AFFECTIVE LIVING

Feedback and I have a love-hate relationship. We’ve had horrendous moments, lowlights including:

• YouTube comments from trolling strangers;

• The parent who threatened to sue me for targeting his daughter by – get this – reminding her of homework due dates;

• A teacher’s constructive feedback of “Wear better clothes” after a PD;

• Blog commenters arguing that I should quit teaching because I misspelled a word.

But, some of my most transformative experiences have come from getting feedback from colleagues who craved, modeled, and facilitated exceptional feedback. By seeing the power of effective feedback – and growing a tough skin from ineffective feedback – I’ve come to crave answers to the mantra, “Know Thy Impact.”

Which leads to a problem: So much of my time is isolated from colleagues. I often teach in a bubble with an occasional administrator popping in for a semi-annual observation. So I’ve learned to shift my thinking – realizing that one of my greatest sources of feedback is the very focus of my job: Students.

When is the last time you asked your students for feedback – in a way that allowed you to act upon that feedback to improve their learning? Sure, we might give an “end of the semester” evaluation. Or ask for thoughts after a unit or course. But feedback is best when it empowers us to act now.

Here’s how to do feedback better, using a notecard and a tradition:

Feedback Friday

Request it

Each Friday, give your students a note card and ask them to respond to one question:

What can I do to help you learn better next week?

Reframe It

I choose Fridays for this process because, if the feedback hits me hard (because I’m a human), I have a weekend to process it, brainstorm, and regulate my emotional attachment to the feedback. I look at both outliers and trends. I also try to find what the root of a comment is. If a student says, “I get bored when you lecture” I know that it’s a cue to experiment with engagement strategies, not a personal attack on my character.

Review it

On Monday, don’t let the Friday feedback go unmentioned. Explain to students what you gained from their feedback – and how you are going to implement it. Invite discussion (e.g. “A few comments said that our class lectures get boring or dry; I’d love to hear some suggestions on how I can fix that”).

And here’s the kicker: Actually implement their suggestions to the best of your ability. Let’s be honest, sometimes kids don’t know what they don’t know. But this is not a space to get defensive and justify away every piece of feedback you receive.

Some of my best shifts in teaching came from suggestions from my students. I’ve re-written assessments, changed my nonverbals, and gotten more creative with instruction – based on hearing directly from my students. Perhaps the best part, though, is seeing how it transforms the culture of a classroom, allowing me to ask for feedback mid-lesson and inviting students to take ownership of their learning.

Repeat It

A question often arises, What if my students can’t give good feedback?

The best way to get better at feedback is to practice it — and, unfortunately, students are rarely given opportunities to practice providing feedback. Feedback Friday has shown me that it takes a few rounds before students (a) trust they can be honest with their feedback and (b) learn ways to be more helpful and specific with feedback.

It’s key, then, to do this at least a couple times a month (I do it weekly). Not only will frequent requests sharpen their ability to give feedback, it will shift the culture of the classroom: Students will develop greater psychological safety, increased sense of autonomy, and a heightened feeling of belonging to the classroom community.

Here are three other tips for helping students give better feedback:

Tip 1: Teach Effective Feedback Tips

Improving a student’s ability to give you feedback helps them get better at providing each other feedback. Though this article is based around peer-to-peer feedback, it could easily be adapted for developing a culture of student-to-teacher feedback:

Developing Students’ Ability to Give and Take Effective Feedback by KQED

Tip 2: Preface it

To guide my students toward better feedback, before they write, I tell them this:

1. “Nothing” is an illegal answer: If you can’t think of something I can do better, at least tell me what you want me to keep doing.

2. Give suggestions: If you don’t like how something is being done, try to give an idea of how I can do it better.

3. Be kind but fearless: Remember I am a human, so consider wording it in a way that helps me receive and implement it. But I will not take anything out on your personally, so be fearlessly honest.

4. There are non-negotiables: We will read. We will write. You will have assignments and assessments. But how we do those things is up for revision.

Tip 3: Structure it

Structure feedback around key topics or use more specific questions:

Rigor

• What can I do to challenge you with content and help you grow?
• What can I do to help you understand challenging content?
• How effective is my ability to explain content? What could I change?
• How effective is the feedback I give for helping you learn and improve? What could I change?

Relevance

• What can I do to help you see how this content matters for your present and future?
• What can I do to help you apply this beyond the classroom?
• How effective are the assignments I give for helping you apply your learning? What could I change?

Relationships

• What can I do to help you understand that I believe in your ability to learn in this class?
• What can I do to strengthen our relationship?
• What can I do to make this class a safe place to learn and be?

Feedback doesn’t have to be caustic. It doesn’t have to be rare. And it doesn’t have to come from our superiors (or internet trolls). We can choose to create contexts — and cultures — in which students and teachers help each other grow.

Got ideas on how you create a culture of feedback with your students? Share the wealth in your comments below!