The following is the sixth of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a “clinical evaluation” (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 French.
I provided Mr. MacNeil’s assessment grade by grade in separate posts, followed by my reflections (response). In other words, the performance evaluation of the three grades was distributed over three posts.
Further posts followed that included performance evaluation criteria for Domain I (Professional Responsibilities) and Domain II (Educational Environments), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response).
For the context of the “clinical evaluation,” see the post A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Eight.
As a teacher, I was earning around $85,000 a year at the time. Undoubtedly, according to the social-democratic or social-reformist left, it was a “good job,” “decent work,” and other such clichés. Being under clinical evaluation or supervision, however, was in effect legal torture. Did the collective agreement between Lakeshore School Division and Lakeshore Teachers’ Association prevent such legal torture? Was the collective agreement a “fair contract?”
I responded to Mr. MacNeil’s clinical evaluation with an initial 43-page reply, with the then Manitoba Teachers Society (MTS) staff officer Roland Stankevicius (later General Secretary of the MTS) providing edited suggestions that reduced it to about 30 pages.
Mr. Stankevicius remarked that the evaluation reflected negatively–on Mr. MacNeil:
You have provided a very scholarly response but it needs to be shortened. I hope you agree with my suggestions. …
You have made your points here. NM [Neil MacNeil] does not look good in a lot of how he states his observations (in my opinion).
This commentary by the union rep was made in December, 2011. However, two months later, in February 2012, I was to be evaluated again–this time on “intensive supervision”–under the direct supervision of the superintendent of Lakeshore School Division, Janet Martell. Since I was seeing a counsellor for the Manitoba Teachers’ Society, Degen Gene, under the Employee Assistance Program, he recommended that I go on sick leave. A math teacher at Ashern Central School (where I worked) also suggested that. In February, Mr. Stankevicius (the MTS union rep), Janet Martell, superientendent, Leanne Peters (Assistant Superintendent) and I had a meeting to discuss the issue.
Mr. Stankevicius, the MTS lawyer and I subsequently met. The lawyer indicated that the issue was grievable (I could claim that they had breached the collective agreement), but that in the meantime I would still have to undergo intensive clincial supervision–and that despite Mr. Stankevicius’s earlier claim that Mr. MaNneil’s evaluation reflected badly on him rather than on me. I was already experiencing extreme stress due to the legal harassment of the principal. I also knew, both from experience as a union steward at another place of work and from a course I took on arbitration, that the process of grievance handling could take months if not more than a year before being addressed and a judgement handed down. The implicit power of management’s right to direct the workforce granted the superintendent the right to harass me legally–despite a collective agreement–the principle of following the directives of management and grieving later–hardly expresses any fair situation. I decided to go on sick leave, and I resigned at the end of June 2012.
This post deals with the performance evaluation criteria of Domain III (Teaching and Learning), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response). (The final post in this series will be about performance evaluation critiera for Domain IV (Professional Relationships), with Mr. MacNeil’s comments and my reflections (response).
When I refer to “see above” in some of the posts, it refers to previous posts (in the actual response to the principal’s performance evaluation, it was to what I had written earlier).
The radical left should expose both what management does and how it does it. Discussion of the situation that various kinds of employees face need to be openly discussed, but to do that it is necessary to expose, in a transparent way, managerial behaviour.
The radical left (and even many self-proclaimed Marxists), however, these days rarely discuss in any detailed way issues that oppress workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers.
Lakeshore School Division
Teacher Clinical Evaluation Report
Teacher: Fred Harris School: Ashern Central School Subject/Grade: MY French; ELA Trans. Focus 30S; SY Support The teacher and administrator will review Administrative Regulations and Procedures Evaluation Process-Professional Staff (2.3)
Domain 3: Teaching and Learning
3a. Communicating instruction
3b. Questioning and discussion techniques
3c. Student Engagement
3d. Effective feedback for students
3e. Flexibility and Responsiveness
Administrator’s Comments
Students are often confused about what they should be doing during classes, and how they should be doing it. Almost all instructions in the observed classes have been giving orally, and as there appears to be very little desire on the part of the students to take part in the activities or learning being asked of them, they are often not listening to these oral instructions. Even when instructions have been presented on paper, as for the family tree assignment in the grade 7 class, Fred and the students engaged in something of a battle as they attempted to focus on the second part of the page, dealing with the actual assignment, while Fred kept insisting that they redirect their attention to the first part of the page – which they never did appear to do. This tug-of-war went on for several minutes.
Any flow in the question and answer sessions between Fred and his students was disrupted by Fred’s continued admonishments of student who were not behaving appropriately in the class. Both I and the students had trouble seeing the point of these sessions due to the interruptions. The sessions at the beginning of classes where personal questions were asked and answered were, as previously noted, devoid of any evidence of progressing in competency in French, or in creating effective relationships between Fred and the students in these classes.
There was little effective engagement during these classes. Through much of the classes, students were looking elsewhere, had their heads down, and/or were engaged in other activities than those Fred wanted them to be engaged in. These other behaviours included such things as braiding their own or others’ hair, doodling, reading other materials, making paper airplanes, walking around the class, sharpening pencils, etc. Students’ body postures appeared in many cases to be “slumped” in their chairs, looking elsewhere rather than at whomever might be speaking at any given time. During the most recent observation (grade 8), 3 of the 5 girls taking the class were overheard by myself saying the same three words, “I hate French”. Students would routinely insist that they were unable to carry out the tasks Fred requested of them, or to respond to the questions he posed to them.
