8 Stories about feedback
In response to a previous post of mine, “Stories about aims on the board,” a friend brought the LOLs when she suggested I state the aims at the start of my post. I thought about doing so for this post but no “by the end of this post, readers will be able to” came to mind. I suppose my personal goal is simply for me to share the stories, which might, in turn, help readers sharpen their thinking on this topic. Or not. It was fun for me to think about these stories and how the have impacted my thoughts on getting and responding to feedback from students. In any case, I hope you enjoy the stories.
(I do apologize because I think some of these stories have been mentioned already on this blog or in various places around Asia)
- In a previous job the end of term evaluations were really a big deal. As much of a big deal as Ron Burgundy. These evaluations were among the primary determiners of teachers being able to stay employed at this particular institution. One term, I decided I would be sure to get a perfect score in the only question on the survey that was not subjective or based on the opinion of the students. Or so I thought. Question 5 dealt with the teacher being on time for the lessons and I endeavored to be in the classroom 5 minutes early and ready to start exactly on time. However, my score on Question 5 was not perfect. This results of my experiment were not exactly surprising to me or my peers but they were very interesting. It became even more interesting when a colleague who was, shall we say, not so concerned about starting on time got a higher average score on this question than I did. Very interesting indeed.
- Another classic feedback story for me in that particular institution was when I got nearly perfect scores (on every question) from one group. I knew that I hadn’t done my best and I was not very happy with my teaching or my attitude with this particular group. To my mind I deserved the poor scores which I felt certain I would get. I was shocked when I saw the very high numbers from this group because I felt I had failed them and myself. After I got over my surprise and tried to figure out what had happened, the most reasonable explanation for the high scores was that one student in the group, the oldest and most influential student, was in my class the previous term and we had a very good relationship. I remain convinced to this day that he persuaded his classmates to give me high scores. This was based on my relationship with him and my good work the previous term but not what I did with that particular group. What a strange way to evaluate teachers.
- I once killed a man with my disclosure about not reading end of term official feedback.
- In my first few months as a teacher trainer I was faced with a predicament. My colleague was a new trainer too, and he was also new to Korea and there was a learning curve about Korea and the teaching and learning environment and everything else. To make matters worse before we started the job we were told there would be a curriculum for us to follow. There was no such thing so we were pretty much making things up as we went along. The course was supposed to focus on a mix of English and Teaching skills and knowledge. My colleague decided to do a strand on pronunciation, which included learning the IPA including sounds that were particularly challenging for Korean students (and as it turned out Korean English teachers). There were some complaints about this strand. The complaints went to me and my colleague but mostly to the training center admin. We had a meeting with the director and she encouraged (read: demanded) him to stop the strand. I didn’t think it was proper to change in the middle based on “hallway feedback” from just a few participants. Regretfully, I was not assertive or convincing enough and he acquiesced to the encouragement.** When we got the final feedback for the course (which humility almost prevents me from mentioning won a national award) the most frequent feedback was that we should have kept going with the pronunciation strand. Most noteworthy for me was a comment that went something like, “I didn’t even really like the pronunciation thing but I think you should have kept going. You are the trainers and if you decided it was needed then we should have respected your thinking and gone along with it. I was very disappointed we didn’t complete this strand.” Although it was not an ideal situation I felt like it was a very valuable learning experience in many ways.
- At the same training center six months later the training center director grabbed my arm in the hallway and said that there had been complaint about something or other. I asked her how many complaints had been received. She said 3 (of 33). I said with a smile, “Great, only 3 of 33! We need to keep on doing exactly what we are doing. We are collecting feedback weekly and hopefully these issues will come up at that time. Thank you very much for the concern. I think we can surely handle this as a group. Thanks!”
- In that same course my colleague and I collected feedback using different colored papers and we were very impressed with the level of detail the participants gave. I think this was based on the fact we had done it before and that participants knew we valued the feedback and were very willing to consider what they had written and possibly make changes. I also think our feedback on previous feedback was useful in helping participants see what sort of feedback was useful for us. I didn’t necessarily agree with all the feedback we received but it gave me a glimpse into the minds of the participants. It might be pure speculation at this point (quite a few years later) but during the course there were some questions about certain projects we asked participants to work on. Spending 20-30 minutes on the theoretical background for what we were doing (and helping participants see that TBL wasn’t something we just made up) seemed to dramatically increase buy in. I was very pleased we got the feedback relating to their confusion and was very happy to have the chance to address it before it was too late.
