Do you teach special education?
Special Education teachers may find this FAQ document from the state Department of Education helpful in preparing for their observations. An excerpt:
Will there be a specially designed rubric for special educators?
The regular educator rubric will be utilized for this group. In some cases the observer may need to adapt the bulleted descriptor points, as there may be some that don’t necessarily apply in every Special Education teaching situation. However, the general principles of the indicators themselves do apply.
Special education teachers provide instruction in a variety of settings. How can the current rubric be applied when evaluating teachers who work in/with: a) Inclusion classrooms (co-teaching or assisting) b) Life Skills (i.e. CDC) classrooms c) those with multiple and severe disabilities (i.e. non-verbal, medically fragile, visually or hearing impaired) d) homebound settings e) resource classrooms?
During the pre-conference meeting a thorough discussion must occur as to how the components of the rubric apply to a special educator’s unique instructional settings.