A big focus for me this year has been feedback for students: how we do it, why we do it, how often, how much, etc.

And a few weeks ago, it was my turn to be on the receiving end of the feedback, when our students were asked to feed back on the teaching in my class this year.

And.

I.

Choked.

Now this shouldn’t have been a big deal; I mean, I have only one class left in school (the others having recently graduated), and no reason to think that any of their feedback would be especially negative.  So why was I so nervous to hear what that had to say?  What happened next led to some powerful insights for me in terms of how I think about feedback – on both sides of that exchange.

I knew, having posted a link to the student survey form, that I was not in the right place to be able to read those responses and interpret them constructively.  I was tired, and in the middle of a funk lasting a good 5-6 weeks, during which I couldn’t tell you that I was doing a good enough job.  This is a familiar feeling for me, perhaps for you too, and a wave I know I can ride out.  But I also knew just how wounding it would be to see my failings in black and white at that particular moment.  A wimp?  Yes.  Grit and resilience?  A tough call when you’re gritting your teeth to see out the day.

I took down the link.

The first thought then, was what a luxury it was to have that choice.  I knew that I wasn’t in the right space for feedback, and so I chose to delay it.  Dylan Wiliam draws our attention to the reality that, not only does feedback sometimes have zero impact on learning, but sometimes that impact is negative.  How often do I consider whether students, individually, might be in the right place, this lesson, to have their work picked over, their ‘flaws’ and ‘failings’ held to the light?  Of course, we always aim for feedback that is ‘task-involving’, as Wiliam would say, rather than ‘ego-involving’, but even so: when it’s been one of those days (weeks, terms…) it all feels personal.  So could I, in future, check in with students first?  Do you want to hear feedback on this right now?  Is feedback today going to help you learn?

In the meantime, I tried to unpick my wimpishness.  I don’t recognise myself as someone who doesn’t seek to learn how to improve; who doesn’t want to be proven wrong, or admit to weaknesses.  And I came to the conclusion that that was where some of the trouble lay: I didn’t believe there was anything they could say that I hadn’t already thought of.  I am intensely critical of my own teaching, and I know when there are things I’m trying to push to the side or gloss over.  In this case, it felt important to me to have the chance to own those things by naming them myself, rather than having them reflected back at me.

So another couple of useful things came up for me here: one was to wonder how often students lack ownership of their learning because we jump in too quickly with the feedback.  How can I build in space and time for students to form their own reflections, before offering another perspective?  The other issue I found interesting here is that of the weight or value we give to those perspectives; I had inadvertently given more weight to mine than theirs: I didn’t believe there was anything they could say that I hadn’t already thought of.   I had already dismissed the possibility that they could have a different but equally valuable perspective.  And that’s a difficult thing to write, because again, it’s not a trait I recognise in myself as a teacher.  I needed to take back some control, and of course it would be foolish to deny theirs an element of pride and self-protection here: please, let me say it first;  I know, I know.

I sat with that for a couple of weeks, hoping no one would ask how my surveys were going, and then came across this fascinating article on Twitter which just resonated so powerfully: “Why Admitting You’re Wrong Should be the New Right.”  Henry Wismayer explores the political consequences of our “wrong-phobia”:

“A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything,” writes Kathryn Schulz in her 2010 book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, “about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.”

Now I might be a narcissist and a wimp, but I also know that I am far from omniscient.  And I knew, as soon as I saw this article, that here was an opportunity to model something much more interesting and powerful for my students.

So before our next class, I put on my Big Girl Pants, and sat down with another article which I’ve often used with students, on four different types of mistakes.  And, as I’ve asked of them, I noted my ‘sloppy’ mistakes (I’m always late to class when I’ve had an activity at lunchtime; I’m bad at posting tasks on the OLP), and my ‘aha’ moments (I should have made them a part of the discussion about feedback, instead of fearing what they might say).  As for students, the most useful part for me was to consider the ‘stretch mistakes’: things I’m still working at, and don’t have the answers to yet.  For me this is feedback (still), mastering the concepts on the language side of the course, and building relationships with individual students in what is a fairly large IB class.

More than that, I was open with them about why I had taken down the link, and the thinking this had prompted.  As behavioural psychology tells us, even showing that kind of vulnerability, articulating that to them, I sensed shifted something in the dynamic almost immediately.

So then, finally, I asked them to complete the survey.  Armed with my assessment of myself, they were able to give me targetted, thoughtful feedback and suggestions for meeting my goals.  Out the other side of my confidence-wobble, I was ready to take onboard their feedback and know I could learn from it.  I could zoom in on the most useful things, not just the negative.  Having taken time to honestly reflect, I felt ownership over the process.  And (of course) they told me some things I hadn’t thought of, and need to consider.

I’m looking forward now to modelling with them how I use the feedback to refine my goals, and use deliberate practice and reflection to work towards them.