Feedback: Taking it to Heart

Feedback. It's a topic about which I have written quite a bit, especially in the realm of its integral role with student learning. However earlier this week, I got to experience the role that feedback should have upon the instruction provided to the learners. I know that all of us have dutifully completed surveys at the end of a day of professional learning only to see that no changes are made to subsequent events. As a participant, it implies that your voice isn't important; others know better than you. You become a victim to what others want for you rather than having that control over the learning process.

I can honestly say that my experience with the Network to Transform Teaching Hub team was the complete opposite. Never in my experience, have I observed a group of organizers take the feedback left at the end of one day, to immediately turn around and spend hours making alterations and adjustments to the following day's agenda based on what the learners needed or wanted from the experience. I want to point out that all the participants received an agenda (a plan) that I can only imagine took days to create in advance of the learning session. Yet, the Hub team valued what everyone said and were willing to make adaptations to meet our needs.

For me, this served as a perfect model for how accomplished teachers would approach their classrooms. We all collect information and data from our students, but the real question is what do we actually do with it? Do we listen to what our students are actually saying and make changes to our plans based on what we hear? Are we valuing what our students need, what they want out of their learning experiences?

For several years, I have asked my students to provide me feedback on our classroom throughout the school year: What went well? What didn't go well? What goals do you have? What changes can we make to better support your learning? As the recipient of that feedback, you have to be willing to hear some things that may be very hard to hear. I've had some learners provide feedback that has brought me to tears, but when I honestly looked at the choices that I made, I could see the disparity between what I thought I was doing to support learning and what the student perceived.  Even though we may spend hours planning to meet the needs of our diverse learners, the truth is we don't know how our intentions translate to each one of them unless we take the time to ask, truly listen, and put their ideas into action. Because the reality is that this learning is about them, not us. They deserve the best learning opportunities possible. We just have to provide the tools, guidance and pathways to get them where they want to go.

Want to read more about feedback in our classroom?

• From Numbers to Meaningful Feedback 
• Where Do We Go from Here? Tools for Providing Timely, Personalized Feedback

Learning is Hard

This week, I have been immersed in a four day learning session. While the work is extremely valuable and exciting for student learning, it is completely out of my day-to-day realm. I possess very little foundation in this type of work (in spite of completing my homework in advance). As I reflected at the end of the day yesterday, I realized that much of what I was experiencing can be very similar to what some of our students may experience within our classrooms everyday. As someone who strives to learn and grow every single day, it was an eye-opening experience to sit in this role.

This lead me to question the choices I make with and for my students. Am I providing them the supports that they need to make sense of the content with which we are working? Do I give them some context upon which to hang new ideas and then the time to process and discuss these ideas? Am I stopping throughout the learning process to check for understanding or am I trudging forward full speed ahead oblivious to the fact that a student is sitting there completely lost and frustrated?

Furthermore, what are my students experiencing? Are they so overwhelmed that they complete shut down? Do they feel like they are the only one in the room who doesn't get it? Are we giving them an opportunity to vent their frustration? (Thank you, Emma) Are they getting the encouragement and one-on-one support that they need to keep moving forward instead of completely giving up? (Again, thank you, Emma)

Learning is hard. Sometimes it's scary. As the lead learner in our classroom it our obligation to look out for every single student put into our charge. Sometimes it's important to put ourselves into their shoes and feel how overwhelming, messy, and ultimately, exhilarating learning can be.

What do you value?

This past weekend was the University of Montevallo's annual homecoming, College Night.  For College Night, students break into two teams, gold and purple. Each side spends three to four weeks writing and producing an original musical. Everything is done by students: costuming, musical compositions, choreography, set design/building, lighting. The two sides perform, amidst each side's chanting and cheering and it's scored by a panel of judges. A tradition like none other in the United States, it began in 1919 and is a considered a local legacy by the Library of Congress.

As we were ensconced with all the different College Night celebrations, it occurred to me that many of the attributes that we value in our classroom are also valued at Montevallo: creativity, collaboration, community, voice, hard work and acceptance.

