In the regular world of the classroom, teachers are always being evaluated.  The principal schedules regular visits to your classroom during the year bringing the official district forms and checklists.  Parents will call with compliments, stop by to help, and yes, sometimes call and write notes of criticism when they feel you have missed the mark.

But none of this compares with handing out 40 evaluation forms to 40 teachers who have spent $300 for a full week workshop.  On the form, there is a list of questions, each with a set of boxes for participants to check…always, sometimes and never.  After quickly checking off boxes, there are also 20 blank lines, complete with a blank back side of the evaluation form, and the participants are “invited” to write anything and everything they want about the workshop…and “you” their instructor.

All evaluations are anonymous.  Teachers gradually filter out of the room with their papers, notes and gifts, turning their evaluation forms upside down on the stack at the back of the room.  Soon, the room is empty and quiet, a complete contrast to the noise and activity of the week just finished, and you are left to collect your stack of forms.  Evaluation forms.

Tired and exhausted, you now get to decide where best to read these forms.  Alone.  With a co-teacher.  At the airport over coffee.  At the restaurant over wine.  In the airplane.  Or ignore them.  Don’t read them.  Just put them into the final envelope with your registration forms and reimbursement receipts, and send them off to the Center in California.  There were instructors who did just that.  I didn’t know how they managed it.  How could they not want to know…how had they done during the week?  What had the teachers in the workshop thought of them?  When the stack of evaluations arrived in California, what would the owners of the company be reading about them?  What about the bad evaluation?  Didn’t they want to see it first?

Even after years have passed, every instructor can sit and talk about the one evaluation form that sticks in their brain. The instructor can recite the written comments almost word for word.  No matter how many workshops, how many participants, and how many glowing evaluations, every instructor can remember the one evaluation form where the participant listed their failings.

I can remember mine.  There were three forms.  In Montana. They didn’t like the workshop.  The instructors (including me) were ill-informed, incompetent, and biased.  The instructors (including me) didn’t support the Center’s book.  They didn’t work in unison.  They contradicted each other.  The rest of the 25 evaluations were rather lukewarm; this had been a good week.  They had learned a few interesting things.  Blah, blah, blah…my mind returned over and over and over again to the glaring forms that chastised me for wasting their time.

Thank goodness for the one…bless her…one participant who took the time to mention me by name on her evaluation, complimenting my teaching style.  She will never know the saving grace of her kind words, keeping me from self-destructing in despair over my failure to please the three disgruntled participants.  I had never expected to be perfect, and I knew that some of their comments were based on problems to which I had contributed.  But it hurt to feel the finality of their condemnation.  They offered no charitable kindness.  I had failed them.  Completely.

I remembered one of my mentors who had been teaching math workshops for years, and I remembered reading her evaluations with her, together on an outdoor patio over sandwiches and sodas.  Every evaluation said that Candy was wonderful.  Great.  Exciting.  Thought-provoking.  Perfect.  I asked her how these compared to evaluations from all of her workshops, and she smiled.  “They’re pretty much the same, always.”  How did she do it?  How could I ever get good enough to measure up to Candy?

It didn’t seem possible that I would ever achieve teaching greatness.  Fortunately, I persevered.  Yet, even after years of proven success, I could never shake off the inner dread at the end of each workshop, as I stared at the stack of unsigned 40 evaluations on a Friday afternoon.  Had I met everyone’s need?  Had I given it my all?  Been organized?  Thoughtful?  Challenging?  Understanding?  In spite of smiles during the week, was there someone who had suffered through the week, finally getting a chance to tell me all about it on their evaluation?

Leaving Nashville, this Friday evening on the airplane, I thought about the fun, exciting, and slightly kooky week of math just finished.  The energy level had been high.  I had taught at an inner city school for a full house of 40 teachers brimming with good humor and enthusiasm for math challenges. It was fun, but I had struggled.

All week long one “Minnie Pearl” participant seemed to bubble to the surface with eccentric requests and activities.  She came late one day after the lunch break was over and spread her “picnic” sack lunch all over her group’s work table, passing around pickles and hard boiled eggs, in the midst of a lesson on multiplication.  She interrupted a fraction lesson on another day to announce that ice cream sundaes and fixin’s were being served in the back of the room.  She wore polka dots and hats with flowers.  On Wednesday, she invited me to stand down and take a seat so that she could take over and teach the division lesson a different way.  I loved her.  So did everyone else.  Fellow participants would all shake their heads, laugh and giggle, but they were laughs of understanding and acceptance.  They would never do anything to put her down.  “Minnie” was kindhearted…but what did I do to keep the workshop on track without insulting her?  How did I keep from frowning about pickles, laughing over ice cream sundaes, and staring at hats with flowers?

