November 21, 2014
Junior 2 Teaching Interns and Principal Fellows MSA Students Collaborate
Junior 2 Teaching Interns and Principal Fellows MSA Students Collaborate
Something new and exciting is happening this semester in the COE that you might miss if you are not currently a Junior 2 intern or a Principal Fellow. The two programs are collaborating for the benefit of both student sets, and the process has been extremely promising. First, the interns and Fellows meet and discuss lesson plans and teaching strategies. Next, the Jr 2’s teach a class, while the Fellows observe either in person or by watching a video of the lesson uploaded to Taskstream. The Fellows then evaluate the lesson and provide constructive feedback. This process is repeated across three lessons the interns teach.
The process is valuable to the interns because they get another set of eyes from experienced classroom teachers. The MSA students get the valuable experience of observing and evaluating teachers with a rubric, which will be a fundamental part of their future jobs as administrators, as they must observe their teaching staff and evaluate according to The Rubric for Evaluating North Carolina Teachers:
North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Process
As a Principal Fellow, this experience has been valuable and has taught me some practical lessons. I spent hours watching my intern’s lesson videos, brainstorming constructive advice and writing helpful comments. And this was for an intern who had well-prepared lessons and did a fantastic job. Yet I realize as an administrator I will not have hours to spend on each individual teacher. I can reflect with empathy now on some of my past evaluations, which may have seemed rushed and minimal. A principal with 80 staff members must schedule 80 pre-conferences, observe 80 lessons, and schedule 80 post-conferences. Each teacher should be observed a minimum of three times per year, and ILT’s require even more. Hundreds of hours are required to meet the minimum standards for evaluating and assessing teachers, and to truly help teachers improve, more time will be needed than just the minimum. But for the moment, my responsibility is to one intern and I have the luxury of time. I hope that my feedback will help her to ease into her future as an NC teacher. This experience has definitely been worthwhile for me in my preparation in becoming an NC school administrator.
Elbert Maynard
Principal Fellow
#ECU_CAEPisComing