Evaluation of Ability

I believe that it’s important to be a reflective practitioner because as teachers, we are

always learning. As times change, as students change, and as the teaching profession changes,
teachers must always be reflecting on their practices and adapting. It’s important to always be
adjusting to the needs and demands of your students. For example, you may have a class that’s
quite advanced and needs a more challenging curriculum in order to feel like they’re achieving.
You may have another class that’s not as advanced and needs to move a bit slower in order for
them to feel successful. It’s all about being able to recognize what your students need and then
being able to properly address those needs.
My process for evaluating my instructional practices will come from a number of
different things. In a band classroom setting, I believe that there are several key factors that
determine how successful your instructional strategies are and how well they’re being received
by your students. These factors include the number of students involved in the program, how
proficient the students are at playing their selected repertoire, student retention from year-to-year,
the quality of our live performances, and our festival or contest ratings. These are the primary
factors that I will use to determine the quality of my teaching practices.
Another quality method of self evaluation is to use surveys. I greatly value the feedback
of my students, their parents/guardians, and my school administrators. In order to make sure that
they all get a chance to give me some feedback, I will distribute an end-of-the-year survey to
each group at the end of every school year. It’s important to me that I remain open to making
changes based on what they say. For my students, I will pass out a written, anonymous survey for
each of them to fill out during our final week of class. For their parents/caregivers and my
administrators, I will email an online, optional survey out to them. I will ask that they email me
back with their responses.