Feedback & Tough Love

"You can fight change, adapt to change, embrace change, create change, or lead change. No matter your choice, change is not going away." - George Couros, Innovate Inside the Box

#InnovateInsideTheBox

I'm currently participating in a book study with Innovate Inside the Box by George Couros and Katie Novak. This book has got my mind going 90 to nothing every time I pick it up. I have all these incredible (okay...maybe they're not INCREDIBLE, but still...) thoughts that make me want to bring this blog back to life. Then life gets in the way, I lose my thoughts, and the blog doesn't get done. I need to make more time for this.

While I was on a flight this past weekend, I read the chapter "Master Learner, Master Educator." It got me thinking about all the feedback I've received during my sixteen years of teaching as well as made me realize that one of my biggest passions as an educator is having the opportunity to spread the joy of life-long learning with others - student AND adult learners! My top 5 strengths include Input, Restorative, Learner, Achiever, and Deliberative. I joke that I'm just a big nerd, but I love to learn new things and pass along what I've learned to those around me. But I digress...

A teacher, who also happens to be a parent to one of my students this year, approached me in the hall today to thank me for being amazing. She went on to say that her son was really enjoying being a part of my class. She couldn't have known how much that quick little piece of feedback meant to me. Of course, not all feedback is quite so easy to receive.

During my reading of the chapter mentioned above, I kept recalling a conversation I had with another colleague (also a parent to one of my students at the time) nearly eight years ago. I went to this teacher with a question not only because I trusted her opinion, but I also thought she'd be on my side with the issue at hand. For several years, I sent home the same multiplication packet (packet...*shudder*) over Thanksgiving break. We were just beginning to learn the concept, and it was meant to help students with their memorization and fluency. My thought process was they'd have a week, and I thought it would be easy. A couple parents complained, so I went to seek this teacher's opinion and was looking for her to support me sending this assignment home. BOY, WAS I WRONG! In the most polite way possible, she let me know she also hated that I was sending the packet home. Her family was planning to go camping over the break, and doing homework was not something she was looking forward to putting on her camping itinerary. If I'm being honest, it was hard to take in that bit of feedback, but it was so necessary for me to hear and learn from! If my memory serves me correctly, I believe I made that packet optional that year. I'm not sure I ever required it to be completed again. (Sidenote: Because my own children were still so young and didn't have their own busy, little lives, I didn't realize just how precious our weekends and week long breaks would be. I've definitely learned the error of my ways now!)

Feedback isn't always easy! Sometimes you seek it out yourself, and other times it just shows up in your inbox. Sometimes it will make you downright angry. Give yourself a minute to be upset, but then ask yourself, "What lesson am I meant to learn from this?" 

No matter how it is received, feedback is necessary for growth as an educator and learner. Looking back over my years in the classroom, I've made a LOT of mistakes. I'll likely make a lot more, but I'm looking forward to every learning experience that crosses my path. This journey just gets better and better.