We have almost completed our first month of school! The schedules (and changes) have been done officially for 2.5 weeks now, and things are finally settling down and becoming routine. With this new found freedom, I have actually done my first classroom visit of the school year, planned my next three classroom visits, planned the PSAT proctoring schedule, and just sent out our middle school and high school needs assessments.
Needs Assessments are a funny thing. You want feedback to grow and ya know, get better at your job, but some of the things that come out of a needs assessment can really play with your emotions. At first you're just happy you sent it out 'cause you're on the right track. You look at the first bit of data and are just excited that parents and teachers are actually taking your survey. When you check the results that third...fourth...fifth time you start to actually read what the people are saying and can feel vindication, shock and intimidation.
Woo Hoo, only 1 hour and 30 parents have responded!
You know that your job is valuable and you just prey and hope others see it that way. You're excited when the results say that others find your job as important as you do, a big accomplishment to say the least. You are a bit shocked when you realize that not all know exactly what you do or get negative ratings on key components of your job. On our teacher survey only, we included a section for comments. Here is one that really made me think.
Looking at our one day old results, I can now say my feeling is one of intimidation. We have so much to accomplish and to prove to our students, parents, and teachers that I feel it is so much and overwhelming. Where do we start? What do we do first? How can we better serve our stakeholders? The questions are overwhelming. There is no correct path, we just gotta jump in, use the data to back up our decisions, and go for it. I gotta say, I am grateful that our school doesn't have a department of one.
If you'd like to see what is on our needs assessment, click one of the links (text) below.
Also you may be wondering why we did separate assessments, when you can do one and separate the data. Time, time is the answer. Google Forms will calculate your data and add pretty graphs for you automatically. If you want to see what the teachers just said, or the parents, then separating it takes time, and Google won't automatically set up your graphs. You can make the graphs by hand of course, but that takes time.
