How can the tax paying public be sure that teachers are doing their job well?

         The issue with the tax paying public is that they do not see what we as teachers go through on a daily basis. They do not understand that sometimes we have a difficult class, sometimes the students don’t work well with us, or the students might make it their point to disrupt us, their classmates, and make it a horrible learning environment.

         So the question put in front of me is how can we get the tax paying public to see if we as teachers are doing their job well. There is no simple answer for this question; however there may be a few ideas that might help.

My initial thought was “why don’t we have our fellow teachers come in and evaluate us? They know what the kids are like, which ones are just trying to show off, or deciding not to do his work.” I further thought about this, and although there is an issue regarding the fact that the teachers might not be in the same field (i.e. a math teacher evaluating a social studies teacher) we could make it work. We could have fellow math teachers come into other math teachers’ rooms and evaluate them.

         Coming from a household where both of my parents are teachers, I asked them what they believe should happen, and after a few shrugs of the shoulders and a couple glances at one another, my dad suggested the following:

“We could have the students fill out surveys quarterly answering anonymous questions that can incorporate the teacher’s effectiveness in teaching.” I questioned him and asked “what if you have that student in the class who doesn’t care how it will affect your job standing and they make you sound terrible, even if you are an excellent teacher”. His response was that we could sift out the surveys that are over the top and just look at the ones that seem the most realistic.

         Thinking about my dad’s response to the question posed makes me feel that there isn’t a lot that we can do to help reassure the taxpayers. They cannot come into our classrooms and grade us because they don’t know what is effective or ineffective, nor do they have the time to take a day off of their busy schedule to come and assess how our teachers are doing. Not only that but most importantly, they don’t know HOW to evaluate us. They don’t have degrees in teaching; say that the taxpayer is a cook in a restaurant. They don’t know how to assess us properly because of this. We don’t go into their kitchen and tell them how to cook a goose if we haven’t a clue the first thing about cooking. I understand that they want to see for themselves how we are doing, but it’s impossible for them to fully grasp why we do the things we do.  They need to trust the other ways of how we as teachers are evaluated, just like how we have to trust that they made our food correctly. I believe that the best way to appease everyone is to have multiple ways of assessing us as teachers. Then, we take the average of all of the assessments and reevaluate from there. We need to have surveys given out to students and get their input on their teacher, as well as allow our coworkers to come into our classrooms and evaluate us themselves. I believe that the more people and more opportunities we can have people of all different backgrounds come into our classrooms, the more input we will have to our effectiveness of teaching. I believe that the more people you have reviewing your work won’t hurt, but can only improve your overall teaching. Even though these methods of evaluation may not be used for or against you, it can help you to realize your strengths and weaknesses in teaching, which can help us improve our teaching, seeing as how we are lifelong learners.