Feedback- Part 1 - "I've Got You"

In all of John Almarode's presentations, he talks about feedback.  No matter what else he has talked about, he says, "All of this is meaningless without feedback."  He also makes the points that feedback is about helping a student to improve.  In his Almarodian way (I'm coining that right now), he says, "Feedback should not be, 'I've Gotcha.'  It should be 'I've got you.'"

Each year, I spend a ton of time giving feedback to my 8th-grade students, and I try hard to keep this idea in mind (not that I ever had a gotcha mentality before, but I am trying harder to be really intentional about keeping feedback focused on making the product better).  The opportunity to practice this most comes from the NASA paper that I've written about before. (Actually, when I wrote about it before, it was the Mars Paper.  Sometime, I should write about that change.  Keep an eye out.)

Here's the gist of the assignment.  Students are told to inhabit the role of a NASA administrator and determine the top three priorities that NASA should invest in.  They are given time to explore the NASA website to see what they are already doing, and our media specialist comes into the classroom twice, to talk about good research and to talk about proper citations. 

The first thing that was due was their thesis.  Now, remember, they are in 8th grade, so I am not expecting super-sophisticated and nuanced writing.  I'm fine with it if they want to fill in a sort of formulaic "NASA should invest in ________, ___________, and __________."  I had them send them to me in email so that feedback could be returned as quickly as possible. 

The majority of the feedback fell into three categories:
- not reading the instructions
- choosing a priority that is impossible to support (using black holes as garbage dumps)
- missing the point of the assignment

How I give feedback is determined by the error itself.  A student who has not read the instructions is going to get different feedback than the student who is just misunderstanding them.  

- Quote the instructions - Those who have not followed the instructions will get a reply that quotes the rubric and refers them back to it.  I word it politely, but it usually says something like, "Remember, you were asked to . . . "

- Ask them to think closer to the box - Don't get me wrong; I like creative thinking.  There are, however, ideas that are too out there to find support.  Their feedback usually sounds something like, "Points one and three are fine.  Do you think you will find an expert who says the same thing you are saying to support point two?  If not, you might want to choose something more doable."  

- Giving my own example - I struggle with this one because I have found that students just put what I said, and I don't want to do their thinking for them.  

Feedback takes time, but it is time well invested.  This year, I got better papers on the whole than I have gotten in most years.  I wish it were possible to give thorough feedback on every assignment.  It isn't.  The complexities of the pandemic have made strong feedback more difficult (more on that next week).  It requires a lot of work in a time when we are exhausted.  But it matters.  It matters more than the grade because it builds your relationship with the students.  Start increasing it on the big things as you can, and keep in mind that you are communicated "I've got you."

The Pandemic and the Arts

Yesterday, I got to do something I haven't done since February 2020.  I got to sit in an auditorium and watch a live production.  While the audience was masked and the actors were wearing face shields, it was the closest thing to normal I have seen in quite some time.  

Like all sectors of business, the fine-arts world has been hit hard by the pandemic.  With singing and wind instruments being high-spread risks, choirs have been forced into zoom boxes or stopped altogether; symphonies have been moved online.  Museums have operated with limited capacity, and the lights on Broadway have been darkened for over a year.  

My school had, fortunately, already had its spring play last February.  It was heartbreaking to watch as other schools had to cancel their March and April performances.  It was hard for all involved.  While the focus was on seniors, there were also those who were going to participate in their first play and teachers who had worked hard to train their students, only to have the culmination of that training called off.  When the school year began in the fall, every school was in a different situation.  Some were fully virtual, and plans were made for virtual plays.  Some were in hybrid situations.  Our fall play involved some kids on stage and a few projected on a screen as they participated from home.  There was no live audience; it was streamed online (which involved jumping through legal hoops with the distribution companies).  

During this time, I have watched four virtual productions from Fellowship for the Performing Arts.  This is a great organization that deserves your support, but some of them were better virtually than others.  The Easter Passion was harder for me to watch because I found being sung at by people who are used to singing in a theater is a little overwhelming when it was happening inches from my face.  Virtual musicals may not be for me.  They used greenscreen to produce The Great Divorce, but that's a complicated story that was made confusing because five actors played nine parts.  While I appreciated what they were trying to do, it just didn't work as well on screen as it would on stage.  I truly enjoyed Martin Luther on Trial and Shadowlands because the performances of those actors were stunning, but I can't wait to see them live in the future.  Those incredible performances will only be enhanced by the immersive experience of the darkened room and the set and the shared feelings you only have with an audience.

What I experienced in our school chapel yesterday was something that cannot be experienced virtually - shared emotional response.  When something was funny, we laughed together; and the actors responded to that laughter.  That only happens in a live show.  While you might laugh at your laptop while watching a virtual performance alone in your living room, you won't laugh as hard or as long (and the actors won't know you are laughing and react to it) because laughter is social.  I might cry listening to a sad song on my iPod, but it is not the same experience as an audience being moved to tears by a powerful concert performance.  The feeling that comes from a large group of people being silenced by awe is unlike any feeling I may experience on my own.  

