As a teacher, you are constantly giving feedback through comments on papers, assessments, verbal directives and a variety of other methods. (Sometimes even a sticker on a well done paper constitutes feedback.) Have you asked your new class for feedback yet?
Feedback from a class can be an interesting proposition. I find that it can be the noise kind of feedback or the directive kind of feedback. As a teacher, we get feedback from the students. "This is too hard." "You give too much homework." "You go too fast/slow." "I don't like Teacher So and So". "That's not fair." You name it, we get it.
However, some feedback from a class is very helpful. "I like it when we work in groups" helps me know that some students need the confidence of a group validation to succeed in a skill area. "This was fun", lets me know that I can probably use that style of activity again. "You never call on me", lets me know I need to be certain to check how I am calling on students.
Feedback from a parent can prove interesting as well. Enough said, if you are a teacher, you read this line correctly.
Feedback from a supervisor or principal or mentor comes in all kinds of packages. Some helpful, some detrimental.
Ultimately, feedback can be very powerful for good or for bad. It can harm someone and keep them from trying. It can spur someone on to become better.
I welcome feedback when it is based in truth. Some of the best feedback you can receive comes when you know it is based on what is happening. The worst feedback comes from misinformation and from a false narrative and from someone who does not have you and your best interests in mind. It is hard to imagine, but some supervisors with a personal dislike of another person will give feedback based upon falsehood. Some parents give feedback without the facts being in place. I think that the unfit feedback is the reason people don't like feedback in general.
Teachers are moaning because it is informal observations at my school. Why don't they like feedback? A large range of reasons exist, but the bottom line fits among these: 1. The person giving feedback is not respected or does not have the expertise to advise. 2. The person giving feedback is not basing it on what is actually happening, but rather on what they think is happening. Fact v. impression is always a source of conflict. (For example, your students are in disarray when the observer is arriving. Looks bad. However, you are transitioning from a brain break to the next activity. Actually good. The observer needs to get the facts in an effort to give proper feedback.) 3. The feedback will always have a negative because the observer believes everyone should find something to improve. 4. The feedback is always flawed, and it can affect the future employment adversely, and unfairly. 5. The feedback does not provide an opportunity for anything positive.
Students are moaning because they don't like your feedback for the very same reasons (except instead of future employment, you would insert grades). It is so difficult to judge if someone is talking or sharing a pencil when you ar focused on so many things simultaneously in the classroom. It is challenging to determine whether or not a student really isn't trying or whether they are struggling but can't ask for help because they figure it won't help anyway.
When we are giving students feedback, let's make it work for them. Let's pick things that are good and encourage them, and let's pick things that are truly wrong and work to give them the tools for correcting those things. Let's be sure we are accurate and that we have their best interest at heart. (For the most part, most teachers do, I'm happy to say.)
So as my colleagues are moaning this week, I am using that energy to challenge myself to evaluate my feedback to students, whether verbally in class or on assessments. As I receive my feedback, I will consider the information presented and remember how my students feel. (I'm pretty sure my feedback will be good, but with a new boss, who knows?)
I encourage all of us to make sure our feedback is honest, helpful and loving - even if we are aggravated with a particular student.
First published September 13, 2018
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