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Some background:
I'm a student teacher at an elementary school. I'm studying to be dual certified in general and special education. Currently, I'm in my special education placement. Recently, we had to complete a survey (which wasn't anonymous) asking us what position we were aiming for (general education or special education). I wrote general education. I wanted to be a classroom teacher, not a resource teacher or coteach (teach with a general education teacher) in various classrooms. After experiencing my internships, my desire hasn't changed.
The problem:
My supervisor observes a lesson of mine (unannounced). Afterwards, we discuss the lesson and she immediately discusses everything she disliked about it (usually she emphasizes on the positives and is very lenient about the not so "hot" parts... which happens in special education). She wrote some positive things down but neglected to mention it. In the middle of our discussion, she brings up that the lesson I taught was for a general education class (which is what I taught! We have an inclusion classroom [which is a mix of general education and special education]). She said something along the lines of, "I know that you want to be a general education teacher and you're just here [in special education] to get through this [program]." My jaw dropped. No, I don't want to become a special educator. However, I'm taking this position very seriously and am working my ass off. She accused me of ignoring the needs of the students with disabilities when the ENTIRE lesson was catered to them. No, there wasn't much differentiation between the general and special ed students. But the lesson itself was created with special education in mind. ... 4 more weeks till graduation. ...
There are a lot of people that just don't have it in them to say anything positive about anybody. They think evals are only for negative things..
Where I use to work, our state supervisor use to come around to do evals now and then and everybody always dreaded her coming. I was thrilled when she came to the department I was manager of because I needed more employees.. My eval was terriable as I knew it would be but the end result was I got that new employee. She clearly saw we were overloaded for the staff we had, therefore, all the negative marks got me the help I needed!
But the person just above me could come in and do a eval and all she saw was negative stuff and at times, being downright silly with what she wrote down as bad/wrong... always minor, nip picking at the little stuff.. One time I called her on what she put down, having the records in hand to show her what she wrote down was WRONG and that work HAD been done!
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