Self-Assessment to Prepare for Your Teacher Evaluation
TL;DR
(Instructional Guidance, Transcript, and Prompts below)
Why Self-Assessment Matters Before an Evaluation
A few weeks before a formal teacher evaluation is an ideal time to pause, reflect, and assess your own practice. Regular self-assessment should be part of good teaching habits, but it becomes especially valuable when an evaluation is approaching.
Short-Answer Approaches to Self-Assessment
Approach 1: Narrative Self-Assessment (Short-Answer)
Use AI to conduct a guided, short-answer self-assessment. You describe your teaching context and the specific area you want to evaluate. The AI then asks a series of short-answer questions, one at a time, focused on that area. After you respond to all questions, the AI generates critical feedback and targeted suggestions.
Turning Responses Into a Shareable Report
The results can be converted into a first-person reflective report suitable for submission to an administrator, along with concrete actions you can take to improve. The teacher is responsible for reviewing, revising, and ensuring accuracy before submitting the document.
Approach 2: Alignment With a Specific Instructional Framework
A variation of the narrative approach focuses on alignment with a named instructional model or pedagogy, such as Marzano techniques. In this case, the AI asks questions specifically tied to that framework and evaluates how well your classroom practices align with the stated expectations.
Rating-Scale Self-Assessment Using Evaluation Criteria
Likert-Type Survey Based on Official Rubrics
AI can generate a Likert-type self-assessment survey directly from your evaluation rubric or performance guide. You rate yourself on each item using a numerical scale. After all responses are submitted, the AI scores the results and provides an interpretation that includes strengths, areas for growth, critical feedback, and even examples of what an evaluator might say.
Key Takeaway
AI-supported self-assessment can help teachers prepare more intentionally for evaluations by structuring reflection, clarifying expectations, and generating actionable feedback. This process supports better self-awareness and more focused professional growth.
Teacher Take-aways
Pedagogical and Professional Implications
Effective teacher self-assessment is an instructional improvement routine rather than an evaluation exercise. It begins by clearly defining the teaching context and selecting a specific instructional responsibility to examine, such as explicit instruction, monitoring for understanding, or feedback practices. This focus anchors reflection in observable classroom behaviors and strengthens the connection between professional growth and student learning.
A concise, structured self-assessment relies on disciplined self-questioning that prompts teachers to describe planning decisions, instructional moves, and monitoring routines, then compare those practices to intended outcomes. When reflection follows a consistent structure, it reveals patterns in implementation, highlights strengths to sustain, and identifies gaps that warrant adjustment. The purpose is accuracy, not affirmation.
Critical feedback is what converts reflection into improvement. Feedback is most effective when it is specific, evidence-based, and oriented toward instructional decisions. Research demonstrates that feedback improves practice when it supports task-level and process-level refinement rather than general judgment (Wisniewski et al., 2020). Studies of instructional coaching similarly show that targeted feedback combined with opportunities to adjust practice is associated with measurable improvements in teaching quality (Glover et al., 2023).
To sustain continuous improvement, self-assessment should conclude with a small set of prioritized, near-term instructional actions. These actions should be observable in daily instruction, feasible within existing routines, and re-visitable using the same criteria that guided the reflection. This creates a practical improvement cycle in which reflection, adjustment, and review are directly tied to instructional quality.
References
Glover, T. A., et al. (2023). Instructional coaching actions that predict teacher practice. Journal of School Psychology. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022440522000838
Wisniewski, B., Zierer, K., & Hattie, J. (2020). The power of feedback revisited: A meta-analysis of educational feedback research. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 3087. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03087/full
AI Support and Use
Teachers can use AI as a structured support tool to strengthen instructional self-assessment and continuous improvement.
- Structuring disciplined reflection
AI can guide teachers through sequenced reflective questioning that prompts description of planning decisions, instructional moves, and monitoring strategies, etc. This structure helps teachers articulate what they actually do in practice, revealing patterns, inconsistencies, and priorities that may not be apparent through informal reflection alone. - Generating critical, growth-oriented feedback
AI can synthesize strengths and growth areas in neutral, professional language, suitable for submission and reflection. - Aligning reflection to instructional criteria
AI can assist teachers in examining their practice against established instructional frameworks or evaluation criteria. - Converting reflection into action
AI can support the final stage of the improvement cycle by helping teachers consolidate reflection into a short, prioritized set of instructional actions.
Used deliberately, AI supports teacher metacognition, strengthens instructional clarity, and reinforces continuous improvement without replacing professional judgment.
Full Transcript and Prompts
When to Self-Assess
Your teacher evaluation is coming up, and a few weeks ahead of that, you want to do a self-assessment, basically to ask the question, “How am I doing, and how can I best prepare for my evaluation?”
Now, I would argue that teachers ought to be doing this regularly anyway. But, certainly, if your evaluation is coming up, it’s a good time to stop and reflect on what you’re doing, how well you’re doing it, and what you can do better so that when you get evaluated, you get a good evaluation.
We’re going to turn to AI to assist us with that process.
Let’s take a look at two different approaches, a more narrative approach and a more quantitative approach, and then some recommendations about how you might use the results.
Assessment Type One (A): Short Answer
Starting with prompt number one.
Prompt
I teach [in a mixed-grade, high school special education self-contained classroom]. I want to conduct a self-assessment based on how well I [provide social skill development]. Ask me 10 short-answer questions, one at a time, regarding my performance in this area, and then provide critical feedback.
So in prompt number one, we’re going to start off “I teach…” and you’re going to describe your specific context, grade, subject, content area. Anything special about it. That all goes right there.
