will help students see the outcome they are aiming for. We must differentiate with homework and find creative and rigorous ways to reinforce learning at home where students may have to work independently. Homework must be made meaningful by connecting it with the student’s goals and with the rigor of the class work.
Rigor truly begins first and foremost in what we believe about our students.
Do we believe our students can do the same kind of work as students at schools where our own family/friends go? If any of us have trouble believing this, we just might be teaching at the wrong place because the paradigm of thinking of Petree teachers should be that our children can learn anything, if they put their minds to it. Therefore, it is our responsibility to teach with the intentionality and intensity of rigor in content, process and product in order to help our children learn how to put their minds to it. They can truly become great in their performance and excel when they have teachers who believe and challenge them to put their minds to it.

Shelia Burlock, Principal

Quote for the minute: "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge but rather a lack of will.” (Taken from Dare to Soar plaque given to Ethel Lee Harris on 11-23-03)