Note: this is actually a form with check marks from "No evidence" to "Expert". This document only includes the comments for each section, correlating to the California teaching "strand". This was my first quarterly assessment with my new supervisor.

Overall

1. Michele has a wonderful rapport with students that allows her to focus less on classroom management and more on supporting students learn math content. There is a clear mutual respect in her classroom between her and her students, and her relationships with individual students are particularly strong.
2. Michele cares deeply about student learning, and has put in place many structures to support students above and beyond her “8-3” teaching duties. For example, Michele offers consistent lunch-time work sessions where she makes herself available to students. Beyond just that, Michele has convinced particular students to actually come see her during this time, and because of this has been able to offer a few, struggling students some added, individualized support.
3. Michele (with her CT) has established many norms around how students speak to her and to each other, and because of this students offer ideas and suggestions readily in front of the class and are willing and accustomed to learning from and with the people around them.
4. Recently, Michele has become more open about her practice, and has actively pushed herself to critically analyze her planning and teaching to make it better. This is especially admirable, I think, at a time in the year where student teaching can feel more limiting than exploratory.

Strand One: Engage and Support Students in Learning

1. Michele works very hard to support individual students. She meets with students during lunch and after school, and during class checks in with students personally throughout each period.
2. Michele promotes student autonomy in part by using the groupwork-focused curriculum she was given flexibly. Michele scaffolded one activity designed to be done in groups of 4 so that more students had access to it on their own. However, students were still encouraged to use each other for help, to ask questions, etc., and thus students could “choose” what kind of support they might need.
3. Michele’s approach to teaching mathematics centers around making the content accessible for students. Michele uses “kid-friendly” language consistently, allowing students to first make sense of difficult content in their own way before introducing difficult semantic pieces. Michele often explains things in two or more ways and has relayed to me she does this because it will hook more students in.

Strand Two: Supportive Learning Environment

1. Classroom management is one of Michele’s clear strengths. Students come into her classroom on time, know what to start doing, and engagement is high throughout the period.
2. Michele and her CT have created a safe enough environment where students feel comfortable offering answers and ideas in front of the class. The variety of participants in her class is exceptional, and on top of this students get quiet and listen when another student is talking.
3. Michele clearly values students’ opinions and ideas. In one period I observed a student offered a strategy for writing a polynomial equation that was incorrect. Michele worked through it, with help from other students, to see how “close” the equation got them to the actual graph. When it didn’t work, another student offered a change to the equation, which Michele then tried. The discussion went on for a few minutes until the class finally found an equation they were satisfied with. It was a beautiful example of an alternative teacher choice to “no that’s wrong…here’s the way to do it.”

Strand Three: Content Knowledge

1. Michele knows the content well. This is in part because of her experience tutoring and mentoring so many different students on the same material over the years. Though Michele will acknowledge that tutoring a student one-on-one is a different ball game that teaching the same topic to an entire class, the things she has learned about student thinking, misconceptions and stumbling blocks clearly serves her well when introducing new topics in her placement.
2. Michele consistently works to explain something in another way, or using different language, when she assesses confusion.
3. Michele is using an Elmo, Projector, and overhead daily in her lessons and is gaining fluency with technology.

Strand Four: Curriculum Planning

1. Tracking Michele’s organization and use of learning goals, especially in the context of a complete unit of instruction, will be a focus for me in the spring quarter.

Strand Five: Assessment

1. Michele consistently asks students (both the class and individuals) if they are “getting it.” This is a simple move that does provide her with some information about some students, and that sends a clear message to her class that she wants to know what they are thinking and how they are feeling about the content.
2. Michele carves time into each lesson for students to work on their own or informally with others, and during this time sits with particular students to assess what they know and/or help them move forward.
3. Michele has convinced a handful of students to come see her at lunch and after school on a regular basis so she can keep track of their learning and support them more individually.
4. Michele is working on expanding her daily assessment repertoire, specifically in terms of more formal, formative assessments. One strong piece of her assessment strategy in general is that she uses data intensively, and looks for patterns in missed problems and mis-steps in every quiz and test she gives.
5. Most importantly, Michele views assessment not as a “test” of what you know but as a way to show what they know and provide her with information. She has put structures in place to support this message, such as not accepting a test with a blank problem. She supports students starting problems that they don’t know how to begin, as well.

Strand Six: Professionalism

1. Michele has more and more been able to identify pieces of her practice that she needs to improve and would like to work on this year. One of these in particular is how she introduces a new topic, including the instructions given, how it is scaffolded, how discovery plays a role and how she learns about students’ prior knowledge.
2. Michele has been very open to constructive criticism about her practice in the past two months. In particular, Michele and I talked after one lesson about the dependency of some of her students on her instead of each other (as in, sitting waiting for her to come help doing nothing vs. asking each other). In the next lesson, Michele instituted norms for seatwork in the form of choices for when you’re “Stuck.” She listed a few encouraged strategies (ex: asking someone else, writing your question down and moving on) and a few forbidden strategies (ex: stopping doing any work until she comes over). She emphasized and supported these norms throughout the same period, and within minutes there was a clear change in how many students remained stuck and not engaged in the task.
3. Michele is an incredibly busy person, balancing tutoring, teaching, student teaching and STEP among many other parts of her life. She does this, in general, with great (apparent) ease, and her students are always made her first priority.
4. Overall, this is another part of Michele’s development as a professional educator that I intend to learn more about in the spring quarter. As Michele’s C&I instructor, I can say that Michele sometimes struggled with directions, guidelines and deadlines. (emphasis mine. Truer words were never spoken> As her supervisor, I can say Michele has turned in every reflection on time and met with me consistently every Wednesday.
5. Michele has completed three CSETS and has substituted for the chair of her department [in Algebra II/Trig] on two occasions.
6. Michele is the sole communicator with her students’ parents. She is in consistent communication with five parents currently.
7. Michele’s teaching in [outside organization] has assisted her reaching the students in her class and in other classes. For example, students from the program will approach her because of their established relationship with her from outside her placement to check in about what they are getting not getting, if they’ll be absent, etc.

Next Steps:

1. Std 4: Michele does not currently lesson plan, and she is in a placement that uses common curriculum, assessments and homework. Michele acknowledges that she needs to improve how, when and what she plans before teaching.
2. Std 4: Michele will teach her unit plan in the next month, which will be a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect together on lesson planning and unit planning.
3. Std 1: Michele also wants to figure out what to do with chronically-absent students.