Evaluating and Supporting Early Educators

Let us start by thinking about your role as an education leader. You have a staff of 10 early educators and you want to evaluate and support them. You might wonder if you have enough time to do this. Very often when I am doing a workshop or training, the issue that comes up the most is time. How do I have time to do a proper job of evaluating and supporting staff?

Now let us talk about a yearly schedule and why it is a good investment. Many education leaders go from crisis to crisis.  I am proposing that you do a little planning and invest in how you are going to evaluate and support the teachers at your program. It is similar to teachers planning how they will evaluate and support children, resulting in fewer chaotic behaviors because things are better managed.

Good Investment (for 10 teachers)

Imagine you have 10 early educators. The table above shows a proposal for an annual number of hours spent on evaluating and supporting your staff. Spend about eight hours on planning, either two half days or one full day. Know exactly where you are going with this plan and remember that staff meetings are important. I budget about 26 hours a year for staff meetings. That would be about one hour every other week or 30 minutes every week. 

For these 10 early educators, plan individual evaluation for about 60 hours. This would be about six hours for each person to observe, do some collection of data, review the data that you collect, and have a conference with a teacher for about two hours. Remember, this is for the entire year. For these 10 people who work for you and with you, spend about four hours (four times one hour with each one) providing individual support in addition to the individual evaluation.

The next item is weekly affirmation for 43 hours. This would be about five minutes per week for 52 weeks per person. It could include writing a note, a text, or an email to your staff to let them know what you saw that they were doing well. This is time well-spent. This totals 177 hours. That may sound like a lot, but if you have a 2,000 hour work year, then that is a little bit less than 10%. Then I have 60 hours of extra support. This is because just like children, some children are easygoing and are developmentally on target. Your regular teaching goes well for them, but some of them may need extra support. I am suggesting that you budget 60 extra hours for those teachers who might need extra support. Maybe I have not completely convinced you yet, so let us move on. Remember that planning this way will give you fewer crisis times.

Keys to Quality Education

Figure one shows quality education for children in the middle. It is buttressed by the teachers, which includes their skills and their traits or who they are, and teaching, which is the instruction and the curriculum. The third part is the job of helping all of that come together, which is the leadership and management in an organization. The main resources in early childhood are its people. As the teachers are very engaged with the children, then the leadership and management need to be engaged with the teachers even more so than with the children, so they can support the teachers better.

Figure 1. Keys to quality education.

We have many tools to help us on this journey. I would say the most important one is The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Code of Ethical Conduct. It is a very direct and strong guide for our work with children, families, and colleagues. Colleagues are employers, coworkers, or employees, the community, and society too. The most important thing to think about today is our responsibility to children, families, and colleagues and how to be aware of what is going well and what may need some extra support.

Consider the Consequences

Let us say that the center director goes to the classroom to give a teacher a message at nap time. She observes that two teachers are discussing the home life of a child whose father was arrested for drunk driving. That relates to our responsibilities to families and to confidentiality. It relates to gossip. If we are not aware of that or if we do not have a plan, then this is going to impact the quality of our program.

Here is another example. Teacher M and teacher R do not get along. They are often in the director's office complaining about each other separately. One complaint is that each one disappears up for 30 minutes without telling the other. This is annoying, but it is also unsafe. It is a matter of responsibility towards colleagues as well as to children because then supervision is not as thorough as it could be.

The last one is a preschool classroom which is chaotic. The director has asked for a lesson plan, but she has not gotten one. Some people would say they do not really need a lesson plan. But the lesson plan is an indication that the teacher has planned ahead for the activities and for the materials. That would also impact the quality of programming.

These are all issues that need to be addressed with evaluation and support.

Guiding Principles

Next, let us think about the guiding principles for quality education, also from NAEYC. Take a look at guiding principles for both children and teachers.

On the left is the NAEYC guiding principles which include creating a caring community of learners, enhancing development and learning of children, planning appropriate curriculum, assessing development and learning of children, and developing reciprocal relationships with families. In my thinking of the parallel process, which is that education leaders should do with teachers what we want them to do with children, I thought about how this would translate for our job as education leaders working with teachers.

