Although new teachers like Kara House, AP Environmental Science and Biology I teacher, have not had the same training as the veteran teachers for the new RISE evaluation system, many feel like they have no problem adjusting to the change.
House is both new to CHS and the RISE evaluation system. She said although she didn’t have a year to prepare for RISE, she attended multiple training sessions in the summer to help her prepare for those standards. In addition to summer sessions, on Aug. 14 she and all the other teachers in the school attended a four-and-a-half hour morning session that discussed all the new components implemented this year for RISE.

“They showed us all the structuring for what we were going to do and introduced new expectations for the year,” House said. “It’s all new for me. I knew parts of the system because my old school was going to do RISE, so I’m not worried at all about what’s going on this year.”

Jennifer Marlow, science department chairperson and chemistry teacher, said these new teachers will have no problem adjusting to RISE because things have not changed content-wise, but more reinforcement is now placed on instructional strategies implemented in the classroom.

“Change is always hard, but I think that what we’re going to see is that there is a bunch of good strategies already going on at Carmel High School, and I think teachers will continue to communicate with each other and bounce ideas off each other,” Marlow said.

Despite the changes in teacher and student evaluations throughout Indiana, Marlow and House said they are not too worried about transitioning and see it as a great opportunity for teachers to carry on good classroom instruction.

“These teachers are all well-qualified and prepared for instruction this year,” Marlow said. “Although RISE is now in use, they will continue teaching as effectively as they used to and it will not matter if they’re new or not to the school.”