Supervision vs.

Evaluation
In my experience, an evaluation is often thought of as the summative assessment that teachers
receive each year that grades or rates their proficiency and efficiency in the classroom. Evaluations tend
to have a negative connotation with teachers, especially in schools in which the administrators on
campus are not frequently in classrooms, there is a new evaluation system, or part of their pay is based
on their scores. Meanwhile, supervision in my mind is an all-encompassing term for how a principal
interacts, or should interact, with their staff members. This includes supervising before and after school
duties, both formal and informal classroom observations, guidance in PDs or one-on-one conferences,
and overseeing the staff members in their participation of events or activities on campus.

I personally believe that the focus in a school building should be on supervision, and lead into a
final evaluation. Previously, I have worked with both strong and weak administrators and evaluation
tools. At a prior school, I worked with a principal who only came into my classroom two times over the
two years he was at the site, and the only time he ever set foot in my classroom was for my annual
observation. He was a principal that often stayed behind closed doors on campus, and was usually the
last one on campus in the morning, and the first one to leave in the afternoon. Because of this, I believe
it made it very difficult to truly supervise his staff. On the other hand, I have also worked with a principal
who was the complete opposite. He made it a point to be in everyone’s classroom at least three times a
week, even if it was a brief walk-through or time to stop by and check in on how everything was going.
Our evaluations were not based off one single observation. Rather, it was centered around an overall
accumulation of all observations and times the staff member was supervised over the year. While there
were more “formal” observations that led to our scores for instruction, teachers had an opportunity to
reflect, improve their instruction, and be measured on their growth at the end of the year rather than a
single lesson. Likewise, because he was around campus, participating in activities, and always readily
available and supervising staff as a mentor, the teachers had a much stronger morale on campus, and
showed more growth in their teaching.

The involvement of government can be incredibly tricky when it comes to education and the
supervisory and evaluatory roles of a school administrator. On one hand, government involvement can
be wonderful for schools when they work towards improving the quality of education of students
through increasing funding for teacher pay, implementing programs such as 21st Century and Title I, and
setting standards that attempt to align all states throughout the nation and hold all students to the
same expectations. However, as the school system becomes more controlled by the government,
schools become more focused on the test scores of students and evaluation scores of teachers. This is
one reason I believe we often see “dog and pony” shows during formal observations rather than true,
raw, outstanding teaching in the classroom. The administrators are often so focused on checking boxes
and assigning teachers numbers that they seem to lose sight on the goal to help teachers grow and
become stronger educators. They should be a supporter and mentor of their staff members, not simply
a grader.