Bias for Action
Teacher evaluations – hot and controversial topic, right?
As much as we would like to think that teachers are “lying around the pool and eating bon-bons” during their summer “off”, that is not true at all!
It is a story made up by non-teachers who are not happy (or even jealous!) that teachers are not in their classrooms during the summer like they have to be in their office or on the job during summer months.
Well, I am here to tell you that most teachers I know (and there have been literally thousands of them over my long career!) are attending PD workshops, learning and growing their craft.
Or they are writing curriculum and creating “new and improved” initiatives to implement as mandated by the district or state.
Even if teachers were lounging by the pool and consuming French chocolates, their minds are still wandering and reflecting on events from the past school year and how they are going to try to finally get that dopamine hit and validating feedback of “innovating” or “outstanding” or “exceed expectations” or whatever the highest level is called on the rubric.
So, as I was lounging by the pool with my oh-là-là luscious chocolate companions (lol!), I struck up a conversation with my husband on the topic.
My mental musing about employee evaluations and how differently employees are evaluated in the business world as opposed to teachers in an educational system led to an interesting conversation and new perspective.
For teachers nowadays, of course we all know about Marzano and Danielson and terms like domain, rubrics, reliability, strategies, reflection, collaboration, professionalism, etc.
In the business world, they use terms like performance, review, conduct, leadership, achievement, communication, etc.
My husband brought up a term that his company (based in Germany) used:
Bias for Action
I had no idea what he meant by that, and so I asked. (more…)
