All about my day!

This afternoon we attended a seminar for the EAD 820 Internship Program. There were several students presenting their work at different stations and I had the opportunity to listen to a few of them. One I found interesting was the 360 degree model. A woman who is going to school to become a principal implemented a program for the teachers in an elementary school that allowed them to receive feedback from their students, colleges and the student’s parents. They were all given surveys to rank their teacher’s teaching abilities in the classroom; the teacher herself was also given the same survey. The woman presenting this material compiled all the surveys and made several graphs to compare the rankings between the students, colleges and parents. Her finding showed that a majority of the time the teachers ranked themselves much lower on a scale from 0-5 than the students, colleges and parents did. The teachers were also given a list of addition comments written on the surveys. This allowed the teachers to get a sense of where they stand when it comes to the teaching ability according to another person’s perspective. It gave them ideas for places in which they could improve, and places where they are currently successful. This is often done in colleges (such as Michigan State University) but is rarely done in elementary school settings. I thought it was an extremely good idea to implement this program in an elementary school because as a future teacher I would love to have feedback from my students, along with my colleges and student’s parents. It would be a wonderful way for me to see things the students understand and I am teaching well, along with areas where I need to spend more time planning.