Dear Museum-Lers,

This case against the teacher is a classic example of HR gone bad and
should serve as a lesson to all of us.

While I'm not a fan of beaureucratic red tape, you can never have too
much paperwork in your defense. I have learned to save EVERYTHING and
back it up. E-mails from clients and supervisors are saved and
important ones are printed out. Evaluations are also saved and I keep
copies of the personal assessments I have to write for myself and send
in. (It's such a joy to have to justify my existance on a yearly
basis.)

Notes from important meetings are transcribed and sent to everyone at
the meeting, requesting that if anyone has any additions or
corrections to add to the notes. This way everyone is on the same page
and is in agreement of what went on during the meeting. These aren't
formal meeting minutes but it does help keep straight who is working
on what or who is taking over which tasks so you don't get the "I
thought Bob was going to do it," and "I thought you said you'd do it,"
etc. etc.

Another word of advice, even if you get a bad evaluation or one that
you thought wasn't fair, you can always respond to it in writing and
have a record of it put in your personel file. Always, always do this
just in case it comes back to bite you in the butt later. You never
know.

On 9/27/06, Sue Fischer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>     Then when the teacher received her evaluation conference, which was in mid May and after the field trip, some issues of concern were discussed and the teacher stated that she didn't think it was fair to evaluate her on expectations that had not been clearly communicated to her in writing.

Gotta agree with that. If issues are important enough to be evaluated
on, you need them in writing. If your boss won't give them to you,
write them up and send it to him/her and request an acknowledgement in
WRITING - e-mail is fine just keep all copies of e-mails relating to
the conversation. Otherwise, it turns into a "he said/she said"
situation and you can't fairly be evaluated. Not receiving
expectations in writing also gives the impression that they are not
that important and are merely suggestions, not mandatory. It also
allows you to respond to the expectations and give your opinion. If
you don't agree or believe that certain expectations are too high to
meet, you can submit your responses in writing and have them go into
your personel folder which the HR department and your supervisor must
acknowledge.

For example, if one of the expectations is become more knowledgable in
your career field, you can respond that you can only do this if you
are allowed the time and budget to take classes and that your current
workload and budget does not currently allow for this. This way, if
changes aren't made to your workload and budget and you don't meet
this expectation, you can't be dinked for it on your evaluation.

> Principals try to work through informal methods first to address performance concerns (verbal instructions, etc.) before documenting expectations. The principal did then document the performance areas that needed to be addressed - at the teacher's request - but the documentation was not brought on by the field trip; the field trip was not a catalyst for anything or the final straw to get her in "hot water."

Well again, if the documentation was done AFTER the evaluation, then
it isn't very useful. And on the HR side, it doesn't provide a history
of poor performance or not meeting expectations, esp. if the teacher
has had satisfactory evaluations for 27 years of her career.

>     After the memo was provided as requested, she did file a grievance and also asked to be transferred if there was an opening in the district. The transfer was denied because the central administration felt that if you allow a teacher to transfer after a supervisor has given them guidelines for improvement then you have weakened a supervisor's ability to address performance issues by essentially giving the teacher an "escape hatch" to avoid meeting the expectations of the supervisor.

Um no, those performance issues will follow you around the school
system. Just because you screwed up in one school doesn't mean that
you start over fresh in another one. Again, documentation will follow
you around and hang off your neck like an albatross. A good admin
won't judge an new transfer by his/her past evaluations but if
problems start to happen and they match previous problems, HR just has
more documentation to back up their poor performance claims. It sounds
like this school system doesn't know the first thing about HR.

>    What is getting lost here is that this is not about a field trip, censorship, or a parent complaint. It is not about age, tenure or salary level as has also been suggested in the media. This is about a school administrator working to help an employee improve her job performance and to improve the educational experience of students. Even someone who has taught for a long time can still have opportunity for professional development.

There's professional development and following procedures. It sounds
like the admin did not follow basic procedures and it caught up with
them. The timeline of the events are also off. The teacher was
evaluated in mid-May and then expectations were documented. I assume
the school year ended in June which gave the teacher at most a month
to address those expectations. That's not very long to do anything,
esp. at the end of the school year. Plus if the expectations were that
serious, they should have been formally addressed ages ago, not
verbally discussed. Then the teacher has the Summer off and starts
back up or is put on admin leave before that happened which basically
doesn't give her any time to try and meet those expectations. Good
companies and organizations will have a formal policy of addressing
low evaluations and meeting expectations which will include the
intervention process. Most places give people at least a few months to
improve and monitor them closely to see that they are improving or at
least trying. I don't hear any evidence of this.

So all of it still makes me very suspicious of what is really going on
here. Principals who are very concerned will do more than just talk to
people and do the documenting long before the evaluation. Even if the
teacher needs to improve her teaching, the school system has
completely dropped the ball on documenting what was expected and
following up on it.

Deb

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