Know Thyself.

—Ancient Greek proverb, attributed to Socrates

If we’re to improve our practice as educators, we need to know how we’re currently doing, and honestly assess what we need to change.

But that’s not as easy as it sounds, because it’s pretty hard to know yourself.

Heck, I can’t even tell if my shirt’s tag is sticking up, much less identify all of my best opportunities for professional growth.

Plenty of people made fun of Donald Rumsfeld for talking about “known knowns” and “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” but there’s something to all this.

The Johari Window helps us map out the blind spots:

Feedback from Others

Right away, we can see why getting feedback from others is helpful:

• It prompts us to take action on “open” areas of growth, that we might already know about but not yet have acted on
• It gives us a chance to learn about growth edges that we’ve been “blind” to

But opportunities to get feedback from peers are pretty rare in most schools.

Seeking Signals From The Unknown

So how can we peer into our “unknown” areas of practice, if they’re invisible to us and to others who observe us?

Simple: through seeing, firsthand.

If we sit around a table in the library and merely tell each other what goes on in our classrooms, there’s going to be a fair amount of both self-deception and posturing.

And if we just tell ourselves we’re doing great, without ever seeing our own practice—without looking in the mirror—we’re hanging out in the “blind” quadrant.

But if, on the other hand, we actually see ourselves in action, on video, the impact is immediate and dramatic.

We see.

And seeing is believing.

Seeing Is Believing

If you see what I’m actually doing in the classroom, your feedback isn’t just idle opinion.

If I film myself, watch the video, and reflect for a bit on what I actually see, my capacity for self-deception will be diminished, and my opportunities for real growth will increase dramatically.

If I then get your input, and show you the same video, I’m going to blow out the Johari Window. I’m going to have far fewer blind spots and unknowns in my practice—at least, in the aspects of practice that can show up on video.

Note: We Don’t Do This

I’m not saying anything new, here. But I’m advocating for practices that are almost never…well, practiced.

It’s easy to understand why—getting feedback from a peer can be intimidating, not to mention a logistical challenge.

Arranging schedules, finding substitutes, creating a climate of trust—it’s no wonder that virtually everyone believes we should see each other teach, yet virtually no one ever does it.

That’s why we created the Professional Collaboration Challenge—to help you gain greater insights into your own practice, and give and receive helpful feedback around your most important instructional priorities.

Register for the Professional Collaboration Challenge, and we’ll share powerful strategies, tools, and techniques for making collaboration part of your practice, without disrupting your schedule or taking more time out of your day.

Too often, teacher evaluations are little more than ratings with a few supporting statements thrown in.

If the process involves so much work for both administrators and teachers, why don’t we get better results?

There’s a vicious cycle at work:

• Most evaluations don’t have a positive impact on students—they don’t result in improvement or the dismissal of underperforming teachers
• Because evaluations have such a poor track record, we tend to see them as perfunctory, and do a perfunctory job, so they’re rarely solid enough to use in dismissal
• The more we see the evaluation process "fail"—the more we fail in our efforts to dismiss underperforming teachers—the more pessimistic we become about the whole process
• We start to look for workarounds, such as reassigning or otherwise harassing teachers we want to get rid of, in the hopes that they’ll get the message and leave voluntarily

How’s it working for us? Not well.

But I believe we can break this cycle.

Breaking The Cycle with Better Evidence

We each have opinions about every teacher we work with. Some of these opinions are backed by solid evidence, and others are mere assumptions—which have no place in the evaluation process.

Gut-level feelings are an important starting point, though. Walk through this exercise in your mind as you read.

1. Articulate Your Gut-Level Feelings

Think of a teacher whose performance you aren’t happy with. What’s bothering you? Express your gut-level feeling, in whatever language comes to mind.

Shut the door and say it out loud if you need to, or write it down, but don’t share this with anyone. It’s just an exercise.

Example:

"Mr. Smith just has no rigor in his classroom. He has 3rd grade kids doing 1st grade work. Every time we talk about rigor, he complains about "where students are" and how he has to give them a solid foundation first. I feel like he’s underestimating his students, and not following the curriculum that everyone else is being successful with, especially in math. His kids aren’t going to be ready for 4th grade next year, and he thinks he’s doing them a favor…"

2. Dimensionalize and Check Those Feelings

Take your gut-level opinions that you expressed in step 1, and try to come up with specific instances that would justify your feelings:

Example:

"I visited the class on Friday and students weren’t doing the 3rd grade math curriculum—they were doing a bunch of random worksheets, and when I asked him about it, he said he was meeting the kids where they were."

Now, ask yourself: was this an isolated incident, or just another example of this teacher’s typical practice?

If you can’t come up with more than one example, now you know your next step: collect more evidence.

3. Imagine The Defense

Now, imagine that you’ve made your accusations, and both you and the teacher are presenting your case to a 3rd party—perhaps the head of Human Resources or a union rep.

What could you expect the teacher to say in his defense? A few possibilities:

• "I had a good reason for what I was doing, and you didn’t bother to understand it for yourself"
• "That was an isolated incident, and I was having a bad day"
• "I know it’s not the way you’d do it, but I’m getting results with my students"

If you have a good counter-argument to overcome each of these objections, you’re ready to move forward.

If not, you may want to reconsider whether your gut-level feeling lines up with the facts.

If you do have to change your claim, that’s a good outcome. It’s better to pursue a hypothesis, and abandon it when the evidence proves it false, than to not look into it at all.

4. Write Your Argument in CEIJ Format

Now it’s time to move from gut feeling and draft evidence into crafting a powerful, specific argument that you won’t be afraid to share with the teacher or any 3rd parties who’ll be reviewing it.

CEIJ format has been around for years, and was (to my knowledge) popularized by Jon Saphier. Briefly, the elements are:

• Claim: Characteristic practice
• Evidence: Specific instances
• Interpretation: What they mean
• Judgment: Final rating on criterion

The Claim

When you write a claim, you’re translating your private, gut-level feelings into a specific claim that you can share with the teacher and anyone else involved in the evaluation process.

A word of warning: when you write it out, the claim is going to sound harsh (if it’s a negative comment at all), because you’re separating the claim from any context that might soften it, and making a statement about the teacher’s general level of practice in that specific area.

The "I was having a bad day" or "that was just one incident" arguments will be directly challenged by the claim.

The Evidence

Of course, the claim doesn’t speak for itself; it needs multiple, specific instances to serve as evidence.

The evidence should be indisputable; in other words, the teacher should agree, or be clear from your notes, about what happened, because it’s strictly factual.

This separation is key: the claim makes a general statement, and the evidence backs it up. The only way to challenge the claim is to provide contrary evidence.

The Interpretation

Here, you’ll specify the impact of the claim and evidence. Typically, the interpretation says what impact the instruction had on students or on other factors relevant to professional practice.

For example, you might say ‘As a result of doing below-grade-level worksheets, students were unable to complete most of the questions on the grade-level common assessment."

The Judgment

Finally, you’ll give the rating. You’re not rating the lesson or the observation, but the overall level of practice, so make sure this lines up with the claim you made above.

Putting It All Together: High-Performance Teacher Evaluations

Generating solid evidence for teacher evaluations is a major focus of our online course, High-Performance Teacher Evaluations.

Registration is open now through this Friday, February 27, when we’ll officially start the course.

Learn more about High-Performance Teacher Evaluations »