It's obvious, to even a casual observer, that the University of Montevallo values those traits. As a teacher I couldn't help but wonder how we demonstrate what we value within our classrooms? What does a casual observer see when he/she walks into our learning space? Are students sitting in quiet rows working on test-prep? Are learners sitting all over the space, collaborating in face-to-face and digital formats? Are they building and making things? Are they applying their learning in meaningful ways? Is everything focused towards a score on a standardized test, or are students pushed to demonstrate mastery on authentic problems? Where we invest our time and energy shows what we value.

I think whether we make conscious decisions or not, what we value as an educator can be seen with our students in our learning spaces. Sometimes, we need to take a look in as an outsider to see if what we value is truly what is being manifested in our classrooms. If someone who didn't know you came into your classroom, what would they see?

Let's take these ideas and build the best learning experiences possible for our students.

Being Present and Making Moments

At the beginning of a new calendar year, there is much discussion about goals and resolutions. Although my students composed a an email on futureme.org outlining their plan for the second semester, we set goals in our classroom just about every day regardless of what the date on the calendar reads. Each day is fresh with new ideas, new possibilities, new opportunities. Each day, we are a little different and therefore our path may need to be altered.

Yet, as my students were discussing and writing an email to their future selves, I began to think about what changes I wanted to make, personally and professionally. With the integration of digital tools into our every day lives, we have opportunities to connect and collaborate with people globally. I know I am a much better teacher, a much better person, because of these regular connections through social media. However, as a result, like many of my students and friends, I realize that we often disconnect with those around us in the three-dimensional world to catch up with those in our digital world. Have you ever looked around restaurants? It is very common to see a group of people (of all ages) dining together, but not conversing because they are each on devices.  This happens in professional settings too. 

As I reflected on this, a thought crystallized. We only have limited amounts of time with our students, with our family, with our friends. Once a moment is gone, it will never return. We need to clear time and mental space to truly be present in each of our moments with others. 

For me, I realized that my mind was too cluttered to be able to enjoy moments giggling with my nieces or planning an amazing simulation for my students. I had to clear things off of my plate and out of my mind. That meant saying "no" to truly worthwhile opportunities. It meant removing devices from some of my activities. I have to have space to be creative and breathe so that I can be the best teacher for my students and the best version of me for my family and friends.

Teaching is not about content, it's about students. Life isn't about a checklist, it's about the people that we surround ourselves with and the choices we make. So whether we are conferring with a student on writing, facilitating an improv activity with our class, meeting with a parent to design a path to lead to a student's greatest success, hiking with friends, cooking dinner for loved ones, or binge watching TV in your PJs with your family, let's all strive to make moments. Be present...because that's the greatest gift we can give another person.

Fairy Wings, Time Portals, and Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Like many classroom teachers, I will do whatever is in my power to provide my students with the level of support and challenge that they need to meet their goals. I strive to put the fun into every day. There is plenty of research that supports that fun is a legitimate, pedagogical choice in teaching a person something new. It removes fear from trying something new, produces dopamine and endorphins in the brain causing conenctions, and opens the gateways of moving new ideas into cognition. Recently, I have been in a search for new ways to bring fun into my classroom. I say new, but what I discovered in my search was something that I did as a new teacher; somewhere along the way, it dropped out of my practice. What was that? you may ask. That was the joy of bringing "guests" into my classroom...guest as in me dressed up in a costume and interacting with my students from a different perspective.

This idea occurred to me as I faced the grand task of teaching A Christmas Carol to my sixth grade students. I have been very fortunate to collaboratively plan with my ELA colleagues this year. They had done a unit centered around A Christmas Carol in past that had been extremely successful in helping students master multiple standards. I immediately began to question my ability to not only effectively use the text to provide modeling of literacy standards but also and adeptly scaffold their learning within this complicated text. Furthermore, I was keenly aware that this would be their first experience with classic literature. I want my students to LOVE literature as much as I do and I didn't want build up negative opinions about these texts years before they would tackle them in the future.

While I was racking my brain, an idea crystallized. Wouldn't it be cool if kids could travel through time to see how different life was during the 1840s and 1850s in England and how that directly impacts the writing of that time? Since I found myself lacking a working TARDIS of my own, I decided to bring history to them. I decorated our classroom like Victorian Christmas time and came to school as "Clara Bennett" from 1852 England. I dressed like her, spoke like her, and created a deep history that wove together Victorian life in England and the United States (which included their 6th grade history content; fortunately, Dickens did a tour in the US which lent itself perfectly to my story).

