Writing Student Evaluations Using Evernote

Change.

I thrive on it. I love the seasons, rearranging my studio annually and re-doing my student schedule each summer and fall. The latter, of course, takes time, but for me, the idea of never changing my lesson schedule is suffocating! LOL.

Clear start and endpoints can give distinctive physical and mental relief and rest. When I used to be a choral director, I would frequently get sick the week following school being out as my body was letting go of the stress!

For many independent studios, the end of the school year is a time to take a step back and celebrate the culmination of students’ work and progress through recitals.

Not only that, but it’s the perfect time to turn our heads and reflect on the last 30-40 lessons and 4,000-plus hours of practice. Did we use our time wisely? Did the student make progress? Did they participate in any studio events? Does the student feel they put in their best effort? There are so many questions that can be pondered and progress assessed, that conducting student evaluations has become a part of my annual schedule.

My recital is always the Sunday before Memorial Day. It does get a little crazy having it that time of year, but I love the feeling of having that culminating event where the whole studio comes together to celebrate and make music.

The week following the recital, students and parents come to the student’s normal lesson time, but there is no formal lesson. We sit down and hash out the past and the future of the student’s piano studies together. (My studio is closed for a semester break the last week of May, and then we return for summer lessons the first week of June.)

My role in that meeting time is to give the student a formal evaluation, and the parent and student’s part is to fill out questionnaires, which I give to them ahead of time. Today, we’re focusing on the former.

Many teachers, after seeing my extensive tutorial on how Evernote can help you organize your studio, got a peek at my evaluation form, and have been asking if I would be willing to share. Not only am I going to share the form, but I’m going to explain in detail how I use Evernote to organize and track evaluations from year to year.

Seeing how far we’ve come is only possible if we remember where we started!

The Form

First, let me tell you that nothing is new under the sun. Through other teachers’ generosity, their ideas have helped me develop a form of my own. I would encourage you to do the same!

My rating scale was inspired by Leila Viss’s post on her weekly lesson assessments.  Details for skill areas were inspired by an article in AMT magazine on assessments and Natalie Weber’s Year-End Evaluation form she shared several years ago (which is what I used my first couple of years).

Here’s a screenshot (in 3 images) showing you what the form looks like as a note in Evernote.

 *Side note – The table was cut and pasted from Excel as I don’t like how the “table” function in Evernote behaves. 

Guess what? If you use Evernote, I will share a public link to MY note with you! What does that mean? If you use the link, you will always see my most recent version of the note, even if I make changes at a later date. It also means you can save that note directly into YOUR Evernote account!? What, are you serious? Yes! So, instead of creating the note yourself, you can simply start with mine and then modify it to your needs. (Don’t worry; saving the note to your account and making changes will not alter my note). How cool is that?!

Click here to access my Evaluation form in Evernote

A few Details

A few points regarding my form. First, as I note on the form, most students, as long as I feel we’ve had a solid year and good progress, will receive a 3. I reserve 4’s and 5’s for above and beyond. My husband, who’s in the business world as a Salesforce Administrator, receives annual evaluations. This has always been the norm in his experiences in the real world. It made sense to me so that’s what I went with. You may disagree and that’s why it’s great you can modify the form to your own needs and expectations! 🙂

Second, under the “Achievements” section, I left examples of things I would generally include.

Third, I use Piano Safari’s Mini Essay #21: Levels of Repertoire to help me determine “school grade level.” I include this because it relates to the student’s level of something they already understand. Last year I didn’t include this (because at the time I simply didn’t feel like it and sometimes I make decisions on the fly based on how I’m feeling at the moment – a flaw, I know). I had a few parents who still asked about it and were disappointed not to have it included, thus resulting in the return of the grade level.

I used the Evernote web clipper (see my 5-minute tutorial) to clip the PDF from the Piano Safari website.

Now, not only is the PDF downloaded and therefore referenced under my Evernote tag, but the note also captures the direct link to the PDF if I ever need to view it online.

Duplicating and Tracking from Year to Year

Okay, next, I’m going to discuss how to track each student’s evaluations and save them in Evernote. This includes the use of tags. If you’re not familiar with the tagging system or why, in my opinion, it’s the best way to organize Evernote, then take a few minutes to watch my video on tagging.

Here’s what you do. First of all, notice that I’m under my “evaluations” tag. You can see that in all the circled areas. I currently have 14 notes under this tag. Right-click on your master evaluation form note title and click “Duplicate Note.”

Then, tag one student on this note and remove the “evaluations” tag.

That note will now show up under that student’s tag. You can then change that note’s title to “Student Progress Evaluation 2017” and add the student’s name to the top of the evaluation, and it won’t affect your original note. You can also see that I can view that student’s previous three years of evaluations. It’s always nice to see comparisons from year to year.

Next year, I can simply duplicate this note for this student. Easy!

If I’m lucky, it takes 10-15 minutes to duplicate the master note individually for all of my students and 15-20 minutes per student to write their evaluations. I spend quite a bit of time writing these evaluations during evaluation week.

You can then either email the note directly to the parent to preview before the meeting or print a hard copy to give them during the meeting.

Here’s what it looks like when it comes to email.

Face to Face

Even if I didn’t write formal evaluations for my students, I would still take the time to schedule a face-to-face time to chat with them at the end of the year. Since many of my parents, I only see face to-face a few times throughout the year, it feels good to have a chat, whether it be formal or casual.

An in-person meeting is also the perfect time to make any big studio announcements. I can’t wait to share my big announcement with my families this year. Actually, the announcement is for you, too, but I’m going to keep you both in suspense until the last week of May! Hehehe…