P3

In my opinion, there are a majority of factors that should be taken into consideration when determining the effectiveness of a teacher. I think one of the best indicators of a good teacher is her student’s participation in class. Regardless of the subject, I think that a truly effective teacher can make any subject interesting and engaging with a little enthusiasm and effort.  Coming from personal experience, I think that when teachers apply the curriculum to real life is when I get the most out of it. Otherwise it is all just a bunch of useless information that I am forced to memorize and not actually understand. Which leads me to my next point. As long as the teacher is doing their part, the rest of the work is up to each individual student. For example, you could have a great teacher who makes every effort to get you to pass your exam, but at the end of the day, it is up to you as the student to get it done. And without an effort from the student, nothing will be accomplished.  And although I do realize that this can be detrimental to teacher’s ratings if their students don’t put forth the effort, I think that this is a problem that every teacher has to deal with, regardless of who they are teaching.  No matter what, every teacher is going to get their share of kids who don’t make an effort academically; therefore teachers cannot use this as a valid argument when defending their low ratings at the end of the school year.  I do believe that the situation regarding Nicole Weingard was completely unjust, and that that is not the correct way of determining a teachers rating. The way that I think it should go is each year the average from the past 5 years in any given subject should be calculated, and then the scores should be compared to that number, rather than looking at yearly increases.