Contact Your Lawmakers – Suspend This Year’s Evaluations
Earlier this month, MEA joined with other education organizations in a letter from State Superintendent Michael Rice to lawmakers urging the suspension of evaluations this year due to the pandemic.
The letter requested that the Legislature “amend state law to let our educators—teachers and building administrators—focus exclusively on the needs of children this year rather than enormously time consuming and less impactful educator evaluations.”
You can read the entire letter here.
Lawmakers need to hear from you about the urgent need for this action. Contact them today – ask them to suspend evaluations and relieve some of the intense pressure educators are experiencing in this stressful pandemic school year.
Covid continues to ravage our classrooms. Daily, our students, staff and other key school employees are falling I’ll despite vaccination status and we scramble to find enough employees just so we can hold school in person. Teachers want to teach. We have so much to catch up on. Please ease the burden of evaluations this year for us. We love our students and want to focus on what they need the most- and that’s a proper education, emotional support, and many times food and clothing. Thank you.
As a veteran retired teacher, I’ve experienced the excessive amount of time that evaluations can take. During this incredibly stressful & unprecedented time teachers should use that precious time to focus on their students. Admin. as well , along with supporting their staff.
Suspending teacher evaluations is essential this year, due to the interruptions in teaching. Teachers faced so many challenges, they don’t need the pressure of evaluations this year. Suspend student testing as well!
I am urging you to suspend evaluations this year. Teachers are beyond overwhelmed. I do not fear the results of the evaluation, but preparing for the meeting, submitting paperwork and ‘proof’ that I am an effective teacher, and the follow up meetings are too much. I am trying to be everything my students need, but something must give. Unfortunately, I fear it will be my mental or physical health.
The minute teacher evaluations was linked to student growth was the year the teacher’s soul was crushed. It is why we are here now with people fleeing from education at a high rate. There isn’t a teacher around that wouldn’t want a child to grow educationally. This year kids have been in and out of the classroom even more than last year. There are variables that we can’t control and that is one of them! We want to be able to look at the testing data with better lenses on curriculum deficiency not teacher deficiency.
Enough is enough!
Please suspend evaluations. We are year 3 of pandemic teaching and learning. We are subbing all the time on our off hour. We are tired and not given any time to plan well with all the subbing. Have a heart! Please!
Please suspend this years evaluation for teachers. If teachers were exempt from evaluations due to being highly effective, that status should continue for next year as well.
How can you evaluate someone when the environment they are working in is not the normal educational environment. Students, teachers, and parents are trying to work through this. DON’T ADD MORE PRESSURE TO AN ALREADY PRESSURIZED TIME!
This year has brought challenge after challenge! Teachers have risen to every single occasion. That alone should be their evaluation!
Our students and us teachers need grace. They are working so hard and struggling with so much going on. We are also struggling the same. It is so incredibly hard to keep pushing these students to perform for evaluations of our own when they simply can’t keep up and neither can we. This is just common sense.
Please suspend this year’s evaluations for teachers.
Please suspend teacher evaluations this year. They do nothing to help children or the teachers who teach them during this time of trauma.
This year has been even more challenging than last year. Last year we were a mix of virtual & in-person. This year my district has been in person the entire year. We have had to deal with students who are a year or more behind due to the pandemic. I have spent more time dealing with mental health issues than I have ever before. Support the teachers and the work we’re doing. Suspend teacher evaluations this year.
I am writing this message to ask to suspend the evaluations of the 2021-2022 school year for teachers/educators. Since March of 2020, teachers, students, and parents have gone through a multitude of changes and frustrations, making each transition for students with their learning much more challenging than it has ever been in the past. Students not only need to stay on track to academically to catch up and grow this year, but they also desperately need support emotionally and mentally because of the stresses and strains they have been gone through. Many teachers and schools are also dealing with massive staffing shortages, making it near impossible for educators to appropriately plan with their fellow educators, support the students who need help academically and emotionally, along with helping all students transition to being back into the classroom setting. The amount of expectations and duties teachers are facing is also making it quite impossible to have a healthy work/home life balance, creating many frustrations and negative energy every time we start a new week. While rising the growth of our students academics is of utmost importance each year, as an educator, students need more than just academic support right now. Their emotional well-being, and teachers well being, if far more important than pushing students to test well, and have teachers stress if they “effective” with their profession that they pour their heart and soul into. I end this message by reminding to whom is reading this that we all chose to teach for one purpose, to help students. Whether that is to support their growth goals academically, deliver the content effectively being taught, or to be that shoulder to lean and cry on when needed. If you want to keep well-rounded educators, who are professionally certified and experienced, in the classroom/school, please suspend the evaluation process this year. Sincerely, a very tired, burnt-out, and exhausted Kindergarten teacher.
Please consider suspending evaluations this year. As an administrator, I feel that there is no opportunity to provide meaningful feedback to teachers while we are consistently faced with extreme staff shortages, little to no qualified substitutes, shifting between in-person and remote learning and the emotional and behavioral challenges our you f people are experiencing.
TeChers have enough to deal with give them a year off on evaluation’s.
Please consider removing the evaluation component for this year. Beyond many of us shuffling back and forth between traditional (in person) and virtual learning for safety of staff and students, beyond the many of us (staff and students) who became ill in returning this year, and beyond the additional stressors of creating content to be viewed/completed in two different styles — the other daily expectations have been incredibly overwhelming. Please give teachers the respect they deserve by acknowledging everyone of us that is still here is doing everything we can to assure our students are engaged and learning, and are cared for and safe. We are all highly effective this year.
An evaluation this year for teachers is just as unnecessary as the standardized tests that the students have to take this year. Neither of these things will provide accurate feedback or data on how any of are doing this year. We are all doing our best and we are all still struggling. The students need us more than they ever have and the less time we need to spend with things like evaluations, the more time we can give to our students. If we weren’t in this for student success and student support and learning, we would have left a while ago. Teachers demands are at an all time high and it can be very safely assumed that we are constantly going above and beyond, when acknowledging that we are still surviving, regardless of all the layers we have had the last couple of year. No need for an evaluation. The fact that we are still standing is enough.
Teacher have so much on their plates. They don’t need any more stress. We love our jobs and do them well.