Feedback That Empowers: Turning Reflection Into Growth

Erin Stanley:
Talk to me a little bit about your strategy behind providing feedback. I know sometimes that can be tough to not just fall into saying the same phrases over and over, making it really meaningful and also providing feedback that’s not going to put new teachers on the defensive or that they’ll be open to it. What kind of strategies do you use?

Ann Stark:
So I always want to make sure that I start with something positive for sure. And then if we have the recording, I’ll have the teacher watch it ahead of time and then I’ll say, how do you feel the lesson went? Tell me some of the positives that you found come out of the lesson. What are some things you’re feeling confident on? And then tell me some areas where you feel like more growth is needed or you’d like to talk through something you felt maybe was a little rocky. And we can look at that portion of the video together and kind of come up with some strategies. So having the data, using the data as my opening points is really helpful. And then it leads into mentoring conversations where sometimes hard conversations may need to be had, but usually if I have the video, they’re the one that will bring up, oh, that didn’t really go how I pictured it.
I didn’t notice that happening. And so then it’s there. There’s no denying what’s on the video. And so it really was game changing because it did make things feel a little less evaluatory because they’re the ones that brought it up instead of the mentor bringing it up. And then we can talk it through, well, why do you think that happened and how can we address that? Let’s talk about some strategies that we can try for next time that might help. And then if we do another observation and observed the lesson, the growth is right there. Look how much better they responded this time when you approached it from this way. So it’s very beneficial for a teacher to watch themselves teach.