When student arrived, they travelled through our "time portal" and then we began our conversation. Now I knew this would be fun for them, and I expected it to last for about 20 minutes of class. What I didn't expect was how engrossed in it my 6th graders would become. They asked endless questions. They had to learn to accurately describe and explain things during their time (microwaves, cell phones, televisions, video games, etc.) to someone with no background knowledge. This honed their communication skills better than any activity that I could have designed and they were totally hooked on Victorian England. 

The next day, when class began they told me about my ancestor (their conclusion), Clara Bennett, and in detail about the life of Charles Dickens and Victorian life in England and America. When I asked if they wanted to read some of Charles Dickens' work, the answer was a resounding yes.

I had forgotten the impact that a costume could have upon students. Since then I have dressed up as "Faire E. Wiing" a travel consultant who connects students with a personalized travel adventure in the Fairy Tale realm. I've taken on the persona of the Mad Hatter when students shared their narrative writing projects. Each time, the students treat our learning as something special, out of the ordinary. For them it's a time to sit up, take notice because something special is going on that they don't want to miss. And true to that brain research, my students gain a deeper understanding of whatever content we are discussing and adroitly apply it to future learning.

Last week, we had several guests come to our classroom and I overheard one student tell one of our visitors, "You better keep your eyes open and be ready in Ramsayland because you never know who is going to show up to take us on an adventure." With that endorsement, I know I need to continue to look for other ways to purposefully bring the fun to their learning. I realized that as educators, we need to be willing to fall down that rabbit hole and embrace whatever method we find in meeting the needs of our learners. 

photo credit: Time & Money via photopin (license)

Our Heart to Heart Talk...It's About Time

As mentioned in 6 Lessons Confirmed (& Learned) from My Students, my students wrote letters to the rising 6th graders. The letters, though full of sound advice, humor, and their unique voices, included recommendations that seemed dissonant to the classroom learning environment that we had created. My learners recommended things like "complete your homework on time, don't talk during class, and study for tests to get good grades." 

The day after I wrote that post, we sat in a large circle (in each of my classes) and I explained to them my desire to be the best teacher possible for all of my students. I continued by asking them to give me honest feedback to the questions that I still had. I talked a lot about perceptions and how many times we can think we are doing one thing when in reality we are doing something different. Students chimed in with their understanding of those types of experiences. 

I knew that they all understood the power of honest feedback because we had been engaged in that type of learning environment for the entire year. I also knew that I needed to be open to listening and accepting whatever they shared with me. To be honest, I was a bit nervous because my students' insights are the ones that I value most. We have spent a year learning together. They know sound educational practice. They regularly cut through "fluff" to get to the heart of a matter. They know how to analyze and question. Now, I'm asking them to turn all of that to answer a few of my questions about our learning environment and my teaching practice.

As we talked they were brutally honest, but kind. I learned that much of what they had written as advice was not about our specific class, but about the overall grade level. They shared what they loved about our class: having freedom and a voice in their learning, small group instruction to support/challenge each student where he/she needed, assessments they always felt prepared for and never surprised by content, the ability to share their thoughts and ideas with others. 

Then they shared what they didn't love: "Mrs. Ramsay, since we spiral within our standards and gradually get harder as we work towards mastery, why do we have to move so quickly? They are just going to come around again, aren't they?" That is not only truth, but it's supported by educational research and brain research. (Yes, I believe in sharing the strategy, rationale, and research as to the "why" of what we do in the class each day.) Personally, I had felt like we were moving slower this year than in previous years. Of course, this had been their only year with me. They had nothing with which to compare the pace of our lessons. Looking through their eyes reminded me that we did need let them have time to marinate on ideas, delve deeper into topics, and spend time just reading and writing for the enjoyment of it.

