Schools should regularly ask students to evaluate their teachers. In my first grade school teacher, I evaluated myself. I learned the importance of doing my best in every class, of giving my best effort in every assignment, and of always being on time. I learned that the teacher’s grades were not as important as mine, but that if I worked hard and did my best, my grades would reflect my learning rather than the teacher’s.

The value of evaluations, such as the ones stated by the speaker, is unquestionable. Teachers should be evaluated by the students because they determine the success or failure of the teacher. It is a daunting task, however, to judge the performance of a teacher. This is a task that few students feel well equipped to undertake and it requires the students to be both objective and impartial. When a student is asked to evaluate his or her teacher, he or she will invariably see past the teacher’s flaws and shortcomings while missing the teacher’s positive qualities and accomplishments. The classroom environment is the ideal place for students to evaluate their teachers, as it is a setting where the teacher and students are all working together to accomplish the same goal. A student who feels that he or she is not up to the task of evaluating the teacher’s performance may simply avoid the evaluation, or even sabotage the process by deliberately failing the assignment. Any student would be foolish to put his or her grade in jeopardy, especially if the evaluation is for teacher evaluations.

For years, teachers have evaluated students’ performance on their own. Without input from their students, the teacher becomes lost in his or her own thoughts, and misses the interactions between the students and the learning environment. The teacher’s perspective is clouded by the teacher’s own feelings towards the students, and it becomes difficult to separate those emotions from objective evaluation. A teacher’s feelings towards the students may be based on age, race, gender, family background, or any number of other intangible factors that are impossible to quantify. If the student feels uncomfortable evaluating his or her teacher, he or she may be less likely to give an accurate assessment of his or her performance. The failure to properly evaluate a teacher is not the fault of the teacher but of the nature of the evaluation. Students should be encouraged to regularly evaluate their teachers, but in the intimate setting of the class. Anything beyond that, such as standardized testing, will be less effective because of the student’s own discomfort with evaluation.

Another way to evaluate teachers is for the students to pair up and perform a mock evaluation of the teacher. Many teachers pride themselves in their teaching abilities, and will likely respond to such a challenge. If each teacher is paired with a student, the teacher receives valuable feedback from a student who is not distracted by personal feelings. The teacher then has the opportunity to evaluate the student’s performance relative to his or her classmates. The teacher will be less inclined to give the student a poor grade, and can give the student praise and encouragement. This type of evaluation could be incorporated into a class project or assignment, or it could be a separate project or assignment. The teacher should give clear guidelines to the students, such as whether the evaluation should be positive or negative, formal or informal, and when it should be turned in. The evaluation should ideally be anonymous, so that students do not feel any pressure to give the teacher an unfavorable grade.

The value of student evaluations is unquestionable. At the beginning of each year, all teachers should be evaluated. This evaluation should encompass all aspects of their teaching, and should provide feedback to each student. This feedback should encourage, as well as criticize, the teacher. Students should be asked to evaluate their teachers regularly, but this evaluation should be done in the context of the class. The evaluation should not be limited to one area, such as grading, but should address all aspects of the teacher’s performance, including class participation, content, and organization. The evaluation should be anonymous so that students do not feel any pressure to give the teacher a poor grade.