Student Feedback is Pricelss

I have spent my summer mornings on Mondays through Thursdays teaching 2 8th grade math recovery courses to students that will be retained without successful completion. I have had the pleasure to connect with many 8th graders that were not students on my academic team during the
school year (I only have 2 previous students on my rosters). I desire to see these students taste success during these 21 days. I hope that they will gain confidence and a sense of self-efficacy that can transfer to the high school with them in August.

In addition to building relationships with new students, I have had the pleasure to meet an aspiring math teacher. He is coming from a career in Physics, and he was in my school with a group of aspiring educators from the University of Delaware. My AP and Lead Teacher placed him in my class to observe. After class, I was eager to have a conversation with him about his goal of becoming a teacher. He informed me that he intends to make a difference in the lives of children. He is actively searching for a school district to offer him a teaching opportunity as he is entering the Alternate Routes to Certification (ARTC) program through the University of Delaware. I am a strong proponent of this program because this program along with the Appoquinimink School District afforded me the chance, or opportunity, to pursue my passion after leaving a career in Financial Services.

I offered him tons of advice during my short time with him. I recognized in him some of the same zeal and passion for reaching kids that I possessed at that stage of my journey (That passion and zeal still exists). As I reminisced about the struggles and disappointments I experienced at the beginning stages, I was compelled even more to assist this aspiring educator. We arranged for him to teach a 15-20 minute segment of the following Wednesday’s lesson in the summer school curriculum.

As an aspiring administrator, this gave me a chance to observe instruction and give feedback to this aspiring educator. Well, that was my intention. Before he began instruction, he explained the instructional goal of his “mini lesson” to the students. I wrote down notes as he facilitated the learning process during this 15-20 minute segment. My plan was to give him feedback after the students were dismissed for the day, but to my surprise, I didn’t have the opportunity. When the aspiring educator was finished with his portion of the lesson, he requested feedback from the students. I was blown away with the useful feedback displayed by the students. Their responses reminded me of portions of an article I read not long ago, Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. This article gave the following as traits of feedback that lead to helping the individual receiving the feedback:

• Goal-referenced
• Tangible & transparent
• Actionable
• User-friendly
• Timely
• Ongoing
• Consistent

To avoid an extremely lengthy post, I will summarize the feedback given by the students. Each student (this class only has 7) explained to the aspiring educator what strategies used during the mini lesson helped them master the goal of his “mini lesson” and which ones didn’t. They supported this with evidence. They even went further to add that if he continues to do “x, y, & z,” and if he changes “x,y, & z,” kids will love being in his class. The aspiring educator acknowledged that he will utilize the student feedback when he designs next’s week’s lesson, which will be 30 minutes long, and an advisor will visit to observe his instruction.

It was great to see this gentleman ask for immediate feedback. As educators, we love instant feedback so that we can adjust our practices in order to increase student achievement. The students in my class offered feedback that was goal-referenced, tangible and transparent, actionable, and user friendly. This experience lead me to thinking about the following question:

• Am I effective enough at giving students feedback that consists of these seven keys when they are trying to master certain mathematical concepts?

I give tons of verbal feedback to students over the course of a 45 minute class period, but the area where I will plan to spend a lot of time is ensuring that the feedback is “actionable.” These students reaffirmed many things that I have been reading and studying on for the past several weeks. All kinds of magic took place in this classroom on this particular Wednesday. Sometimes all it takes looking through the lense of children.

“Children see Magic because they look for it.” Christopher Moore