Transcript

Hello listeners. We are excited to BLaST the Airwaves with you today and provide educational solutions for all. My name is Rebecca Gibboney and I am the Curriculum and Online Learning Specialist here at BLaST Intermediate Unit 17. I am thrilled to welcome you to this episode of BLaST the Airwaves.

When I first started teaching, like even student teaching, I didn’t always enjoy hearing feedback. I know how important it is. I understand the reasoning behind providing feedback. It’s just so hard to hear sometimes. It just pointed out my “imperfections” (even though, remember, perfection doesn’t exactly exist). It was hard to handle in my first, second, fifth year teaching. I wanted to get it right. I wanted to just move on. I wanted to, for once, feel like I had it all together.

Yet, surprisingly, this has changed as I have become more experienced as an educator. I now crave feedback. Granted, I always remind people I am human, so take it a little easy. However, I have come to the realization that I need to have a healthy relationship with feedback. I need to learn to look at it, not as a sign of imperfection, but a chance to grow.

It is the same in the classroom. Our students (and maybe even ourselves) need to develop that healthy relationship with feedback. As educators, we need to be aware of the feedback we give and the balance between feedback and assessment. Because there is a balance.

It’s like a cycle. Assess, feedback, learn. Assess, feedback, learn. “Assessment is assessment…there’s nothing magical about [assessment] itself; it’s what you do with it” (p. 148). It’s the feedback you give. The teaching that you adjust. That is what shapes the student’s learning. It is the “connective tissue” (p. 148).

In the virtual space feedback is just as important as the face-to-face space, if not more. In fact, I would be even more cognitively aware of how often I am giving feedback and what kind of feedback I am giving. The feedback not only helps support the learning process, but it also builds meaningful interactions with your students. It builds relationships.

How often are you providing feedback? Is it the copy and paste kind of feedback? Great job. Nice. Fantastic. Or are you giving the high-information feedback? You know, the feedback that is corrective feedback filled with information about processes and helping students with their own self-regulation. I mean, we cannot just assume that by giving the students the answer they will actually learn. It’s just not how it works.

Let’s start with something simple. When planning and providing feedback for you students, ask yourself and your students these three simple questions:

Where am I going? – This question focuses on your learning intentions, your objectives, your essential questions. Your students should be able to answer these questions by providing the right amount of teacher clarity.

How am I going there? – Simple. It’s your pedagogy and your strategies. What strategies will you use to get your students there? Your students might be able to explain the steps and the lessons they must take to get to that end goal.

Where will I go next? The final question and, personally, the most important, because you are shifting the focus and ownership to your student and his or her future actions. It’s the time that you get to coach and facilitate. Let them develop a plan. You learned this, so now what?

A teacher leader, an administrator, a colleague, should be able to come into your classroom any given day and in any given lesson and ask a student these three questions and he or she should be able to respond. This proves your teacher clarity. But, it also provides a framework, some guidance, for you to help provide personalized feedback and (informally) formatively assess your students, not as a data point, but as a human.

Human. We all go back to making every situation, every interaction, human. Feedback is wonderful. It’s fantastic. But, it’s meaningless without a positive relationship. It’s meaningless if you have not built credibility with your students. It’s meaningless if you don’t build a classroom climate that allows for failing forward. A climate that embraces errors, not as a sign of imperfection, but as part of the learning process (p. 151).

You know, as I started to embrace my own journey of growth, swallowing some pretty tough feedback here and there, I started to build a different relationship with feedback as an educator with her students. I watched as students simply threw out my feedback on tests or quizzes or projects. May I add, it took me hours to grade and write. So frustrating. I watched as students started to give up in my class after actually enjoying it, all because they received one bad grade. I watched as they just saw their A and still threw it out, disregarding all my written feedback. An A is an A right?

My feedback was misplaced. So, I found a solution. I started returning graded work without a grade, only comments. If they wanted to see the grade, they had to read the comments. I forced my students to have a relationship with feedback. To accept feedback as part of the learning process and grow from both internal and external feedback.

It’s all about the relationship you have with feedback. It’s love or hate. Which one is it? More importantly, which one do you want it to be for your students? A love or hate relationship?

We would like to thank you for blasting the airwaves with us today. If you like the show, please subscribe or leave a review. If you want to know more. Check out www.iu17.org for further resources and show notes. As always, we want to thank you for what you do every single day. Remember, keep shining. We’ll be back next episodes to provide you another educational solution for all as we continue to transform lives and communities through educational services.

Additional/Suggested resources mentioned in the episode:

The Distance Learning Playbook by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie

BLaST Intermediate Unit 17 – www.iu17.org 

Professional Learning Opportunities at BLaST IU 17 – https://www.iu17.org/professional-learning/ 

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