Newspaper Khebrat Wave2 Oakland 2018

Galileo Saudi Arabia Program Newspaper
Assessing Teachers
in Saudi Arabia
By Maysa Mishrif
There is no doubt that evaluating a teacher in
KSA falls under a long list of assessing criteria.
This list is written by each educational office
around the Kingdom according to the Ministry of
Education standards. Therefore, there are
different forms or grids in different cities, but
they all share the same content.
In Jeddah’s north office, we, the English
department, decided to focus on assessing a
teacher in teaching one skill at a time per year.
Last year, we assessed listening and speaking
lessons. In this article, I will discuss this grid and
its content to enable the teacher to focus on these
criteria as they are crucial for assessment.
The grid consists of 5 parts which are: teacher’s
preparation notes, introduction of the lesson, the
lesson procedure including the skill being taught,
presentation of the lesson, and student’s
interaction. The main purpose or goal of the visit
is to strengthen the knowledge, skills,
dispositions, and classroom practices of
professional educators.
The teacher is also assessed on the strategies used
and how they trigger critical thinking. The
teacher should deal with students’ diversity to
make sure that the strategies being taught are
meeting their needs. Moreover, the teacher
should demonstrate or model the process and
structure classroom time to measure students
'progress. Furthermore, strategies should activate
background knowledge, so previously taught
vocabulary and grammar are recycled then the
teacher could build on this data.
Objectives of the lesson should be written by the
supervisor according to Bloom's Taxonomy on
the back of the grid. Afterwards, the supervisor
could compare the objectives taught in that
particular class to the ones written on the
teacher’s preparation notebook and on the board
for students to see. The class layout and students
seating should also be taken into consideration.
The teacher should know how to handle different
students with different needs. Students are given
a short quiz after class to measure their grasp of
the lesson at hand. Students’ success rates in a
percentage is also recorded on the observation
grid to compare it to the new quiz. Subsequently,
a precise feedback is noted for the teacher to seek
improvement. At the bottom page of the grid
there would be different training courses that the
English department would be presenting and the
teacher gets to choose a couple according to here
necessity.
Finally, I hope that I have shed a light to teachers
in general to what sort of areas a supervisor
would be looking at when attending a classroom.
Now, you can take notes of these criteria and try
to implement them in your next class. Try to keep
doing them daily. repetition leads to mastering.
Good luck.
By Yousef Asiri
The concept of transformational leadership
was introduced by the leadership expert James
MacGregor Burns. According to Burns,
transformational leadership can be seen when
"leaders and followers make each other to
advance to a higher level of moral and
motivation". He pointed out that the ability to
influence followers can change their expectations,
motivations, and lead them to work toward a
common goal.
Today, more than ever, I think we need young,
brave and qualified leaders who can work hand to
hand with their staff and create a positive
working atmosphere to reach the targeted goals.
We need leaders who understand needed changes.
Moreover, we can say that a good leader is the
one who believes that he needs the employees
more than they need him.
Finally, when leaders openly accept a
transformational style, they move forward day
after day to be more focused and function at a
higher level which will create change in
people and in culture and lead to innovation and
growth.
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