So tell me about your teaching, then. What are you trying to accomplish? Self-Assessment. And the part to modify is what are you going to be assessed on? What are you going to be evaluated on? What is your principal going to be looking for?
What do you want the AI to do to help you with this? Well, simply, ask me 10 short answer questions, one at a time just to make it easier, regarding your performance. And then after I do all my responses, give me some critical feedback.
The word “critical” is actually important there. We don’t want it to be like, “Oh, you’re so wonderful” or “you’re so whatever.” We want an accurate objective. Pluses and minuses kind of feedback.
Now, I’ve already run this prompt because nobody wants to see me type up a bunch of made-up responses. So, I’ve already done it. And let me show you what we get from this.
So here we’ve got the prompt. We’ve got the first question.
“How well do you intentionally plan social skills.” So, it’s referring back to that area I talked about. And I simply do a little head scratching and add my short answer response.
Now it’s going to go through all 10 questions like this. (If you’re prone to motion sickness, close your eyes for a moment. I’m going to scroll really fast just…Okay. You can open your eyes again.)
“Critical feedback on your social development process.”
And the nice thing about the AI helping with this is AIs are built as large language models. They’re good at analyzing language, so we can take these short answer responses and find key information and analyze it and match it up to other language things, like your evaluation criteria, to generate some good feedback.
And what is it? Overall summary (nice), strengths. Things you do well based on your responses. Very nice. And growth areas and targeted feedback. These are things to think about pretty carefully before you get evaluated.
Now, based on that, we’ve got some high impact next steps recommended actions you can take now to make sure you are ready for when you get evaluated and overall.
Creating a Self-Assessment Report
One nice thing that we can do as a follow up is to generate this as a report, ready for submission in many cases, and it’s a good idea.
A principal or administrator will say, “Here are the things you’re going to be evaluated on. Do a little self-reflection. Think about it. Write it up and submit it to me so that we can then discuss it.”
All right. Well, you’ve done all the information already. What you need is some help with packaging it and drafting it for a submission.
Prompt
Prepare these results as a narrative analysis that I can submit to my administrators. At the end of the analysis, propose 3 – 4 actions that I can take now to make improvements. Write the analysis results in the 1st person.
That, then, brings us to prompt number two, which is: All right, take these results, prepare them as a narrative analysis that I can submit to my administrators, and propose 3 or 4 actions that I can take now to make improvements.
Importantly, because this is coming from you, write the analysis results in the first person.
(I’ve got another video I did recently on how to make AI write like a person, and, especially, how to make it write in your style. So you might want to take a look at that and apply some of those techniques here, but just asking for the analysis in the first person is going to get you most of the way there.)
It’s going to what it needs to do for you.
All right. So we follow up with that prompt there, and then it prepares the report for us. There’s my prompt. It prepares a nice first-person narrative. So, for example, “I provide intentional and systematic instruction” (Right?) “And I monitor students’ performance.” So it’s coming from you.
You do want to read it, approve it, modify it as needed pretty carefully before you ever turn it in because this is coming from you. It’s based on your information. The AI helped to draft it, but it’s still got your name on it. So look at it pretty carefully.
However, you will get a nice report based on your self-assessment, so that’s great.
Assessment Type One (B): Alignment with Instructional Approach
Now the second approach, which I’m not going to do now, is based on a specific teaching methodology or a specific pedagogical approach. Here I said Marzano techniques.
Prompt
As a [9th grade biology teacher], I will be evaluated based on how well I [demonstrate Marzano techniques] in my classroom. I want to conduct a self-assessment based on these criteria. Ask me 10 questions, one at a time, regarding my implementation, and then score me and provide critical feedback.
I’m not going to do this one, but if you want the whole prompt, just go over to the website and get it. It will be on there. There will be a link in the description for the page that has this information on it.
All right. So ask me questions etc. etc. otherwise it’s pretty much similar.
Assessment Type Two: Rating Scale (Likert-type)
Now the second approach, which is a simpler approach, honestly, is something you can do when you’ve got the actual document of your evaluation criteria.
What are the performance expectations? Do you have a rubric? Do you have a list? Do you have a narrative that says, “Here is what you, as a teacher, will be evaluated on, and here’s what we’re looking for”?
So we’re going to use that to generate a pretty quick self-assessment survey.
Prompt
I teach [junior high science], and my teacher evaluation is coming up. Review the uploaded teacher performance criteria, [domain 1 only]. Ask me 10 Likert-type questions based on the criteria, one at a time, as a self-assessment. Once I provide all responses, score me and provide critical feedback to help me prepare for my evaluation.
So, again, who are you? And what we’re going to ask the AI to do in this case is review the uploaded teacher performance criteria, and is there any particular part? Here I said domain one. So maybe this was an area of weakness before. So let’s focus on that.
Now, what do we want the AI to do? Ask ten questions, as before, one at a time. And then, once I am done, we get through all the questions, score it, and provide critical feedback to help me prepare for my evaluation.
Like before, I already did it, so let me just go ahead and pull it up to show you what it can do.
And here. (So let’s go to the top.) There’s my domain. There’s my prompt. And it’s going to then say, “All right, here’s the scale one through five.” It’s going to ask me questions, and I will simply put in 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 for each question.
This one, for example, I put in a 4. You see it over there on the right.
It goes through all of the questions, and you just type in your response. And finally, (sorry about the motion sickness), but finally here is my response summary: how I responded to each question, my score, my interpretation, my strengths, my areas for evaluation, critical feedback.
And this was kind of nice: What an evaluator might say.
Wrap-Up
So, very nice way to go about self-assessment to help you prepare for your teacher evaluation.
I hope you found these techniques useful. Take care.