Bribery and Teachers

Let me begin this post by sharing the challenge set out before the teachers at the beginning of our Spring season for the assessment cycle...

The classroom with the most observations entered into the GOLD system will win a semi-fabulous prize.

The season ends tomorrow and I began to graph the trends of documentation collection for the entire year and have realized that yes, I need to award the teacher who collected the most data, but I also need to recognize the outstanding efforts of one of our infant teachers.  I bet you're wondering, Why is she so special?

For the fall season, this particular teacher collected no observations.  Considering our assessment tool is observation-based, you can imagine the sense of alarm I experienced after completing the fall cycle.  Winter?  Winter brought us 1 observation from that classroom.  Sigh.  Now I also need to recognize that during the past few months, this teacher has been dealing with some incredible turnover and poor work ethic of partner teachers.  Spring.  C'mon Spring, bring us something good!  No whammys, no whammys, big money.... STOP!  Spring brought us... drumroll please... ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT observations.  WHAT?!  Who is this new woman and how did this happen?  I could not be prouder of her work & the work she has done with her new teaching partner, who has been working hard to collect observations and create documentation panels, etc.  I have been smothering these teachers with love in celebration!  They were, in fact, blushing.

Victory?

Is mine!!!

P.S.  In case you're wondering, the winner this season had 289 observations collected for Spring Cycle.  SERIOUSLY?!  My teachers are kind of amazing!