Evaluating your teachers and staff is an important part of an administrator's job. It is a time when the administrator can sculpt the performance of the educators they oversee. Feedbak™ is our teacher observation tool (you a can also use it for librarians, counselors, etc...) that enables the administrator to effortlessly gather evidence and help them grow in their profession.
This article details how to use Feedbak on the web platform. For the iPad experience, click here.
To get started, log into SchoolStatus.
Click on Feedbak™ in the Utilities menu on the left side of SchoolStatus.
Click on Teachers on the left menu.
From here, you can click on a teacher's name to proceed. Pro-tip: you can type a teacher's name or part of their name to narrow down the list of teachers. From here you can also sort the table to look for teachers who have not been evaluated.
From here, click Add Feedbak next to the class period you will be observing. Then choose the rubric you wish to use from the drop-down menu. This will start the observation.
Feedbak™ defaults to the Collect Screen and to an informal observation. There is a toggle to switch the observation to a formal observation.
The collect screen is where you will enter evidence and tag it to a standard. Simply type what you see the teacher doing in the teacher action box and/ or type what you see the students doing in the student action box.
Click Add Tags to tag the evidence to a standard.
Choose a standard or standards from the list by clicking it.
Hit Save Evidence. Hitting Save Evidence moves the evidence to the timeline at the bottom of the screen. Continue doing this throughout the observation.
Next, click the Interpret tab. Here you will see expandable menus for each of the standards on the rubric. Click the arrow next to each domain to see the standards below it.
Click on each standard to expand its rubric. This will also show any evidence that you have tagged to that standard beneath the rubric. At the top, you can enter comments. You can mark them as a strength (green star) or an area for growth (yellow leaf).
Click on a number in the rubric to assign a score. At the bottom of the rubric, you will see any evidence that you tagged to that standard.
The comment box at the top of each rubric is a great place to leave suggestions or praise the teacher.
Enter your comments and recommendations. You can also click the "?" box once to change it to a star or twice to change it to a yellow leaf. A green star is a strength and indicates the educator is doing something right.
Each time you enter a comment, click Submit Commit. This is possibly my favorite area of Feedbak™. It's the place for administrators to unpack those standards and tell the teacher exactly what they expect. Marking comments as strengths and growths can help reinforce them.
A leaf is an area for growth. This means the educator has something that they need to work on.
Some administrators may choose to go straight to the Interpret tab and start entering comments on each standard as opposed to using the collect screen. Do what works best for you. That's the cool thing about Feedbak™, it's a flexible tool.
When you are all done assigning scores and leaving comments, click the Review tab. On this tab, you will see a recap of the standards you have scored and the strengths and growths you marked in conjunction with each.
When you are done, click one of the following buttons Actions or Upload.
Actions will give you the options to Print, Save as pending, Complete Feedbak, or Modify Feedbak. I'll explain each one of these options below.
- Print- you probably guessed what this option does.
- Save as pending - use this option when you are in a classroom working on an observation but want to go back to review and edit it later in the day.
- Complete Feedbak - click this option when you are finished with an observation.
- Delete Feedbak - this deletes the Feedbak™.
- Modify Feedbak - This allows you to go in and make changes to the observation or re-open a completed Feedbak™.
If you chose Upload or Complete Feedbak, you will see the following menu:
From here, you will see the length of observation and have the option to manually change the length.
If you have finished the observation and are ready for the observed person to view it click Complete & Notify Teacher. You also have the option to Complete & Keep Private. This will not allow the staff member to view the observation. In most cases, you will want the staff member to be able to view the observation, so only use this in rare cases.
I really hope this article has helped you become more familiar with Feedbak™. It really is a powerful tool to fine-tune your staff and help your school achieve maximum potential. If you wish to learn more, I suggest reading the following articles:
Feedbak 2 app: Download or update SchoolStatus Feedbak 2 app for iPad
See Feedbak Viewed Status and Comments (Observers only)
Educators: Explore your Feedbak Dashboard