Student Feedback

Steps to a Coaching Classroom: Newsletter 11

”I might not be able to pay teachers more money, or give them the public recognition they deserve for the amazing work that they do, but I can teach them about a coaching approach. And that will be my contribution to a better world.”, Martin Richards

Martin Richards is the founder of C4E, Coaching for Educators an organisation that offers professional coaching support to educators.

In the previous article, I described how to use exit slips for testing knowledge gained during a lesson, and opening up a channel of communication between teacher and students. Whether you do this as a way of developing your teaching skills, improving knowledge retention or encouraging students to take more responsibility for their learning, exit slips have been proven to be beneficial.

In this article, I will show how to take formative assessment, and flip it so that it is about the teacher, their teaching and outcomes that are being assessed.

“How am I doing?”

When I was teaching, I felt that I wasn’t quite reaching all the students in one particular class. We had enjoyed several great lessons during the terms so far and everyone seemed to be engaged and active in their own way and yet I had a nagging feeling that something was amiss.

During that term, every teacher in the school had for months been working on ‘Formative Assessment’ for students.

I realised that I too would benefit from feedback about my teaching.

The idea of inviting colleagues into the classroom to observe me and give me feedback, seemed too challenging since they were tied to their own timetables. And then I realised that there were already twenty-three people I could ask for feedback - the students.

I was looking for a quick and easy way to get honest feedback. The obvious solution was to use an anonymous feedback form, on paper.

I decided to make this as simple as possible. Towards the end of one lesson, I placed a sheet of paper with a heading "How am I doing?" plus the words [Excellent /Good / OK / Poor] at the front of the class and would invite the students to make a mark where they assessed the quality of my lessons (in general) to be.

I had chosen 4 categories to avoid getting too many “middle” answers. I anticipated there would be a spread of answers across the range. I dearly hoped for a few “Excellent” marks.

At the end of the lesson, I moved to the back of the room, tidying up, and the students made their marks as they left the room.

“Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.”

I got a wake-up call.

Although the majority of the marks were Excellent and Good, there were two marks under Poor. I found myself focusing my attention on those two marks. I had no idea who had made them. I realised that I had opened up a channel of communication with the students that was different and useful to improving the classroom situation.

It turned out that the two students who had marked my teaching as 'Poor' were used to being taught by an authoritarian teacher who would tell them what to do. I had established myself as a collaborative teacher who sometimes pretended to not know the answers. You can imaging the challenge for those students.

As a result, I taught at least part of one lesson a week from the board.

Now I was awake.

In that moment of feedback, it occurred to me that I could also ask all the students what they thought might be beneficial changes to my teaching. I told them that I was going to ask for more feedback later because I felt it gave us a better connection and that is useful for learning. Some days later, I think it was a Friday, I put out another anonymous Feedback Form regarding the learning activities. This time the headings were [More of / Same / Less of], and I invited the students as they left the classroom to note what activities they would like to have more of / the same of / less of.

In this way, I was able to get their input into the design of the lessons.

I learned, for example, that my many, ambitious and clever ideas for group activities was unsettling for many students who preferred a traditional style of blackboard examples and individual exercise, rather than my discussion and problem-solving approach.

I chose to limit the time spent on discussions to specific days.

I also learned that most students would like to know in advance what kind of lesson they were going to get, rather than the 'random' lessons I seem to make up on the spur of the moment.

My response was to write an agenda for the week, informing the students on the general style of the lessons. I also learned to write the agenda in such a way that I could still interpret it in the moment, as needed.

Formative Assessment for Teachers

If you already use formative assessments with your students, you will know how to create a rubric of relevant criteria and descriptions.

Write rubrics to assess your own teaching.

In this flipped version of formative assessment, you are writing rubrics to assess your own teaching. You get to choose what is assessed, and the depth of detail. in the previous story, I chose the broadest and simplest: "How am I doing?" and 4 categories with no description, and yet the feedback was very useful.

Be careful what you ask for, and how you ask for it. Prepare yourself for receiving feedback.

Decide what you want to assess, and a handful of criteria that impact on what you are assessing. For each of the criteria, choose four descriptions that represent low to high levels.

Preparation

Now for the important part. Prepare yourself for the feedback. You will be receiving a blend of information and opinions from your students. Making the feedback anonymous will enable your students to be direct and honest without risk. Put on the same hat when you read the feedback. It's anonymous. Think of it as being about another teacher, someone whose development you are supporting. The feedback is only information. The opinions are information too. If the information makes you glad or sad, it does not matter because you are not that teacher, you are that teacher's mentor.

How you speak to yourself about the feedback is important. You can choose what to include and what to leave out. You can frame your feedback (to yourself) kindly.

Summary

• Design your rubrics the same way as you would for your students.
• Be careful what you ask for. Ask only what you can tolerate being told.
• Use feedback as though you are your own mentor. Be kind.

NEXT

In the next article I will talk about the liberating power of making mistakes.