Once again, I’ve gone for a year without posting here.  My original intention was to document my journey as I embarked on a new path, changing jobs as I stepped out of the classroom for a bit.  Before long, both the journey and my attempts to share it hit rough waters.  I see a value in sharing struggles so that others can see that they are not alone in fighting their own battles or perhaps avoid difficulties themselves.  But my situation involved personalities within my school district and, in the end, I felt it would do more harm than good to air those conflicts.

A heart-to-heart with central administration at the end of the school year has me starting out cautiously optimistic this fall.  We’ve set some boundaries that may or may not hold up but I’m determined to make my stand.  Meanwhile, I’m trying to remember that I can’t change how my district or those within it think or what they deem important – I can only move forward and hope that others see value in my work.

That said, my goal for the first half of this year is to make the new Educator Evaluation process as smooth and as worthwhile for educators as possible.  We have new routines, new expectations, and a long way to go as the various facets of the process are implemented.  No one has all the answers because we’ve only begun to ask the big questions.  For me, knowing that we are making progress will have little to do with the number of forms that are filled out or the number of observations done and will have everything to do with the quality of conversations that educators have with each other and their evaluators about teaching and learning.