NYC Educator: On Student Notes and Rubrics

NYC Educator: On Student Notes and Rubrics

On Student Notes and Rubrics

You go to meetings and someone tells you to group kids in a certain way, or present information in a certain way. Maybe if you do this, it will help maintain interest. Maybe it won't.

You never really know, since likely as not the person who came up with the idea isn't a classroom teacher and never tried it, let alone anything else you do in the classroom. There are a whole lot of people whose jobs entail knowing more than we do about what we do, except they don't do it.

We get these rating sheets where we are marked on a rubric. We're effective, highly effective, effectively high, or I want to take you higher. What does it really mean? Unless you get a bad rating, it means little or nothing. Do the people rating you really understand what's going on in the classroom? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe your supervisor only taught three years, only taught in one situation, only taught one kind of class, and has no idea of the variables going on in your classroom. Maybe your supervisor knows the Danielson rubric and truly believes it encompasses every possibility.

Sometimes kids step up, though, well beyond where the idiotic survey the city put out did, and draw outside the lines. A friend of mine who got a questionable rating recently posted a note from a student on Facebook that CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: On Student Notes and Rubrics