The parallel is creating a caring community of workers, enhancing the professional competence of our educators, providing appropriate direction and resources, assessing professional skills and growth of our early educators, and facilitating involvement in the field of early education because teaching tends to be quite an isolating endeavor.

I hope you can see the parallels here. Then I took the five principles and added a little bit more of a detail which you can see in the handout titled Checklist 1 (Self-Assessment: How Well Are You Evaluating and Supporting Teachers?).

Create a caring community of workers. Part of creating a community of workers is to think about the climate in your organization. Do you greet teachers or do they greet each other every day with a positive comment? Do we provide comfort and assistance for personal and professional issues? Do we help resolve problems? That is what the education leader would be doing in creating a caring community of workers. Listening is also important to creating a caring community of workers. Sometimes what the leader needs to do is listen even if they do not have an answer immediately.

Enhance professional competence. The second part would be enhancing professional competence. Give affirmations for performance and give feedback when teaching is going well, which is most of the time. Give feedback when teaching is not going so well. Provide professional development to the group and to individuals. If you think about that parallel with children again, not all teachers need the same a one-size-fits-all kind of professional development. It is not just based on their years of experience, but also on their knowledge of particular topics. You may have a teacher who has been working in your center for 20 years and has a lot of experience working with children, but you have a new initiative, for example, in early literacy. This teacher does not quite see the point. Despite having a lot of experience with children, in addition to general recommendations, this teacher will need a little bit more support for implementing the early literacy activities that you are expecting.

Provide appropriate direction and resources. The third area is providing appropriate direction and resources. This is communicating clear direction. Early educators are very focused on the children. Their day is managing this group of children all day long, and yours is to manage the direction of your program as an education leader. They are focusing on the details that the leader may not be focusing on, but the leader needs to focus on the bigger picture. That big picture needs to be communicated. It is not always obvious. It depends on what your board is requesting of your organization and what your finances are. Again, it is the job of the leader to provide this direction in a very clear way. It also includes using effective questions for a reflective practice also and providing resources.

What I find when education leaders do this assessment is that they tend to be high in the area of creating a caring community and in providing resources, not necessarily in providing direction.

Assess skills and growth. The fourth area is assessing skills and growth and assessing classroom quality. There are tools like the CLASS, the ELLCO, or the ITERS/ECERS that you might be using. You also want to assess teacher skills and scaffold these skills because the teachers cannot be left on their own to figure out how to do what they need to do. 

Facilitate involvement in the field of early childhood education. The final part is facilitating involvement in the field of early education. As I said earlier, the job of teaching is quite isolating. As education leaders, we need to be able to provide that community for our educators.

Evaluation, Support, Supervising, and Coaching

I do not make a distinction between evaluation, support, supervising, and coaching. I think a supervisor should be able to evaluate and support and coach. I do not want to have a complete distinction between these roles because they are very much integrated. Think of all the characteristics of a good director that you may have had. What did this person do? How did this person act? People often say it is a person who is clear, who guides, who has a sense of humor, who gives resources, who stays with me when I need it, or who gives me space when I need the space.

Evaluation means to find the value of. It is being an empathetic mirror of educators. It is not overindulgent and not overly critical. Evaluation is about finding the value of. To support can mean different things. It may be to hold up from beneath, to uphold or confirm, to stand by, or to provide for. When you are thinking about your staff, remember that different people might need different nuances of this kind of support.

Creating a Caring Community of Workers

Create Good Working Conditions

When creating a caring community of workers you want to create good working conditions. One way to do that is to hire with care. I know that very often you are short of time, there is a shortage of workers, and you need to hire someone very quickly. You may not be completely sure this person is going to be able to do a good job or not. Here I would say, take the time again at the beginning to train that person or to support them in very specific ways so they don't flounder. In the end, if that person leaves, it is going to be even more difficult to manage.

