 I'm going to talk about the projects that I developed that is part of a course that I'm taking at the moment, and it is basically an alternative approach to teacher appraisal. So I'm taking a course called International Diploma in Language Teaching Management. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called the idiltum for short. And in this course there's an HR management module in which we have to identify an HR-related problem in our school, describe the problem, and propose a solution. So I chose to work with teacher appraisals because we don't really have a functioning appraisal system at the moment, so I thought it would be useful for us. So I went on to do some research about it before developing the system. So the first thing that I found out was that an appraisal system that is developed collaboratively has greater chances of being successful because it creates a sense of shared goals in your staff, and it makes them more committed to performance development. So because of that, then staff will own that system and they will be more committed to being better, creating a more capable staff, and then giving your business a competitive edge. So the first thing that I had to do was consult with the teachers at the English Studio and ask them, what do you think about this? So give me some ideas. So I sent an online survey, collected those results, and together with the supporting theory, we put the system together. So the system is called Performance Reflection and Plan, and that name was also decided collaboratively, and it's basically a compilation of performance-related documents and reflections done throughout the year. So in the PRP, the first thing we see is an introduction letter which explains the system and says how is it linked to the values of the organization. The next thing is feedback and reflection on observations, so you will see a record of the feedback that you got from your students from your line manager from observations throughout the year. So it's important to notice here that the observations are not part of the appraisal because you're not going to get observed because your appraisal is coming. That is done separately, so all you see is the result of that, the feedback from that, so you are reminded of it. Next you see a critical incident register which is basically notes on teacher's behavior outside of the classroom related to the business. So here examples of things you could have is number of lesson plans that they submitted in the whole year, episodes of desired or undesired behavior, number of different classes you tried out this year, anything that might be relevant to your performance in this year. So you'll have a register of that. The next thing is a record of your CPD attendance, so any conferences that you went to, webinars, in-house training, the certificate for those things will be there in your PRP as well. It was voted by the teachers that we are going to do our appraisal once a year, but there will be a six month check-in. So the documentation of that check-in, just to see how things are going, that is going to be there at the PRP as well. Up to this point here we've had lots of information about the teachers, so the next thing is a self-evaluation form for you to reflect on the information that you're presented with. So this self-evaluation is important to be developed collaboratively, so the teachers can decide what is the relevant criteria for them, how do they think, what is important in terms of assessing their performance in the classroom. So when this form is developed collaboratively, the result of that will be in the PRP, so they have to fill it out for themselves, and obviously a rating system has to be decided. So what makes a performance satisfactory or unsatisfactory? So that has to be decided collaboratively as well. Next is a job satisfaction survey, which is just four questions you have to answer. What's good about your job? What's bad about your job? What's annoyed you at work in the last year? And what do you need to be happier in work? Then after seeing all this, you hopefully will be able to identify trends in your feedback, in your performance, so you will be able to make a well-informed decision towards your goals for next year. So from your student feedback, from your manager's feedback, identify some weaknesses there and think, oh, I need to work on this, I need to work on that. If you can't think of anything to do, there's a list of CPD activities there that can give you some ideas. So to address this weakness, I can take this webinar, for example, that is happening next year. We have a system review form for the teacher to give feedback on the PRP. Was it useful? Did it help you? Did you feel supported? What can we do to make it better or to make it more relevant to your needs? And the last thing is a final report, which is a summary of everything that happened during the appraisal. So the result of the appraisal, as well, was its performance satisfactory and satisfactory why any follow-up activities that are needed because of that result will be there in the final report. So that's the manager's contribution. The next part is from the teacher's perspective, which is called a teacher portfolio. Again, it's basically a compilation of anything that is important from the teacher's perspective. So it could contain anything that is relevant to you, but some suggestions are successful or unsuccessful activities and a reflection on why they were good or bad. Work-related problems or difficulties, anything that's made your work harder in the last year, you can add that there. In formal feedback, sometimes students come and say really nice things to us or they give us some constructive criticism. We can add that to our portfolio as well. Your own critical incident register, so instead of just the managers making notes about you, you can also make notes about the managers and say, this is an episode of desired behavior or undesired behavior. It's a dialogue, right? So different perspectives. And literally anything that was meaningful to the teacher throughout the year, you can add there. So some advantages of doing an appraisal system this way is that it considers the particularities of the school. It's made by the staff, for the staff, but the contents are very flexible, so you can adapt to it very easily. It involves teachers in its development which again creates a sense of shared goals, creates a sense of commitment, so we made it, we own it, so we want to do it. So that creates more capable staff, gives your business a competitive edge, makes more money. Provides a well-rounded system because we have information coming from many different parts of the business and many different people as well. And that is also an attempt to make it unbiased because it's not just one person saying things about you. You have other perspectives there as well. So here there is a riser that I read. His name is Peter Schultz and he says he's completely against performance appraisal because he says there is an assumption that performance appraisals, they blame the problems of the organization on individuals' performance. So if the company is doing bad, it's because you are doing a bad job basically. So he says that's ineffective, it doesn't help. So the PRP doesn't do that. It says this is what you identified that are your weaknesses. Here's opportunities for you to improve. Let's work on it together collaboratively to make yourself better and as a consequence, the business better as well. So because of the job satisfaction survey, the managers will have useful information to measure your satisfaction with your job and also improve that satisfaction. So what can we do to address the staff's needs? It provides teachers with lots of information about themselves, makes them reflect and think of trends in their performance, anything that they need in order to be able to set goals for themselves in an informed way. You will have a systematic channel of communication every year or every six months to talk to your manager about performance and it allows the space for its own evaluation through teacher feedback so it can always be improved every year because of the review form at the end. So some possible concerns is that it could be time consuming for the manager to put all that information into the portfolios or the PRP. So you could delegate the operational sides of it or you could make access to these files very easy. You just have to put a little paper inside the file every time something happens. So that's take like two minutes of your day. If you say it's impossible to please everyone because there's so many people voting or people won't be 100% happy all the time. So you just vote and elect things democratically and say, well if you didn't get your way maybe it's because the majority of people wanted to be this way so you have to deal with it. And always emphasize the organization's values. So the elected criteria for the self-evaluation for example has to begin keeping with the organization's values. Maybe your school is not open to change. They say we already have an appraisal system so why should we change it? So we could just present it from a business perspective. It makes more money at the end if you have capable staff that is committed to its own development. And it can be built especially for your needs which again enhances the opportunities of it being successful. So something for you to think about when you go home today. Does your school have an appraisal system? What is it like? Do you feel that it's for development or is it judgment of your performance? And what suggestions can you make to your boss to make it better?