Yelp for teachers?

I read an article recently in which a blogger suggested that what we really need is “Yelp for teachers.” If you’ve somehow missed it, Yelp is a patron-review site for everything from restaurants to medical care.

Responding to a lawsuit filed in Virginia in which a parent sued a school district to make teacher evaluations based on student test scores public, blogger Matt Bai countered with the idea that parents should be able to post their reviews of teachers in a public forum. Bai argues, “What we need is for some tech entrepreneur to come up with a Yelp or an Angie’s List for public schools, because the amalgamated voice of the consumer is the most powerful kind of accountability in American life.”

Like most people, I am a review-reader for many of the products and services I buy. I read reviews of sneakers, books, cookware and clothing. And in reading all those reviews, I’ve learned that almost any product or service will have a mix of good and bad reviews.

As I’m reading, I am also simultaneously thinking about the type of person who wrote the review. Is this an honest review? Is it possible that the business owner wrote it or asked (or paid) one of their relatives or friends to write it? Did the person who wrote it have a grudge? Did the person who wrote the review deliberately set out to antagonize the staff, make an unreasonable request, or demand something ridiculous just to be able to write about “terrible” customer service?

I’ve read in several places that Yelp itself is not a reliable source of information — that businesses pay Yelp to publish only positive reviews, and that there are “elite” Yelpers — customers who write so many reviews they could not possibly have patronized all the businesses they claim to have experienced.

And then there’s the phenomenon I’ve noticed most when reading recipe or book reviews — the people who “review” something they’ve never made or purchased. Scanning reviews on a dessert I wanted to make recently, five of the 10 posted reviews were from people who said something like, “this looks so great I can’t wait to make it.” What Bai describes as “the amalgamated voice of the consumer,” while powerful, may not be the most reliable source of information in the world

In contemplating the idea of Yelp for teachers, I recalled a parent phone call I made several years ago while teaching a mythology class. I had called a parent to discuss the fact that her student had missed a lot of classes and, consequently, wasn’t doing very well.

I had just gotten past the, “Hello, this is Prudence Plunkett at Colony High School,” part of the conversation, when the mom (whom I had never met), said, “Oh, yes, I know exactly who you are. I know all about you. You’re the teacher who tries to keep kids from graduating.”

Seriously? Did this woman honestly believe that I had spent six years of my life paying for a master’s degree in English so I could destroy the lives of the Valley’s young adults? Did she really believe that I got up every morning taking pleasure in the thought that I could keep kids from graduating?

What if she had written a review of my class? Would she have acknowledged the fact that she’d never met me? That her student might, just possibly, have a bad grade because he/she rarely attended class or turned in any work? And if she had, would other parents have believed her? How many students might I never have had the opportunity to meet because this woman, “knew all about me”?

To be fair, I have also had the much more pleasant experience of having parents tell me how great a teacher they think I am, or how much their student felt he/she had learned in my class. While those moments are wonderful, I’m not sure they need to be public.

The whole Yelp phenomenon highlights for me something I see as a problem with our world today: the desire to make every single aspect of our lives public. Remember the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder? He has, in the past, openly stated that he does not believe in the idea of privacy.

I do believe in privacy — not in secrecy or deception — but in privacy. I have this crazy notion that if I have caused a problem for a student, the parent can call me, send an email, or stop in. Then we can have a rational discussion about it, and, I hope, resolve it.

I truly do not understand the mindset that says, “I am disturbed by something that happened at my child’s school. The best response is for me to a) photograph it and post it on Facebook so the world can see it and react, or b) call the news media so they can broadcast it all over the world.”

I wonder, has any parent who posted something like that on Facebook ever been able to resolve a problem? Could that resolution have been achieved in a way that wasn’t humiliating for the parent, the student, and/or the school?

At Colony High, and, I think, all of our district schools, we encourage parents and students to complete surveys on their teachers and administrators. That feedback goes where it should: to the teachers and administrators. I think that’s the best place for it.

I remember getting those surveys when I was teaching — my colleagues and I would look at them and use the feedback for reinforcement and adjustment. Sometimes we shared them with each other, other times we kept them to ourselves.

No one likes making mistakes, but we all make them — teachers, students and parents. Of course I am not perfect, but I do sincerely try to learn from my mistakes. Sometimes I haven’t been aware of something I’ve done until I’ve seen it pointed out in a survey, and I have honestly adjusted my work to try to improve.

Most teachers I know are sincere in their efforts to help students and in their efforts to keep improving. Many of us became teachers because we like learning — whether it’s learning about our subject or about our practice.

Education has a tremendous amount of variables: interactions between students and teachers differ according to the individual students and teachers involved, and even according to things like classroom dynamic and time of day. I used to marvel at the difference between, say, my first period class of seniors and my fourth period class of seniors. Freshmen I saw right after lunch were different from freshmen I taught at the end of the day. Even two back-to-back classes differed from each other because of the grouping of the students.

Learning new things is a messy process — both for students and teachers. Let’s do ourselves a favor and keep it where it belongs: among the people who are actually involved in the process.

Prudence Plunkett has been reading and recommending books to Valley students for more than 20 years.