Another thing that helps create good working conditions is to pay fairly. Teachers know that their jobs are not highly paid, but pay fairly to what it is in your area. Also, set a predictable schedule. Teachers who feel that they have a random schedule do not feel respected. The predictable schedule is a better predictor of retention than any of the other areas we are talking about. As you know, retention is a challenge in our field.

Creating a physically and emotionally safe environment is also important in creating good working conditions. Physically, that means having a space for teachers with adult chairs where they can take a break and make a confidential phone call to a doctor or family member. Emotionally safe refers to an environment that is free of gossip and where they can talk with each other in a respectful way. Our field is a very emotional field. We deal with emotions all day long with these little guys which can deplete our own emotions too.

Develop a Professional Relationship with Teachers

Also, to create a caring community of workers it is important to develop a professional relationship with teachers. We want to be friendly, but not necessarily friends. One way to do that is to set your common agenda and think about what you want for the children, parents, and staff. It is not just that you want the children to be happy and healthy. This is of course the goal, but the details are in when you want them to be healthy and happy, such as at arrival time, at lunchtime, and at playtime outside. All those details are what constitutes the common agenda. That is a very good way to develop your professional relationships and to show your care for your staff as professionals.

Practice Affirmations

Think back to when I told you about spending five minutes on affirmations at least once a week. Let us practice with a few examples. 

1. As I am walking the hallways, I see a teacher that is explaining the child's behavior to a parent. I am extremely busy at the time, so later I am going to take the opportunity to write a note. I will say, "Thank you for explaining separation anxiety to Matthew's parents. I could see that Matthew's mom was relieved." Remember to be the mirror for the teacher.
2. You see that children are engaged in restaurant dramatic play. Do not take that for granted. Just write a little note to the teacher and say, "Sarah, you had interesting props and the children were so engaged in the restaurants when they were playing pizza." How are you going to remember all these little details all day long? I recommend that you carry with you a small notebook. It is not big fancy technology, but this is where you can quickly write down something that you saw. Then when Friday afternoon comes, you can write your affirmations. This is a wonderful way to be positive with your teachers that does not take a lot of time.
3. The lead teacher has had two substitutes in the last two days. To this person, you would say, "Paul, I know you have had two subs. You have a good plan for including subs when they come into your classroom."

Eight Ways to Communicate

In addition to communicating your affirmations, also think about these eight ways to communicate.

1. Large group meeting
2. Team meeting
3. Individual meeting
4. Memo
5. Phone call
6. Email
7. Text
8. Grapevine

There are some things that you need to tell your entire staff. For that, the large group meeting is the best way because you are talking to everybody at the same time so they can hear you. It may be a new initiative, a budget issue, or something else that everyone needs to hear. You can also have team meetings per classroom or per area, such as all the toddler teachers together or all the preschool teachers together. Sometimes individual meetings are more helpful.

You can also communicate through memos (in writing) or phone calls. However, phone calls are not very popular right now. People are not answering their phones as much, but sometimes you might need to catch somebody on the phone. Emails and texting are other ways. Again, this is to communicate information. It is not to communicate a problem. A problem might be communicated in an individual meeting or sometimes in a team meeting if it was an issue that affects the entire team. But the purpose we are talking about now is to communicate information or positives.

If you do not use at least the first seven ways in a way that works for you to communicate what you want to say, you are going to have what is called a grapevine or otherwise known as the parking lot meetings. This is where misinformation can multiply. This is where the atmosphere and quality of your program start being affected by misinformation, rumors, or gossip. Be aware of the grapevine part because it has a life of its own.

As I said earlier, we are a caring field. We are people who really care about people. That is why we do this work. At the same time, we are a cauldron of emotions. One of the occupational hazards of our field is actually gossip. It is very dangerous. It affects the social-emotional development of children when early educators are gossiping about each other. We have an ethical responsibility to address it. Very often when presenters do gossip workshops, they have an activity where they squeeze toothpaste out of a tube and then say, "Okay, now that the toothpaste is all out, try to put it back in." That is exactly what happens with gossip. You will never be able to put it back in. I want you to be very alert to the issue of gossip. 

