Depends on your contract.

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Home : 2003 : February : 17

Depends on your contract.
By Cathy-Dee

It will depend a lot on whether you are a tenured teacher (one with a permanent contract) or one who is just starting out and being evaluated for a permanent contract.

Generally in the first year or two of teaching you
have to go through evaluations before you get hired on in a permanent basis. During this time an administrator can let you go for a variety of reasons. If you feel your evaluation did not go well you can ask for someone else to evaluate you (another administrator or the district superintendent). However you should be sure that the evaluation was not fair and was inaccurate. We have all

had our "bad" moments in teaching so usually one negative evaluation will not hurt us in the end. You can call your teacher's union and they will advise you if they are able to help you in this circumstance.

Unfortunately there are some administrators who do threaten firing after a bad evaluation. Often they are actually hoping not to have to fire you and they figure by threatening you, you will rise to the challenge. Only you can determine if this is the case. Is there another colleague you could talk to about this (that you trust)? You may find out by talking with someone that your administrator does use this system with new teachers.