Program Evaluation Forms For Kids: Fill & Download for Free

Confidence to speak.In elementary school, I was painfully shy and extremely quiet. I was the withdrawn kid who kept her head down, didn't peep unless called on, and got whacked in the face by game balls in gym class. I usually kept to myself and loved doing solo activities, like reading and drawing. I never volunteered to speak. I preferred backstage roles during school plays.Then, through a supportive program, I learned to be confident in myself and how to deliver my thoughts to an audience, whether one or thousands of people.From 2nd to 5th grades, I attended two schools at the same time. Besides my normal grade school, I was also in a local Pull Out Quest program, which brought together "highly capable" students together for a weekday every week. I attended my primary grade school the other four days.I loved going to the pull out class every week. Each school year was divided into a few units; we would focus on one unit for about two months, then switch. At the end of each unit, some students would present a project related to the unit. It was pretty open ended but had to fit some basic presentation requirements.We had to give presentations at the end of units of our choice at least a certain number of times every year to pass the class.Now, imagine me. A short, quiet, withdrawn student who slouches a bit. A student who likes to solve logic puzzles, play go, and walk around the forest area of the school grounds during recess.Imagine me presenting to a room full of of sharp minded students. Imagine me fielding Q&A for five minutes afterwards. Oh, did I mention that all presentations are filmed in full and available to parents to watch nonstop?During the presentation, the entire class, along with the teacher, would fill out evaluation forms. The evaluation system comprised of assigning -, ✓, ✓+, and + for a standard set of categories. There was also a comment section for constructive criticism; mean spirited comments were not tolerated.I usually scored well on originality and research. I like being very thorough with something that I'm presenting. It probably helped that I was paranoid about all the different questions that could be asked during Q&A.On the other hand, I was lacking on all categories actually tied to presenting. I've gotten more than a handful of - and ✓s. As the years went by, I became more comfortable speaking, sometimes even surprising myself. I practiced for hours to make my voice calm and controlled. There were a lot of frustrating moments, and sometimes I just felt that I was an ineffective presenter.I learned a lot. I was quiet. I kept looking at the slides. I mumbled. I was disorganized. I forgot words. I needed more practice.I took all of that feedback into consideration for the future.During one of my last presentations, I finally got the evaluation of my dreams from my teacher. I presented about Sue (dinosaur).I keep this in my box of memorabilia. I hope I never lose it.The speaking experience that I've gained from these classes and presentations is priceless. I nurtured this through middle school and high school, leading to experiences I would never have even remotely dreamed of as a kid.Nowadays, I give talks to the University of Washington ACM members. I also welcome thoughtful discussions about various topics. I've led events, mentored new students, and am heavily involved with K-12 STEM and computer science outreach the greater Seattle area.Thank you, Mrs. Thacker. I would not be the person I am today without the supportive environment in this classroom.

I think that this is a great question and I’m going to go in a different direction with this by first addressing your participation trophy point. While I agree that the participation trophy culture is highly problematic, I can appreciate, to a small degree, the intention behind it. I’d like to reconstruct, just a little bit, some of our mainstream ideas about self-esteem as I think that we are pretty misguided about self-esteem, where it comes from, what it means and how we build it in ourselves and others.First, that self-esteem is basically a measure of how one views themselves as either being valuable or not and I think the biggest and most pervasive myth about self-esteem is that it either grows or diminishes based on how other people evaluate us which is the first issue with participation trophies and thus we see misguided adults that try to prop their children up for praise. I would argue that these are the parents that are still struggling to resolve their own self-esteem dilemma and still erroneously believe that external praise is where self-esteem comes from.Second, that self-esteem is somehow hinged on the lack of personal struggle. Our culture has become overly invested in this pathological nonsense that we should ensure that children never feel bad. Somehow, we’ve gotten it into our heads that if we ensure that children never feel bad, they will have high self-esteem. Just because they feel good doesn’t mean that they will evaluate themselves well. But, once again, we’ve gotten into the bad habit of removing difficulties and problems and I believe that actually causes kids to grow up with low self-esteem because it causes them to feel weak and incapable.So what does create self-esteem better than participation trophies?Validation - Kids need to be validated but I don’t think parents understand that validation doesn’t just need to come in the form of verbal validation. Kids need to hear that they are lovable, that they have good qualities, that their parents are proud of them and wouldn’t ever trade them for anyone else. But kids need to be listened to. The vast majority of parents talk way too much and parents that are good listeners are almost as rare as unicorns. Let your kids talk, listen to them, agree with them. Kids also need your eye contact. When you are listening to them, give them good eye contact. This communicates to them that they are important and what they have to say is important.Adapt and overcome - Like I said before, making life soft and easy for kids just so that they won’t experience sadness or pain causes them to grow up and develop a view of themselves that they are weak and incapable. They need to learn to adapt and overcome when life is hard. They don’t come with this programming preloaded into them like a computer, they have to learn it and they can only learn it by doing it. I see too many parents with this idea that if school is hard then take them out of school and make it easy for them by schooling them at home or online. This is a great way to put a torpedo right in the middle of the bow of their self-esteem. They need to learn how to adapt and overcome. They need to face difficulties and overcome them. Even if it means they are sad, lonely, scared and hurt.Teaching them how to validate themselves - We do everything for kids because they have no ability to do anything for themselves but as they grow older it’s important for them to learn to do things for themselves, including how to validate themselves.Unique does not mean better - We sometimes tell kids that they are unique without telling them that this does not mean that they are better than others or more entitled. I think it’s positive to help them understand that their uniqueness is also their strength but this does not mean that life owes them anything.Developing their interests - Kids need to get good at things and we can help them develop their interests and expand on them. Enabling them to get better and more skilled at it and being good at something in their own unique way is a good way to build their self-esteem. I would hope that it goes without saying that the quickest and easiest way to undermine this is to give them participation trophies. The reward without the effort. Nothing in real life actually resembles this.

A large fraction of the significant civil engineering works taking place in the world today and executing quickly and successfully are in China. A number of years ago the project planning and control methods embodied in GANTT ( Gantt chart ) and PERT ( Program evaluation and review technique ) were found to be limited by inability to take into account past experience in the form of applying statistically based values rather than fixed values to the time estimates in the plans. So funding was provided and PhD's were awarded for advancing this method. The grad students were Chinese and low and behold they went home and applied these new methods to civil engineering works in China. So don't kid yourself about Chinese companies lacking creativity. The lack was right back here at home. A bridge that took 3 years to build in the United States in the 1930's took 24 years to repair only half of from 1989 to 2013. During that period China built bridge after bridge in the 3 year time frame. So wake up!