What to do with feedback?

Ever since I read Dan Pink’s book, Drive, I have been fascinated with human motivation.  I had never thought about incentives and carrot-on-a-stick methods the way that Mr. Pink breaks them down.  I was blown away to learn that these things are not only misunderstood, but debilitating to our society in many ways. 

This past October our administrative staff presented us with an opportunity to attend the 21^st century skills conference in downtown Columbus.  The invitation was open to anyone interested, and each department was asked to send a representative.  In the past I have not followed up on these opportunities, but when I saw that Dan Pink was going to be a featured speaker, I knew it was my time to act. 

One thing that I took away from the whole conference, not just from Mr. Pink, was that the act of assigning a grade to an assignment is counter-productive to the learning process.  One speaker put it like this:

-  If you assign a grade to a corrected paper, the student looks solely at the grade and puts the paper away.

-  If you assign a grade and write feedback on a corrected paper, the student just looks at the grade and files it in their bookbag. 

-  If you do not assign a grade to a paper, but provide feedback, the student will then take in the feedback and will grow from the experience because they didn’t get that grade that they have been so trained to view as the end-all. 

It almost made too much sense!  From the moment I heard that statement, I thought nonstop about how I can use this information to improve upon my craft.  To make a long story short, I’ve adjusted my grading method to revolve around giving feedback, and I have attempted to take grading individual assignments out of my classroom.  I want to determine grades on whether or not the student has learned the necessary information, just like homework, tests, and projects are intended to do, but I want to check the students off for their achievements, not assess one product.  I will not go any further on grading because it is still a work in progress and I’ll devote an entire post to grading once I iron out a few more details. 

Back to the feedback.  On Friday I asked my students to evaluate the class and myself as the teacher.  I asked the students to give me an honest and fair evaluation on things such as clarity of instruction, quality of communication, likes and dislikes of the class, and what I can do to help make their experience more enjoyable and satisfying.  It was an overwhelming success as the majority had very positive things to say to go with great suggestions for improvement going forward. 

Here is where I’m struggling:  What do you do with the following two statements that showed up on a few papers?

1.  What YOU want: this was in the form of “it’s hard to tell what you want” or “I don’t know what you want” or “what I dislike so far is that I don’t know what you want.” 

This alarmed me because my first response was to write “YOUR BEST” in really big letters and underline it multiple times.  Then the second time was to write “it doesn’t matter what I want, what do you want?”  Then my third response was to write nothing at all and to look really deeply into that reply and then become really saddened that a student said this. 

I actually did all three.  But, it is the third one that is still with me today, and it is bothering me because it is a problem that is way bigger than just my classroom.  Where have we gone wrong that would cause a student to come to school looking to just please the teacher and not to come to school with a desire to learn with a view of school as a method of self-improvement for their future? 

In short, the direction for the project was to select a topic that relates to your family history (disease/ condition), research it and learn details, then present your findings in a way that educates others on the part of your topic you found most influential.  I understand why students wanted to know what I wanted (it’s what school usually asks), now I need to figure out how to get them to unlearn this mindset to move forward.   

2.  You don’t teach us.  If you have read my previous blogs, or have talked with me recently you know that I have adopted a project-based approach to my class.  Many frustrations led to me believing that having students research individually would be far better than having me limit the students to my knowledge on one individual topic per day.  Instead, I am attempting to be more of a guide to 30 different paths of learning.  It has been exhausting, but very rewarding thus far. 

Anyway, I was somewhat expecting this comment to come from the evaluation.  I haven’t done any “game of school” teaching; No lectures, no power points, no overheads, no worksheets, no outlining the chapter, no vocabulary terms, no tests etc, etc.  I have a vision of what I want to happen in class, and that vision involves students investing in themselves while enjoying each and every day.  I’d be crazy not to expect this type of response, but still, when it came, I was again saddened. 

Students have become so used to coming in, sitting down, looking forward, listening, note taking, and then studying, that anything else is considered “not teaching.”  I am coming to the realization that students do indeed view school as a place and not an activity, and it is unfortunate that they want to show up and have everything given to them.  Students only see opportunities to learn in the traditional methods of school.  They have been trained to recognize the role of a teacher as the direct instructor of information and the role of a student as a passive receptor to information.   How can we open their eyes to see that the world in 2012 contains so many resources that can teach you more quickly and more efficiently than any single source that a teacher limiting them to only their knowledge is limiting their potential?  How can we make them realize that passive receptors rarely develop skill-sets that are needed to be a productive and successful member of a business, corporation, or company five years from now?

This is the unfortunate result of a mindset that we as an educational system have trained kids to have.  I believe that we need to redefine the roles of student and a teacher at all levels.  My challenge to my students this coming week will be to consider the reason they come to school, and reconsider your role as a student and my role as a teacher.  Consider what YOU want, and how YOU can learn, not what I want you to do.  Don’t rely on someone to teach you everything.  Expect teachers to provide you with opportunities, and expect them to be there when you hit a snag.  Do not expect them to solve your problems, but to provide you with the tools and skills to work through them.  Expect them to care about you as a person, and to teach you to be the best person and learner you can be, not to teach you to only know the curriculum.  Embrace the opportunity to invest in yourself and to improve upon your knowledge and skills each and every day.

I appreciate my students for being fair and honest with me.  I got a ton of incredible feedback, and I cannot wait to make some changes in the coming weeks.  I do not think negatively of my students for the statements I have mentioned, I’m actually proud of them for stating their position.  I have brought the statements to attention because they are another indication that change in the system is necessary.  I hope they serve as motivation to teachers everywhere to be bold, try something new, and help to remove the stigma our students have of what student and teacher roles should be.

What are your thoughts?  How should I/ we react to that feedback? 

Take care,

Coach Mo