Hello, I’m a first year public school teacher in Taiwan. I recently had my first performance review. I had 5 different people evaluate me.
Basically every one of them is the same, the score is 85 or 86 and “comments” are basically all positive though; there are a couple that have a generic comment like “more teacher student interaction would be good”, or something to that effect (I had to translate it because it’s not even in English). I’m a new teacher so I’m sure there are legitimate areas where I can improve but this is pretty vague. 85 is the lowest score you can get to receive the bonus at the end of the contract so I’m apparently barely good enough to get it in their eyes. I just found it odd that all 5 of them would give me roughly the same score with no real specific explanation as to why. All I hear from my FET coordinator is how much they like me and how lucky they are to have me…
Is this normal? Is it a situation where they don’t feel like they’re doing their job as an evaluator unless they mark you off on something? Is it a cultural thing? I’d be very disappointed to miss out on the bonus especially if the reasons aren’t clear and right now it seems I’m barely squeaking by. Any feedback from those with experience in the public school system would be appreciated. Thanks!
I think you’re overthinking it. What’s vague about “more student/ teacher interaction needed”? Seems like legitimate feedback to me. Are you focusing on individual students and seeing if any need special attention, or just talking to the whole class as if they’re a monolith? Anyway, you should be happy they pushed you over the line needed to secure your bonus. If they really didn’t like you or your teaching, you wouldn’t get that bonus.
This all depends on your school. Also 5 people evaluating sounds like a lot, was this the open public demo? Where you have a bunch of people come in and watch your class and evaluate you? The real evaluation is supposed to only be 2 outside people that come in. It’s worth like 30% of you score for the bonus.
Anyways every time I have gotten evaluated my form and feedback has all been in English. There is also always a debriefing session afterwards. That’s where I sit with all the evaluators and they give me their feedback. All of my evaluators have given me great feedback on how I can actually improve myself. You should be asking questions with them like “How would you recommend I improve my lesson to have more student interaction?” Or What did you think of my class, what areas would you have done differently and such.
It was my first eval so I don’t think it was the public demo. I didn’t have the written evaluations during the verbal debriefing meeting (they let me look at those later in the day) and all they told me were positive things at that point. So I didn’t know there was anything to ask about with regard to areas of improvement. If they thought I did a good job I wasn’t going to go out of my way to dig for criticisms.
Because more is nonspecific. I already devoted roughly half the class to student / teacher interaction. It’s not as though I lectured during the whole period.
I found out later that what they meant was “only a few more outgoing students were doing all the interacting and they want me to try get the more shy students involved”. But as I said, “more student teacher interaction” was too vague to understand their actual concern.
They generally don’t provide them until afterwards. They usually give me mine before the end of the day, after the verbal debriefing. The ones for me are always written in English (as they are told this beforehand). They can write Chinese on it for my co-teacher though.
Even if they only told me positive things, I would be asking them how I could improve or if I’m doing everything right. There’s always room for improvement. If they say something to vague ask for more details or some examples.
I don’t know what grade you teach, but I teach elementary and I have this problem a lot. Try different ways to get the students involved. Another type of reward system, different kinds of prizes they can get, change your teaching style, (perhaps your using to big of words) or allow the students to answer in Chinese if you have a co-teacher and translate that back to English for them the next time.
I just switched to offering prizes that actually interest the students like toys they can build, (a model catapult) and I went from only 5 or so students participating to pretty much the whole class trying.
Thank you for the tips and feedback, it’s appreciated. I teach senior high but I’m sure I can adapt some of your suggestions. I was also told later that they didn’t want to grade me very high on my first month so they could slowly raise the grade over the contract period. I suspected that may have been the case since all of them were about as low as you could go without affecting the bonus, it was hard to believe it wasn’t intentional.
Don’t worry mate…welcome to the “cha bu duo” culture. It means you aren’t causing anyone trouble and they can’t be bothered to really evaluate you or don’t have a clue how to. In essence, it means you are a decent fit there for them. You know you really did something wrong when you get silence, aren’t evaluated or suddenly win an award while suddenly getting put into a completely different role. That last one means you screwed up so big, they are too embarrassed and don’t want to talk to you about it. Just happened to one of my co-workers. Give face, while taking the same face away. Clever.
The bonus is a carrot and a stick. If one of your Co teachers doesn’t like you they can tank your evales and you lose out on your bonus. When I worked in the public schools I was evaluated my first week on the job at two different schools. On one occasion I didn’t get my month bonus, all the while my recruiter was dumbfounded as to why half the teachers weren’t getting their bonuses. Trust no one, don’t rock the boat, and make friends any way you can. Good luck.
I have been teaching for a while in here but my evaluations look very different. Once a month they come to observe and record the lesson for local government and that is it really. On my payslip there is always info with points that I get. I have been between 92-93 all the time. Once they asked me a question why I did not pre teach a few words but I told them my reason, gave an example and they stopped asking questions since then. They like to present themselves as specialists in language teaching but in fact their methods are archaic, typical grammar - translation method from the 80-ties😁
It drives me mad when I see Taiwanese teachers of English preparing quizes, translation of words from English to Chinese or the other way round…
There’s an instructor at my uni who asked students to translate his PhD dissertation into English for their homework assignment. I’ve seen/heard of some outrageous shit over the years, but this shocked even me.
In four (I think) years of teaching at public schools here, I had one review. It was “you should get a wireless mouse so that you don’t need to walk back to the computer to change slides when you use a PPT”. Sounds like you’re getting quite a lot of feedback.