In ancient times, the arts were created for the purpose of social bonding in the village, sharing culture, passing down oral history, and expressing and receiving emotion.  It is still meant for all of those things.  If you can, donate to your local theater, visit a museum in a socially distanced way, support your school's arts programs in some way to keep them going during these times.  Do that for them.  When the pandemic is over, go to a choral performance, a ballet, a musical, a play, or a concert.  Do that for yourself and your sense of community.  

Vitamin D

This week's blog post is going to be a short one.  

Go outside.  Wear short sleeves.  You need vitamin D.

One of the casualties of the lockdowns was our vitamin D levels.  We were already a bit low as it was March, so the weather hadn't warmed up enough for us to be out much yet unless we played baseball or ran track.  We've been inside a lot since then, and unless you have been supplementing, you are quite low on this very important vitamin.

Vitamin D is easily in the top three most important molecules in your body.  It influences calcium absorption, mood, heart rhythm, and muscle strength.  Your skin synthesizes it when exposed to ultraviolet light VERY efficiently.  If you go outside in "minimal clothing," you produce 10000IUs of vitamin D in half an hour!  

So, put your phone or computer down and go walk around your neighborhood.  You'll be a better teacher next week if you do.

Choose This Good or That Good

In the West Wing Episode "Ten Word Answers," President Bartlett talks about the complexity of his job by saying, "Every once in a while, there’s a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong. But those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren’t very many un-nuanced moments in leading a country that’s way too big for ten words. " It's a great moment in the show and turns the debate in his favor.  It has stuck with me because education is also a very nuanced profession with few choices that are definitely right or wrong.  I'm not saying there aren't any, but in spite of all the arguments taking place on Edu-Twitter, they are few and far between.  

We have been conditioned to believe that every time we make a choice, one is right and is wrong.  We think we are choosing between good and bad.  Sometimes we choose between good and better.  Sometimes we choose between bad and worse.  Sometimes we choose between this good and that good.

Most of the time, we are making choices based on a lot of nuances, from things as important as our educational philosophy to things as mundane as calendar restrictions.  Dozens of considerations, from available resources, budget, academic values, technological proficiency of both teacher and students, age level of students, district testing restrictions, and even the layout of your building can play a role in how you teach a particular topic.  One of my team members has taught her course differently every year, not because she was wrong the first year, but because she felt the needs of her students were different the following year.  As I have written about before, my Global Solutions project looks nothing like the electricity it started out being.  It wasn't wrong the first year, but as my goals and objectives changed, the project changed with it.  When making decisions, the questions to ask yourself are about your goals and values.  Within that, figure out the best way to fit things into your context without worrying that you are making a wrong choice.  Realize you are choosing between this good or that good.

In my physics class, we learn to calculate sliding friction.  There are different approaches to this, from purely conceptual to purely mathematical, and a wide variety in between.  I could purchase equipment to measure force and acceleration, collect data, and have students write formal lab reports in which they draw graphs, calculate coefficients of friction, and analyze the difference between their result and the accepted number.  That has strong academic value and is a perfectly good way to teach calculating friction, but it is not what I do.  

I put out a Jenga game for each pair of students.  As they play, I say things to them about how friction is affecting each move.  I tell them about an interview I heard with Jenga's creator in which she talked about the difficulties of making it; the blocks cannot be identical or there will be too much friction, restricting the movement of pieces; but if they are too different, they won't make a stack.  After they play, we talk about the cause of friction and think of as many examples of everyday things that require friction as we can.  You cannot walk, drive, type on a computer, swallow food, turn a doorknob, swipe a touch screen, or write in any way without friction.  It is after I have gotten through to them just how important friction is that I show them how to do the math.  

Is the way I do it right while the other way is wrong?  No.  Those are both correct ways to approach teaching friction.  Why have I made the choice I have?  It is because I value students seeing scientific concepts in daily life.  I want them to think about friction the next time they play Jenga.  I want it to strike them occasionally as they write with a pencil that what is happening is friction pulling graphite layers off the surface.  I've never been one to view education a job training but as a way of being more connected to the world, so I always take that approach if I can.  I spend little money on equipment from science supply companies.  I buy most of what we use from the grocery store because that is in line with my desire for them to see science as an everyday feature of their lives.  This would, of course, be different if I were teaching a college course to engineers because my value then would necessarily be on their ability to design and build an efficient product.  In middle and high school, I choose the good seeing it everywhere.  In an AP class, I might choose the good of lab reporting.  If I taught engineers, I would probably choose the good of career preparation.  None of these are choices between right and wrong; they are choices between different types of good.

When you make a choice in your class, don't fear making a choice that is wrong or bad.  Figure out what good you are aiming for, and make choices that fit that good.