Teachers are one of the key players in a school. Their performance directly relates to the performance of their respective students. This, therefore, means that their ability to teach must always be evaluated and improved so that they may continually meet the needs of the different students they interact within the classrooms. Teachers always undergo intensive evaluation in order to improve their performance in class. Improving their performance may have a positive impact on the performance of their respective students. The evaluation of teachers, which is aimed at improving their performance, is executed by instructional leaders. The feedback given to teachers after the evaluation process helps them to improve their teaching skills. A good rapport, instructional challenges, positive feedback, and coaching strategies are essential in improving the performance of teachers. The main purpose of this essay is to examine how leading leaders give peer feedback, which is related to teacher performance.
Since teachers are the most resourceful players in a school, they are very critical in raising the education and performance standards among the students. Enhancing their effectiveness ensures that they are highly motivated, well resourced, and highly skilled in performing their respective duties within a school setting. Effective teachers are those that are clear about their instructions, have adequate knowledge on the current curriculum or syllabus in use, can effectively communicate to their respective students on their expectations, can effectively apply meta-cognitive strategies, and are knowledgeable about all their students among many others (OECD, 2009).
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"Leading Leaders in Giving Peer Feedback Related to Teacher Performance".
To ensure that teachers are effective, they must be regularly assessed. One of the most common assessment tools used in evaluating teachers is the use of instructional leaders. An instructional leader is a professional who prioritizes the learning for students by setting goals, monitoring and evaluating lesson plan, distribution of learning resources, and evaluating teachers on a regular basis. By doing so, an instructional leader aims at improving the quality of instructions so as to boost students’ learning and development within the school. They are simply an essential ingredient in improving students’ and teachers’ performance in the classrooms.
An instructional leader usually evaluates a teacher by actively observing their teaching strategies when teaching their respective students. Usually, instructional leaders attend the classroom sessions before the evaluation process starts, a good rapport between the instructional leaders and the teacher must exist. Creating a good rapport between the instructional leader and the teacher ensures that the evaluation process is successful. An instructional leader may establish a good rapport with the teacher by informing the teacher in advance about his intention of attending his classroom session so as to evaluate him and creating an open communication system that creates a good connection between the two parties. In my field experience, the instructional leader created a good rapport with the teachers during observations by informing the teachers about his evaluation plans and creating trust between the two parties. Informing the teachers about the evaluation plans ensured that the teachers do not feel ambushed when interacting with their students. Creating trust helps in notifying the teachers that the evaluation process is for their own good.
During the observations, it is important for the instructional leader to actively engage with the teachers so as to achieve the desired results. Engaging with teachers mainly helps the instructional leaders to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the teachers when teaching their respective students. In the field experience, the teacher engagement strategies that were utilized by the instructional leader are maintaining eye contact and participating in the classroom activities. Maintaining eye contact with the teachers helps the instructional leaders to actively look and listen to what the teacher is relaying to the students. The instructional leader was able to gauge whether the concepts being taught by the teachers are aligned with the concepts in the syllabus. Participating in the classroom activities is effective as it helped the instructional leader to gauge the ability of the teacher to interact with his or her students in the classroom.
During the observation, certain strategies were suggested to the teacher to differentiate the instructions. Differentiating instructions refers to the process of modifying instructions to meet the needs of the students. The strategies that were used to differentiate instructions during the observation understand the students’ abilities and needs, promoting learning activities that helped students to become independent learners, engaging the students in respectful learning tasks, allowing the students to examine and incorporate their interests in the learning activities, and teaching student’s skills that are helpful in pursuing their independent learning.
The climax of the evaluation process is feedback. A good evaluation tool must give teachers feedback. Feedback is important as it ensures that the teachers’ performance improves (Education First, 2015). Instructional leaders must, therefore, give the teachers feedback based on their observations. Feedback may either be positive or constructive. In the field experience, the positive feedback given to the teachers by the instructional leaders was that they were able to engage with their students in a way that students are able to understand the concepts being taught and they were able to stick to the syllabus. The constructive feedback given to teachers by the instructional leaders was that they need to build on their ability to help students become independent learners.
The effectiveness of the feedback given to the teachers depends on the coaching strategies applied by the instructional leaders. The coaching strategies mainly help instructional leaders, who act as a coach, to inform the teachers on their strengths and what they should do next to get rid of their weaknesses. In my case, I would employ additional coaching strategies like facilitating, collaborating, and instructing with the teachers. These additional coaching strategies will be very important in developing self-reflection, trusting feedback relationships, and enhanced teaching practices employed by the teachers (Park et al., 2014). I advised the instructional leader to use a more directive stance in future rather than a responsive stance.
Teachers are among the most resourceful people within a school setting. Their abilities to deliver knowledge to the students directly relates to the personnel of the students. This, therefore, means that the performance of teachers must be evaluated on a regulate basis. Instructional leaders are often tasked with the duty of promoting students’ growth by evaluating teachers’ performance.
