Even the Youngest Students Can Evaluate Their Teachers’ Work
Report cards for all
Teachers have so much to learn from students — always. I know this from my time teaching in post-secondary, when I made full use of my end-of-term teaching and course evaluations. More on the “how” of that below.
Even kindergarten students
There’s no reason why secondary and elementary learners can’t take part in similar process. Even kindergarten students are capable of drawing a picture of a time when some action or words of their teacher resonated with them, positively or otherwise.
Teachers who consider their career to be a calling, a vocation, will understand that this is a piece of dialogue between the two most important people in the system — the learner and the teacher. This is not for parents, administrators, school boards, or any other people who lack day-to-day knowledge of classroom-learning.
Just as in “higher” education, the evaluations could be assembled by a student in the class, in a sealed envelope. And returned to the teacher after the grading process is over, to be opened in a quiet space, when the teacher is ready to receive careful thoughts on the work of the year.