Another student voiced his desire to spend more time in small group. As I was trying to figure out what he meant as a majority of the students' time is spent in small group, he clarified that he wanted to have more small group time with me. He went on to explain how the time we spent working together face-to-face on his reading and writing was what helped him become a stronger student.  Honestly, this one cut right to my heart. This student was in the one class that I only had for 50 minutes (on a good day) instead of the almost two hours I had with my other groups of students. I always felt rushed to "get in" as much as I could within that time period while still individualizing the instruction for all 30 of them (my largest class). One practice that I had was for me to move to each group to work with them wherever they were instead of conducting small group lessons at our table; I would do this two to three times a week while doing small group/one-on-one conferring the other days. It seemed faster...Faster? Did I really think that? Since when is "faster" a sound educational practice? Never!

It's funny that I went into this conversation with one set of questions and left with something so much more valuable. I learned that my students have the ability to provide deep, meaningful feedback. They were honest without being unkind. They justified their answers with evidence, support, and their experiences. Most importantly, I saw how amazing they would be as advocates for themselves and their peers. These kids totally blew me away with how they conducted themselves throughout this conversation. They are awesome....and I'm going to miss them.

And me...what did I learn? I learned that we all need a reminder from time to time about sound educational practice. I had taught them about how the brain works in regards to learning. I had modeled and explained why we used certain practices and strategies. Yet, somewhere along the year, I had felt that end of the year push to cover everything and I lost sight of the most important thing of all...the time my students needed to learn. Time that we all needed. Time that I'm dedicated to providing each student in the years to come.

photo credit: Βethan via photopin cc

Lead with the Learning

In the last month, I have met with legislators and policy makers in both D.C. and Montgomery, Alabama. I have spent much time in reflection on what we as educators can do to make a difference for our students (See Can One Person Make a Difference?) In all the (mostly) ups and (rather few) downs, I have emerged with one thought that was shared by State Superintendent, Dr. Tommy Bice: Always lead with the learning. He shared this in the context of speaking with non-educators, policy makers, and legislators, but I believe that this phrase has much greater ramifications on the mission and vision of an educator.

As educators, all decisions that we make must always be focused on positively impacting student learning whether we are discussing instructional practice, professional development, or logistical planning within a school or district. Everything needs to be focused on student learning.

It is human nature to become creatures of habit. We find a lesson, strategy, or management technique that works and we tend to stick with it for years even when it proves unproductive. Many times we want to make a square peg into an ever-shrinking round whole. What we really need to do is pause and evaluate if that practice is not only effective, but also supports students in their academic and personal goals. Are we leading with the learning?

My intern (who has been doing a fantastic job) often asked me how to adjust her management techniques to support certain students. I asked her to explain her rationale behind the choices she had been making. Once she reflected on it, she realized that she was simply imitating something she had observed rather than thinking about how her choices would impact student learning. I recommended she speak with the students to see what they suggested. What she discovered was that students knew what would help hold them accountable for making good choices and getting the most learning out of each of the opportunities that she provided. She began leading with the learning.

In our PLG meetings, are we making choices about our practice based on what's easiest for us or best for student learning? Taking the time to plan hands-on, cross-curricular activities or experiential learning experiences off campus or supporting student-created and driven learning activities all take time, planning, and resources. But, are we making decisions based on the learning or some less important factors. We must always lead with the learning at the forefront of all decision making processes.

In my aforementioned post, I wondered if I was accurately teaching my students that one voice can make a difference. To the best of my abilities, I try to lead by example. Following Dr. Bice's advice, I try to always lead with the learning when speaking with our policy makers and legislators. This week, I was fortunate to see a how leading with the learning intrigued legislators we spoke with last year. Several of these legislators had spent time seeking out the National Board Certified Teachers in their districts. They spoke with these teachers and visited their classrooms. They were able to see how accomplished teachers lead with the learning and the positive impact it truly has on each individual student's learning. These legislators have embraced the powerful learning that is possible and they have been actively seeking new ways to support it within their districts.

Lead with the learning is a mantra that educators can embrace in all aspects of their professions; one that can greatly impact not only the students directly in one's classroom, but have far reaching ramifications. So next time we each have a choice to make, whether big or small, let's take a moment to ask ourselves, are we leading with learning? If not, maybe it's time to stop forcing that square peg to fit that round hole and step out of our comfort zones and try something new.


photo credit: paul bica via photopin cc