Boredom, Thy Name Is Charlotte Danielson (On Rubrics and Misuse)
Charlotte Danielson
“And another thing!”
I’ve always wanted to start a post off like that, like I was in the middle of an impassioned diatribe and you just happened to step in to the thousand-person auditorium to hear me just get cooking. But then I snapped out of that dream and found myself in another boring Danielson training.
For those not in the know, the NYC Department of Education in conjunction with the United Federation of Teachers has agreed to use the Danielson framework, developed by professor Charlotte Danielson, to evaluate and support teachers. When I first heard her presentation a few years back, I didn’t think much of it. Four hours chock full of jargon and common understandings about the teaching profession might excite a few people, and got a few people hopeful for a person with the solution to examining the elements of a teacher’s performance.
I’m not one of them.
At one point, I remember United Federation of Teachers’ president tell a congregation of us from our district that he liked “Danielson” and calls her from time to time. He sifted through the