Students should be able to grade their teachers

As I have been a student for a decade now, I have had my share of teachers: the boring ones, the interesting ones, the mean ones, the kind ones, and the outstanding ones. Although I have had many amazing teachers, I have never met a perfect one. Although the district and schools have behavior rules to follow, and are occasionally checked in on by their department heads, I haven’t seen much change. With a brother two years younger than me, he gets all the same teachers I do, and tends to struggle with the same problems. So, in my opinion students should be allowed and encouraged to grade their teachers.

The first reason students should be allowed to grade teachers is that it would be fair. Teachers grade and judge their students on our participation, work, attitudes, ability to ask questions, and students should be able to do the same. I would love to be able to give my teachers some suggestions, like to take more time on a certain unit or asking for more organized due dates. This would allow the students to be more open to constructive criticism as well, since being a bit vulnerable leads to more connections. All in all, teachers being willing to evaluated would make students feel like school was more suited to their needs and make connecting with their teachers easier.

The second reason is that it will help both the teacher and future generations if teachers are graded by their students. If the teacher saw 40 different students’ evaluations that said they wished the teacher was clearer on deadlines or asked for some extra time to be spent on a unit, that criticism would be helpful for the teacher. They could use the evaluations as an area to improve. It would also help future students if the teacher listened to the criticism. For example, one of my eighth-grade teachers was not open to questions and would have unfair standards of perfections. Now two years later, my younger brother is dealing with the same problems which means nothing has changed and the teacher has not improved. This problem could have been avoided if my school had offered teacher evaluations at the end of the year and led to a more interesting and open learning experience.

If Central were to introduce grading teacher on their teaching ability, I think four steps would need to be implicated before it would be impactful. The first step would be to design the questions for the questionnaire. They most likely would include the best and worst attributes of the teacher, the area/unit where they did the best/worst, how the teacher helped the student independently, and what other suggestions they would have. The second step would be to prepare the teachers for accepting the feedback. Possibly having a staff meeting about how they should receive the feedback and use it for next year. The third step would be to introduce it to the students, and inform them that this is not a complaining slip about the teacher, but instead suggestions to improve next year. The fourth step would be to have the teachers read them and talk to their department head about the three things they plan to change or improve upon.

Many people disagree with this idea. Some believe that since many students would just use the time to complain about their teachers, only honors student/students with a high GPA should be given the opportunity. This would be unfair, and show that the school only values people who are academically smart. Others believe that this shouldn’t happen at all because some teachers are good because they are strict. My refuting argument to this is that, yes, that teacher may receive more backlash because of their strictness, but they could still improve in different areas. Finally, some people believe that student’s jobs are to learn from their teachers, and that grading them would be unethical. In my opinion, by allowing the students to speak out about what they are struggling about, would allow teachers to do their job better, and make the student’s job to learn much easier.

Change is part of life, and especially part of school. Schools have changed constantly to allow more people to come and become educated, through scholarships and IEPS. Now schools can change again to make the learning environment easier and better for students to understand and learn from.