Recognizing Educator Quality

That brings us to the next section of the course, which is recognizing educator quality. Think about what quality means to you. What does a quality teacher do and how do they behave or act? When I ask this question, I often hear words like helpful, organized, caring, and loves children. They are kind of general. I want us to be a little more specific about what recognizing teacher quality is.

I have divided it up into three aspects. One is the acts of teaching, or what the teacher does with the children and directly how they teach. Second is the results of teaching, or what the children learn as a result of the teaching. We need to make sure we are doing assessments of children to determine the results of teaching. This might be by using Teaching Strategies GOLD or Work Sampling or some other type of assessment. Professional behaviors are behaviors that make a teacher a good worker. 

Acts of Teaching

1. Has an efficient and rich classroom environment
2. Manages the classroom effectively
3. Has a positive rapport with children
4. Implements the curriculum as directed by program
5. Prepares and writes lesson plans for all children
6. Provides developmentally appropriate activities that are content-rich
7. Assesses children’s learning

In acts of teaching, there are seven categories. These include having an efficient and rich classroom environment, managing the classroom effectively, having a positive rapport with children, and implementing curriculum as directed by the program. If you have invested in your curriculum, or if you have an expectation of a curriculum model, then that would be part of the responsibilities of the acts of teaching. Another act of teaching is to prepare and write lesson plans for all children. That would include plans for the entire group as well as for small groups and for individual children as needed. Another act of teaching is to provide developmentally appropriate activities that are content-rich and assessing children's learning. Most programs have some kind of tool to review the acts of teaching. At the end of this course, you will find many resources for acts of teaching that can review on your own. 

You can assess acts of teaching with validated tools that look at the quality of the classroom, whether it is the environment or the teacher's actions.  Some commonly used tools include the CLASS, ELLCO, and ECERS-R.

Results of Teaching

1. Uses assessments to plan teaching
2. Recognizes children’s growth and learning
3. Supports children’s learning intentionally
4. Share with co-workers
5. Shares with parents

The results of teaching are what children are learning from all the teaching that happens. This includes using assessments that you are doing of children to plan teaching. Teachers should not just let the assessment go as interesting information that they do not need to do something about. They should actually use it to recognize the children's growth and learning and to support the children's learning intentionally. That means that they would be sharing with their co-workers, either their assistants or their colleague teachers, and they would share with parents how the children are learning.

You can assess the results of teaching with validated tools for academic skills such as the IGDIS, which looks at vocabulary, phonological awareness, comprehension, and math, or the FAST which looks at alphabet and letter sounds.  Tools for looking at the developmental progression of children include My IGDIs Profile, Work Sampling, and Teaching Strategies GOLD.

Professional Behaviors

1. Maintains safety practices
2. Has regular and reliable attendance
3. Has positive relationships with parents
4. Has positive relationships with colleagues
5. Maintains good personal appearance
6. Maintains confidentiality
7. Has positive demeanor

The handout called Checklist 2 is a Checklist for Assessing Quality of Professional Behaviors that covers these seven items in more detail. In many ways, this is the most difficult part of evaluating and supporting early educators. Professional behaviors include maintaining safety practices and regular and reliable attendance, which can be difficult to deal with. It also includes having positive relationships with parents and colleagues. It is important to maintain a good personal appearance. This can be a source of anxiety for education leaders as they deal with the person whose pants are falling down or who has inappropriate clothing or the infant teacher whose fingernails are very long and not a good idea for hygiene and changing diapers, for example. That can become quite a challenging part of the education leader's job because it appears to get into the personal business and the personality of the teachers.

Think about how all of these examples are a part of that ethical responsibility and quality of good teaching for the children. It does relate to the Code of Ethical Conduct if you are not dressed appropriately for your job. The other one is maintaining confidentiality, again, because we are a field with many intimate relationships. We share lots of stories about families and children. Maintaining confidentiality can be very tricky and so we all need to be aware of that and address it directly.

