Having worked with future teachers, I’ve written a lot of references for teaching jobs. I’ve recently had occasion to respond to a couple more. As a result I’ve noticed (again) a fascinating, puzzling – and highly frustrating – phenomenon.
The two most recent recommendations were for different schools of different sizes in different areas of the state, yet they were nearly 100% identical. In and of itself, this is not too surprising. It seems that most schools these days ‘outsource’ their recruiting/hiring services to larger companies, who prepare the online reference forms (for approval?) and probably tabulate the responses as well. These two schools clearly used the same service.
Whether school districts’ decisions to use these services is penny-wise and dollar-foolish is probably an excellent question, and I’d love to explore it. Unfortunately, that will have to be left for another day.
What I found both fascinating and frustrating is the nature of the questions themselves. On the surface, the questions look typical. I’m reluctant to take space to list them all, but it is pertinent, so . . .
After the usual ‘relationship to applicant’ data (which by the way was nebulous enough itself – 4 choices, none of which were professor), I was asked to rate this student on attendance, dependability, willingness to assume responsibility, ability to follow instructions and respond to supervision, and both quality & quantity of work. (I’m still a little puzzled over those last two.)
Then I was given the chance to list the person’s strong points and areas that might need improvement. I was also asked if I would ‘rehire’ the person (as if a college professor could rehire a student!) All of these, by the way, were ‘required’ questions.
All of these are fine traits, of course, and most are probably desirable qualities in a teacher. On the other hand, have you noticed anything interesting yet?
Here we have a recommendation form for a future teacher, and NOT ONE of the questions relates to ANYTHING that deals with the candidate’s ability to actually teach ! Or relate to students. Or inspire students. Or help struggling students. Or dozens of other related traits I believe we’d want a good teacher to have. There’s not even a question about the applicant’s knowledge of the subject matter!
How can this be?!? Why would a district – let alone several – approve this type of form? How can a district even appear to be uninterested in an applicant’s ability to teach – as hard as that may be to determine?
Are we really more interested in a future teacher’s ability to ‘play well with others’ and accept supervision, than we are in their ability to help students learn?? In fact, there is a convincing argument that that best teachers tend to be pot-stirrers, but I’ll bypass that for the time being.
There’s another huge irony here. It’s very subtle, and I don’t like to bring it up with all its complexities. I’ve written before about how difficult it is to truly evaluate teachers and the art of teaching. Nonetheless, in an era when everyone (mistakenly, in my opinion) seems determined to judge teachers on the ‘performance’ of their students how can we be appear to be sending reference forms that don’t even try to find out how well they might do with students?! What’s wrong with this picture?
I’m aware that there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye. Often these forms are used to ‘screen’ applicants to decide who to interview, where I’m sure (aren’t I ?) that the ability to teach enters the hiring equation. But do we even want to be even screening on just these qualities?
Shouldn’t the hiring process of good teachers be as important as their evaluation process?
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