North Carolina's new Media Coordinator Evaluation should be in place this year. The rest of the teachers have been using their new appraisal instrument for a few years now, and we've just been using the old IGPs from years past (which are sooooooo much easier). Now we have to appraise ourselves, looking for our own shortcomings and areas we want to improve, as well as proclaiming our strengths. We then have to come up with evidence to prove that this is how we function. You end up, essentially, with a portfolio which you will then be continuously updating.
How important is this new appraisal instrument? Not very -- at least as far as the politicians are concerned. NC teachers, including media coordinators and other special area instructors, are all going to be "graded" based upon the school's EOG test results. If the school does well, we're all good teachers. If the school doesn't do well, it's because we're all bad teachers. It has nothing to do with the fact that 98% of the students come from poverty, don't have books at home, don't have food to eat other than what they get at school as free breakfast and lunch, or spent the night before testing laying on the floor trying to sleep because people were shooting in their windows. Of course not! Especially not when you're comparing a school like North Drive to a school with the upper-class politician's kids...
Waaaay back in 1999 when I did my student teaching, I was in a public school in Wilmington, NC. My first day, the teacher says, "Watch this," and had the kids stand up and introduce themselves and tell me what their father did. So I got the whole, "My name is Bianca and my daddy is a heart surgeon," followed by, "My name is Peyton and my daddy is the District Attorney..." So on and so forth. Back then (because now we just don't get new text books), teachers had a say as to which text books they wanted the county to adopt. The county didn't pick the one this teacher preferred, so a parent bought a class set of the ones that weren't chosen so this teacher could give the kids what they "needed." It was so nice, but it wasn't at all like my reality. My first teaching job was as a first grade teacher in an ancient school with a high migrant worker population. I loved it there, but there wasn't money flowing like there was at my intern-school. My last year there (we were military), I had 26 first graders, 14 of whom didn't speak English. I had an assistant who didn't like little kids (she'd been moved down from a higher grade) and wasn't comfortable working with them, especially the ones who didn't speak English. It was very trying, but I loved those kids. Especially my ESL kids. They were so sweet.... But anyway, I'm babbling. My point is, you can't just make a blanket statement about schools and teachers. It's comparing apples to oranges, and I don't understand how the powers that be can't see this.
The way this state is sooooo quickly circling the drain just infuriates me... Sorry for the rant.
But anyway... The link above is to our new appraisal instrument. Keep this in mind while planning your common core standards based lessons, and keep proof of all you do. :)
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