These issues are not individual personality issues. They need to be looked at from a quality perspective and as an expectation that will impact the quality of your program and the quality of education for children. If you remember that triangle in figure 1, in the center is quality of education for children because we want it to always be positive. Take a look at Checklist 2 and think about how this may be happening at your site.

There are very few resources for examining professional behaviors, except for the Code of Ethical Conduct, which is pretty general. Two books that are helpful are Winning Ways for Early Childhood Professionals: Becoming a Team Player and Winning Ways for Early Childhood Professionals: Being a Professional. I think they are very well written and are very good resources that are direct in addressing all of these issues of confidentiality and demeanor and dress code. 

Tools and Techniques for Evaluation and Support 

Next, we will talk about tools and techniques for evaluation and support. 

Provide Appropriate Direction

We have talked about providing appropriate direction, which is those clear expectations of the common agenda with good communication. If you look at the topics on the right, these relate to all aspects of working in an early childhood center. It is teaching and learning. It is about the physical environment. It is about the rules and policies that you have. It is about the program initiatives that you are developing and it could be about professional news.

In many of our programs, we have lots of initiatives, which I have to say kind of drive the teachers a little bit crazy. As the education leader, think about what is the direction of your program and where do you want to go? Where do you want them to go with you? You will only be able to address all of these things through communication.

Addressing Performance Problems

I often have people say, "So this is all very interesting, but how do you address performance problems?" I want to take a few minutes on that. First, assess the problem against one or more of these criteria.

• The behavior of the teacher affects the learning of children.
• The behavior of the teacher affects his/her performance, the performance of co-workers, or the performance of your center or school.
• The conditions of employment are not followed.
• Legal requirements are violated.

Let us look at this example. Teacher A has a good rapport with the children. She arrives at 8:25, five minutes before the children. She sends the children to the rug to do manipulatives while she looks for a book for circle time. She asks her assistant to prepare some activities for small group, which would be after circle. When the assistant asks what she wants, she says, "Just find something fun." The transitions between activities are long and the children get restless while she is looking for that book. The assistant is becoming frustrated and the director is really concerned.

If we think about addressing performance problems, what is happening here? The first criterion is the behavior of this teacher affects the learning of children. Yes, that is happening because the children are getting restless and they have to wait long times. Second, the behavior of the teacher is affecting his or her performance. Yes, though she might not think so. It is definitely affecting the performance of the coworkers because the assistant does not know what to do, and she is getting frustrated. Third, the conditions of employment are not followed because she was expected to arrive a half-hour before the children and now she arrives five minutes before.

So what are we going to do with teacher A? We could have plan one, which is to say, "Okay, this is a problem. You will arrive before the children and you will be ready." We could just say that. Plan two is to have a SMART goal, which is that we have a discussion and say, "You will arrive at 8:00 a.m., 30 minutes before the children. Remember this is in your employee handbook. The activities will be written in the lesson plan and given to the director one week ahead." Again, the teacher may not think that is very important, but for you, it is an indication that the teacher has thought about the activities and that these activities can be shared with the assistant who can get them ready. This means the materials will be ready for the children every day. Continue by saying, "This plan will start next Monday morning and it will be reviewed two weeks after it starts." Of course, you are not going to let that happen without any support in between, so you will write those affirmations. You will be coming in and seeing how things are going. Remember, this would be done through conversation and discussion.

Thinking back to the criteria for performance problems, you have more than one reason to discuss this. It is an issue to problem-solve together, and if the teacher does not come up with their own solution with you, it is okay for you to give resources as well as suggestions.

SMART Goals

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

The idea behind SMART goals that they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. When you have a SMART goal, all of these things listed in plan two above are happening. You will be able to track progress with the teacher or the teacher himself or herself will be able to track whether these things are happening or not. You are not doing this because you are a bossy boss and you just want to make the life miserable of this teacher. What you are doing is working towards the neutral territory in a way of ethical responsibilities and of quality education for children. It is not just because you are picky.

