Hold Us Harmless: Why teachers shouldn’t be evaluated this year
Posted September 17, 2020 by admin

My district is in impasse with my union, Volusia United Educators, over several issues. I spoke on behalf of my union on the issue of teacher evaluation. The union wants teachers held harmless for the year; the district claims that the pandemic and the new types of teaching it has entailed will have no impact on our evaluation. Below is the text of my speech. The hearing is still happening now, so I don’t know what they will decide (I may update this post later with the results and my commentary), but here is my speech:

Impasse Hearing – Teacher Evaluation

Good afternoon. My name is David Finkle. I am in my 29^th year with Volusia County Schools and I teach at DeLand High School. My wife also teaches at DeLand High, and our two children are Volusia County Schools graduates. I was the Volusia County Schools 2005 Teacher of the Year.

As this incredibly difficult school year begins, Volusia County Schools is set to evaluate teachers as if this was a normal school year. You haven’t taken evaluation off the table. You haven’t made evaluation a low-stakes trial run under the new circumstances. You haven’t put forth any changes to the evaluation system. This puts teachers in an untenable situation.

The Volusia System for Empowering Teachers, VSET, is not empowering us currently. It is based on the Charlotte Danielson framework for teaching. The backbone of the model used in our evaluation system is teachers’ ability to build classroom community. Students are supposed to receive feedback from both their teacher and peers. Students are supposed to serve as resources for each other and explain concepts to their classmates. They are supposed to work in instructional groups. Students are supposed to help manage instructional groups and help peers, and the interactions between students are supposed to connect them to each other.

Even if we weren’t doing Volusia LIVE, social distancing alone changes all our teaching methods. We cannot do small group discussions. We cannot do pair/share, student conferences, or collaborative projects. Most of the teaching methods that make an effective teacher effective are simply not available to us this year. Social distancing alone has completely changed the nature of our work. Last spring we moved to online teaching. That, too, completely changed the nature of our work, but we adapted. But Volusia LIVE is not like last spring’s online teaching. It is a completely new form of teaching. What teachers are being asked to do is this: combine socially distanced face-to-face learning with live online teaching – we are combining two completely different, and completely new, modalities of instruction at the same time. We should not be pretending that our current evaluation system can adequately evaluate teachers who are doing two brand new jobs at once.

There was an attempt to train us for this new dual-modality-teaching during pre-planning but it was not enough. But the thing is, even if training had been adequate, the way we are teaching is still vastly different from the kind of teaching the Danielson framework is asking us to strive for.

If we look at the Charlotte Danielson framework that we use for V-SET, there are certain things that we are supposed to be creating in our classrooms, things that administrators are supposed to be looking for.

• Classroom interactions are supposed to be individual and highly respectful, reflecting genuine warmth and caring and sensitivity to students as individuals. In our current situation, individual interactions are extremely limited both with social distancing and online. We usually meet students at the door and have small, individual, non-public conversations with students to build relationships. We can’t meet students at the door. We need to stay distant, and we are too busy sanitizing desks. We are tied to our computers while we are teaching. We can’t have individual conversations with LIVE students either – every online interaction is, essentially, public. We will be evaluated on our relationships with students – relationships that are very, very difficult to build.
• We are evaluated on VSET for maximizing Instructional time. Instructional time cannot be maximized. Attendance takes too long. Taking attendance for the 19 students sitting in my 5^th period in person is easy. Taking attendance for my 13 LIVE students who are also in my 5^th period is extremely time consuming. Are their cameras on? Are their mics on? Every single action we take in class takes twice as long as it used to. We are essentially monitoring two classes at once. If you are having class discussion, the LIVE students can’t hear the face-to-face students in most classes, so to facilitate discussion, the teacher has to repeat everything face-to-face students say for the benefit of the online students. Managing time is a struggle.
• According to Ms. Danielson, behavior is supposed to be entirely appropriate. Quite frankly, we can’t control the behavior of online students, or even build the kind of relationships that inspire good behavior. Face-to-face, creating a culture where behavior is entirely appropriate in class is difficult, and it is difficult to monitor face-to-face students and LIVE students at the same time. When I devote time to talking with my LIVE students, I am not monitoring the students in the room. Neither a traditional punishment and reward, nor a modern collaborative classroom model of student behavior works well.
• The classroom is supposed to be safe; the teacher is supposed to make effective use of the physical space and use it for appropriate learning activities. Learning is supposed to be available for all students, including those with special needs. Safety takes on a whole new meaning during a pandemic. My classes of 15 or more students do not feel safely socially distanced. The room arrangement cannot be appropriate for learning activities – we can’t do pair-share, or small group discussion, or group projects. Accommodations for special needs are difficult in class; they are nearly impossible online.
• In the Danielson model, learning is supposed to float, as they say, on a sea of discussion. Students are supposed to explain things to their classmates and help each other. They cannot do that in the current circumstances.
• Classroom community is supposed to be operating on such a level that students, not the teacher, are to ensure that all voices are heard in class discussion. They are hardly getting to know each other – creating class community and culture is very nearly impossible.
• We are supposed to be giving quality feedback to students, but the setup and planning aspects of teaching are taking all my time. Just keeping up with planning and emails takes up a good part of my planning periods. Trying to get feedback to students is proving to be a real challenge. A lot of the feedback I used to give to students was in the moment, in private conversations as I circulated the room, looked at their work and had quick, quiet talks with them. Right now I don’t circulate, I can’t look at work in either modality, and I can’t have quick quiet talks. I can give feedback, but it is often a couple days after they have done the work. It is quality, but it isn’t timely and it isn’t building relationships.
• We are supposed to use an extensive repertoire of instructional strategies: most of my repertoire is not available. In addition to various small group discussion activities, I can’t have students writing examples on the board. I can’t have students perform Shakespeare in front of the class and have nerf duels. I can’t do chalk talks, gallery walks, or four corners. I can lecture. I can read aloud. I can do large group discussion. That is IT. My repertoire is extremely limited.

We cannot create the kind of classroom that VSET is looking for under these circumstances. We are trying to adapt, but we cannot guarantee that our adaptions will work. This is not the same job, and we were not really trained to do this job in this new modality. Do you fear we won’t work if we are not being evaluated? Teachers at my school have been lined up twenty cars deep on either side of the parking lot gate in the morning – eager to get into school as early as possible. They aren’t doing that because they want evaluation points. They are doing it because they care.

Other districts have opted to hold teachers harmless for the year: St Lucie, Indian River, Desoto, Hendry, Glades, Hardee, Highlands. It is within your power to de-stress our year. It costs you nothing. But it would be an investment in your relationship with your teachers. I have talked to many teachers. Not one thought we could be fairly evaluated in our current teaching situation using a framework designed for pre-pandemic teaching. Not one. It’s not that we don’t want to do a good job. We want to do the very best job we can under the circumstances. But these circumstances limit our teaching in ways we can’t control. Our very best teaching simply can’t happen right now.

In this time of change and difficulty, if I evaluated my students as if nothing was different, I would probably be marked down on VSET for lacking flexibility. The district should model flexibility for us. How you treat us and evaluate us should be a model for how you want us to treat students.

Thank you.