Limit Appraisal And Max Professional Development #ThursdayThunk

Most teachers’ appraisal objectives boil down to get some decent results and look to improve your teaching; we’re going to consult on setting these for all teachers, via the policy, as stated below.  Now with that done we can focus our time and efforts on helping everyone teach that little bit better.

Photo Credit: Gian Luigi Perrella via Flickr cc

An initial meeting in June of the academic year will focus on identifying future professional development needs and priorities followed by a mid-year review to discuss the impact of the professional development agreed.  The mid-year meeting will also be used to record of the contribution to the Catholic Ethos and, where applicable, to the professional development support provided to colleagues.  The final review meeting during June will again look at these three issues.

The Professional Development Dialogue will be guided through a number of key questions which the teacher will have reflected on and prepared thoughts in advance.  The proposed questions, used to structure the discussions, are below.  Have a go at answering the first two; they’re pretty demanding so this is not in any way a soft fluffy process.

1. What area of professional development would most help and support your further development as a teacher this year?  What evidence have you used to identify this aspect of professional practice?
2. Which form of Focused Professional Development (see list below) would provide greatest support for you as a teacher; meeting your needs and having greatest impact on your pupils’ outcomes?
3. What wider career aspirations do you have in the next few years?
4. What professional development would support you in these aspirations in the coming year?
5. What contributions have you made to the Catholic Ethos so far this year (mid-year and final review only)?
6. What professional development support have you provided to colleagues this year (mid-year and final review only for M4+ teachers)?
7. What has unnecessarily got in the way of you focusing on high quality teaching, assessment and learning in your classroom this year?  How could we together remove this/these blocker(s)?
8. What has been the impact of the professional development you undertook this year (final review only)?

All teachers will engage in one of the focused professional development activities below.  The choice will be made by the teacher unless there are specific concerns about an element of professional practice which needs to be addressed:

• Fortnightly mini-lesson observation with coaching feedback
• Fortnightly planning review with coaching feedback
• Fortnightly marking & feedback review with coaching feedback
• Lesson study with other colleagues
• Formative lesson observations (three spaced over time) with follow up focussed professional development on an identified aspect of practice.
• An integral leadership development project focussed on improving pupils’ outcomes from an accredited leadership course

I’ll be interested what comes back from the consultation; fingers crossed that it’s positive.  A copy of the policy and the consultation is here.

#ThursdayThunk is based on something I’ve been thinking about, discussing, working on or has been topical that week.  The thunk is designed to be bite sized and will deliberately be kept short.  It will take one small issue or an aspect of something much bigger.  The intention is for it to be read in two/three minutes as you’re busy running around at the end of the week or relaxing on your day off.