Follow Up Support

You will need to provide follow up support. That is a very important part. You will not let the teacher figure things out for themselves. You are going to provide coaching. It may be a teacher who just needs a little bit of coaching and who needs some encouragement. It may be a teacher who is going to need some additional resources. If the teacher does not know how to do a lesson plan, you may have to write the first one with the teacher.

Coaching is more of a formal kind of resource giving. Mentoring is less formal but still would have a plan. You might not be the person doing the mentoring. There might be a more experienced teacher in your center who could provide mentoring for this teacher who needs additional support.

Thinking back to our example at the beginning with a staff of 10 early educators, all 10 of these people could be very different. The support given should be differentiated based on different educational levels, ages, temperaments, years of experience, emotional maturity, and skills. That gives you a sense of how you can match teachers to help each other. Also, if you have a teacher whose temperament is easygoing, you might be able to be more direct with this teacher. With another teacher, you will be just as direct, but you might need to have more specific examples because this teacher is asking you to provide more data.

Starting Your Plan

Now I want you to think about starting your plan. Think about the number of educators that you have and think about the guiding principles in your handout, Checklist 1.

• Create a caring community of workers
• Enhance professional competence
• Provide appropriate direction and resources
• Assess professional skills and growth
• Facilitate involvement in the field of early education

Which one of those areas do you feel that you would want to spend a little bit more time because you are not fully satisfied with what you see happening? Which area are you really satisfied? You can also share all the good things that are happening.

Plan for Evaluation and Support

• Assess the situation in your setting
• Decide which principles are most urgent to you
• Gather data
• Analyze
• Write goals
• Implement your plan
• Evaluate your plan

As you are assessing the situation in your setting, you are deciding which principals are most urgent to you and you are gathering data. Gathering data means that you have many tools that you may be already using, or maybe you are not. You might need an environmental tool to decide how to assess the classroom environments for the children. YOu might need a teacher survey because you want to understand more how your teachers feel about assessment, for example. You might develop a survey that asks the following questions:

• Are the tools we are using working for you? 
• What other tools would you need?
• What kind of support do you need?

As you are doing all of that thinking and writing goals for yourself, you are implementing and evaluating. This happens at the individual level. Remember, you are the education leader. You are looking at things as a teacher would be looking at individual early educators, as a teacher would be looking at individual children, and you at the big picture of your entire center.

Toolkit

Listed below is a toolkit full of various tools that I have used in evaluating and supporting early childhood teachers. When I work with programs, I notice that they have many tools already. 

1. Self-assessment (leader)
2. Observation (of educators)
3. Weekly Communication Form
4. Checklist for Assessing Quality of Acts of Teaching
5. Checklist for Assessing Quality of Results of Teaching
6. Checklist for Assessing Quality of Professional Behaviors
7. Family Survey
8. Coworker Survey
9. Performance Review Summary and Plan
10. Post Training Survey
11. Coaching Plan
12. Mentoring Agreement
13. New Teacher Intake Form
14. Job Satisfaction Survey

The one thing that programs may not be doing is actually integrating them all. For example, if you are doing the CLASS with teachers, you might be able to have the picture for individual teachers that you can use for evaluation and support. The CLASS is not an evaluation tool in terms of a punitive tool, but remember that we are looking at evaluation, not as a punishment, but we are looking at it as a way to uphold the value of people.

Good Investment (for 10 teachers)

This brings us back to the good investment part. I hope I have convinced you that this was a good investment. I want you to start thinking about the idea of evaluation and support as being a help to you. You will find that the more you are paying attention ahead of time to the good things, as well as to the possibly problematic things that are happening, that you will have fewer crises to deal with. This is because just like a teacher does in the classroom, you will have routines of communication, ways to prevent problems before they happen, you will not have gossip because you will have dealt with it in a direct way, and you will have a much calmer and productive center.

Summary

Here are your notes for your planning. Reflect on what you have learned in this course, decide on three actions to evaluate and support your team of early educators, write down your ideas, and think of a timeline when you will implement them.