Fred appeared to be either unwilling or unable to be flexible in terms of responding to cues from students during the observed classes. For example, in providing students with a handout about their family tree assignment (grade 7), he attempted to go over the goals of the assignment, while they were (naturally) drawn to the requirements (description) of the project on the second half of the page. They would ask questions about this second section, to which he repeatedly replied, “I only want questions about the first section.” A discussion of the learning goals never did transpire, and the class eventually moved on to the requirements of the project. Fred had previously decided (evidently) that students could use “imaginary” family members instead of their real families. This led to questions about possibly using cartoon or other characters in the family tree, and Fred himself suggested that they might include aliens. While this might alleviate some discomfort that some students might feel about using their own family members, it led to a breakdown in the attempted discussion as students began to speculate about the imaginary characters they might use.
Teacher’s Reflections
Re: “Students are often confused about what they should be doing during classes, and how they should be doing it. Almost all instructions in the observed classes have been giving orally, and as there appears to be very little desire on the part of the students to take part in the activities or learning being asked of them, they are often not listening to these oral instructions.”
I have tried to write a general outline of what we are going to do on the board. I have also been writing the purpose of the lesson on the board for about a week now.
Re: “Even when instructions have been presented on paper, as for the family tree assignment in the grade 7 class, Fred and the students engaged in something of a battle as they attempted to focus on the second part of the page, dealing with the actual assignment, while Fred kept insisting that they redirect their attention to the first part of the page – which they never did appear to do. This tug-of-war went on for several minutes.”
I will admit that I should have separated the two parts of the paper into two papers (see attachment). The characterization of what transpired as a tug-of-war is, once again, inaccurate. There were perhaps two or three students who wanted to know about the family tree. Most questions, though, were focused on the first set. There was no tug-of-war. I simply reminded students that we would deal with the second set afterwards. I did not “insist,” as if I were struggling to have them focus on the first set. Such a characterization is simply inaccurate. We did discuss the learning goals, and I reviewed some of the vocabulary of the family and the possessive adjectives. We also, for example, reviewed avoir with age since it is a frequent English mistake to use etre rather than avoir. One student made that mistake, and I corrected the student.
In the grade 7 class, there were, perhaps, 10 to 15 questions by students with their hands raised. They were certain listening to the answers that I was providing and were evidently participating in the formulation of questions in order to clarify the goals and the expectations of the family tree.
Re: “Any flow in the question and answer sessions between Fred and his students was disrupted by Fred’s continued admonishments of student who were not behaving appropriately in the class. Both I and the students had trouble seeing the point of these sessions due to the interruptions.”
Again, I am not sure if the administrator is referring to the grade 6, 7 or 8 classes or to all of them.
I have given several students detention when they have persisted in misbehaving.
Re: “There was little effective engagement during these classes. Through much of the classes, students were looking elsewhere, had their heads down, and/or were engaged in other activities than those Fred wanted them to be engaged in. These other behaviours included such things as braiding their own or others’ hair, doodling, reading other materials, making paper airplanes, walking around the class, sharpening pencils, etc. Students’ body postures appeared in many cases to be “slumped” in their chairs, looking elsewhere rather than at whomever might be speaking at any given time. During the most recent observation (grade 8), 3 of the 5 girls taking the class were overheard by myself saying the same three words, “I hate French”. Students would routinely insist that they were unable to carry out the tasks Fred requested of them, or to respond to the questions he posed to them.”
As I said, I have tried to address the issue with the grade 8s by breaking the process into more manageable (analytic) parts.
Re: “Fred appeared to be either unwilling or unable to be flexible in terms of responding to cues from students during the observed classes. For example, in providing students with a handout about their family tree assignment (grade 7), he attempted to go over the goals of the assignment, while they were (naturally) drawn to the requirements (description) of the project on the second half of the page.”
I certainly agree that “they were (naturally) drawn to the requirements (description) of the project on the second half of the page.” The students are, in accordance with Deweyan theory, more interested naturally in the concrete ends rather than in the means to the end. I had misunderstood what the administrator required; I thought that he had meant that it was necessary to review the learning goals before going on.
As for not being responsive, I tried to follow what I thought the administrator required for learning goals.
Re: “Fred had previously decided (evidently) that students could use “imaginary” family members instead of their real families.”
This suggestion was a suggestion from one of the students.
“This led to questions about possibly using cartoon or other characters in the family tree, and Fred himself suggested that they might include aliens. While this might alleviate some discomfort that some students might feel about using their own family members, it led to a breakdown in the attempted discussion as students began to speculate about the imaginary characters they might use.”
I am uncertain how the spontaneity of the students’ imagination led to a breakdown in the discussion. Some students were enthusiastic and expressed themselves without raising their hand, probably. It seems, then, that good classroom management requires the absolute mediation of the teacher for students to express themselves. If that is indeed considered good classroom management, I will comply with such a view, but I then wonder about the issue of spontaneity and the effect that will have on student interest.
The Abolitionary 