- On that very same training course the most common comment in the end of course feedback was about how impressive it was for the trainers to sit down and calmly discuss the feedback we had received and to make changes based on it but to also explain why we weren’t making changes and to share new ideas for participants to get the most out of the course. I think one example was about participants wanting us to correct their journals for grammar mistakes. This was very far from our intention with that component of the course and we said we wouldn’t do that. We did say that we’d be happy to correct 10 sentences a week from each participant on sentences they weren’t sure about. From reading the comments at the end of the course I got the impression the participants were happy to be heard and happy to have their requests dealt with in such a way. This fits in very well with my idea of such feedback as a starting point for a conversation. Some of the teachers remarked that they’d love to create such channels of communication with their students.**
- In my current place of employment they ask me if there are any students I’d like to prevent from completing the end the term official feedback. I can’t prevent any student, just the ones that didn’t come to class enough. I was fascinated by this question the first time I received it. I think I have actually only “banned” one student from completing the survey (he actually literally never came to class). This policy gave me something to think about but I think in principle I agree that it’s better to get feedback from the students that attend class.
Thanks for reading. I do hope it was mildly entertaining and/or gave you something to think about. These stories are sort of related to my upcoming presentation at JALT, which I mentioned in my most recent post. Any comments or stories welcome.
Extra Notes:
*I have always regretted not being more forceful day and it was a valuable learning experience which has caused me to be a bit more eager to speak up in such situations and a lot more eager to use whatever capital I have developed.
**This was like music to my ears but I realize it is not always easy or comfortable to do so. I think in some places requesting such feedback can be taken for weakness or as the teacher not knowing what she is doing. This is unfortunate but I don’t think it means it’s impossible. The example that always springs to mind is pairwork. There are many places where pairwork is outside of the norm but I think many teachers believe in it and work at it and implement pairwork in their classes. Surely this is not always 100% comfortable for those students unfamiliar with it but teachers push through. Why? And why can’t they when it comes to feedback? Is collecting feedback that much more uncomfortable for the students? Is there another reason at play here? Maybe teachers don’t value feedback or don’t hold the belief that it can be beneficial to them and their students. If that is the case, I can’t really argue with the belief. What I can partially argue with is the cop out that collecting feedback will be uncomfortable and should then be avoided at all costs. Well this note is turning into a mini-rant so I will stop there.
ELT Rants, Reviews, and Reflections 
I’m really enjoying these posts on feedback- lots of things to think about (in the minuscule amount of time I have at the moment!). I’ve never forgotten my first piece of feedback as a teacher. The director called me into her office to tell me that some of the students were complaining that….. I made them speak in English. ‘Rachael, they’re tired after work’, she said, ‘they don’t want to speak English.’
LOL, that is fantastic. Too funny and right to the point of how feedback can be surprising especially when it is based on a different set of beliefs or assumptions. Classic. Thanks very much for the comments. Hope all is well and that there is a light at the end of the busy tunnel. 🙂
Yes, that’s exactly it- when the assumptions are different it completely shifts everything in a way which can be very disorientating. Another feedback which stick in my mind (negative, of course!) was when we had a mock OFSTED at the college where I worked. Prior to this I had been quite unsympathetic about many teachers’ negative attitudes towards being observed. The way I had been trained and the places I’d worked it had always been a positive and useful experience. But not this one. Oh boy. Let’s just say that the observer had very different ideas about how languages are learnt, and that any attempt to discuss these assumptions was treated as resistance to feedback. I guess at least I learnt why all these teachers hated being observed…
Really interesting and I like your compromise with the 10 sentences. Food for thought. 🙂
Thanks Emma, I am so glad you found it interesting. I often think about that situation with us not correcting journals. Luckily one student was honest enough to say he thought it was lazy of us not to be correcting them. This was a very nice chance to clarify our purpose for doing them. 🙂
In 1981 I was sitting at the console in our state of the art “language lab” in ESADE Idiomas, Barcelona. 10 students were in their booths, listening to and repeating the text we had previously practiced in class with slides. This was the audio-visual method in full swing. I listened in to Montse, who was trying to repeat the first line of the text: “Mr Deed is in his office”.
Monste: Mr Deed in .. office ..his.. is
Me: No Montse. Mr Deed is in his office.
Montse: Mr. Deed office ..is..he is .. in.
Me: Repeat with me Montse. Mr Deed
Montse: Mr. Deed.
Me: Mr. Deed is.
Montse: Mr. Deed is.
Me: Mr. Deed is in his office.
Montse: Is office.. Mr. Deed … ¡Mierda!
Me: OK Montse. Let’s try this. in his office
Montse: in his office
Me Mr. Deed is in his office:
Montse In his office Mr. Deed is in. No! no!
Me. OK Montse, just keep trying.
Montse: Thanks everso much Geoff.
I promise, that’s what happened.
Geoff. I tis rare that blog comments bring out laughter, let alone loud laughter but your comments here did this. Twice. That is really funny but also quite telling. Thanks so much for sharing it.