But the biggest challenge was the math.  Every day that week in Nashville we struggled to understand math.  Lessons I had successfully taught in earlier years and workshops seemed to devolve into confusion rather than understanding.  Teachers would ask  me to repeat instructions, go over things again, slow down, and explain it again.  At lunch there was always one table with people working through lessons and problems again, trying to write notes that would help them when they took the lessons back to their own students in September.

In spite of everything, the week was filled with smiles, encouragement, and kindness.  I will forever remember the bright ebony smile of an older woman who had been at every lunch study group of the week.  She struggled with each and every lesson during the week.  But she struggled with a smile.  On Friday afternoon, our final lesson was one that often confounded even the most sophisticated math teachers. This kind lady had good reason to be struggling this Friday.  Years earlier, in her place as a student, I had filed the activity away as one to forget.  It was too hard, and I had other things to think about.

Now, in Nashville, nearly everyone else had packed up and left, and I was chatting with people as they said final goodbyes.  Ms. Ebony remained seated with her books open, papers spread out, deep in discussion and concentration with two of her friends.  Occasionally I would hear her say, “I just don’t understand.”  Finally, after persistence, I heard a cry of elation, and she called me over.  “Look at this,” she said.  “You take this number, and this one, and this one and you add them up.  That’s how you do it.  I get it!  I can’t wait to show this to my class!  I get it!  Thank you so much!”  We were all elated.  I will always remember her as my model of what it means to be dedicated to learning and growing.  She was the ultimate “student/teacher.”

Now, on the plane, buckled into my seat, looking out over the Nashville runway, I worked to summon the courage to read 40 evaluations.  It had been a good week for me.  But, what about for them?  One after another, I read each form.  This week has been great.  The best.  I’ve learned so much.  Jane is wonderful.  Cheerful, organized, compassionate, patient, the best…JANE WALKS ON WATER!  I had spent the week teaching them, but I left the week with them teaching me.

Six years earlier I would have paid a million dollars to hold this stack of evaluations.  But in the airplane that night, reading evaluation after evaluation, I suddenly I knew how wrong I had been.

Forty evaluations.  On the papers were words that talked about Jane.  The words said wonderful things about Jane.  But I knew in my heart that these were not evaluations about me.

I could close my eyes and see the face of Minnie, Ebony, and all the rest, and I knew the truth that had eluded me all these years.  In Nashville, I walked on water because they walked on water.

They saw the best in people.  They struggled to learn when things were difficult.  They accepted with compassion the kooky interruptions of a kind lady.  They were patient with me if I wasn’t able to explain things perfectly the first time.  They took responsibility for delving into difficulties and pursuing problems to solutions.  They loved life, and they loved each other.  There was no way I was going to get an unkind evaluation.  They were the loving, patient, and compassionate people who would always see the same qualities in others.  These evaluations were not about me.  They were about the people who wrote them.

I put all 40 glowing evaluations together again in a neat pile in my lap, leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and reflected on each of the 40 wonderful people I had had the pleasure to come to know.  They had taught me more than I would ever be able to teach them.

I knew then that I had wasted a lifetime waiting for others to let me know how I was doing.  I basked in compliments, and I suffered under criticism, always trying to perfect myself, seeking human praise to let me know I was on the right path.  No matter how good praise felt, I had been wrong.

Yes, the evaluations of others can offer valuable information for us as we work to become the best we can be.  But only if we remember that the evaluation reflects not just our own personal value, but the world view and values of the other person.  I welcome evaluations today.

I no longer dread them..  I know that, with most people, most of the time, I succeed.  But I know much of my success is their success, too.  If there is a complaint here and there, I try to reflect on the complaint and assume my share of responsibility.  But I don’t allow the complaint to bury me.  I use what is useful to improve my teaching.  And I move on.  Complaint or praise, it’s never all about me.

On my part, oh, the words of criticism and anger I would like to retrieve from years past when I was the one wielding the pen, “evaluating” someone else!  Oh, how I cringe at what others learned about me.  Even today when I should know better, I still find myself looking at the sawdust in someone’s eye, never noticing the plank in mine.

Today, to the best of my ability, when it is my turn to evaluate someone else, I have learned to look at myself.  If I am upset at someone, what role did I play in the situation?  Am I being harsh, impatient, inflexible?  Have I tried everything positive I can think of to put things right?  And when I finally feel that I have a justifiable criticism, am I willing to express my criticism charitably with compassion for the other person, allowing them the dignity to work to rectify the situation?

When I am asked for my opinion, good or bad, I do my best to provide honest feedback.  But in the end…lastly, and most importantly…I read my comments and ask, “What kind of person would write an evaluation like this?”

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