The Big History team was STOKED to work with Rachel Dzombak
on teaming strategies with our freshmen for their first group project: The Big
Bang Infographic. But this week Joanie, Gaeby, and I had to make the hard
decision NOT to share the feedback that our freshman gave to each other after reading
what our students wrote about one another.   

We learned something major: Students have to learn HOW to give feedback before we can let them do
that candidly and anonymously with their peers.

 Much of the feedback was either not clear (i.e. “try to be
more helpful”), not charitable (i.e. “try not to need to control everything”),
or completely unhelpful and un-actionable (i.e. “try not to be sick next time”)
and it dawned on me that in order for feedback to be helpful students need to
know how to give feedback. Students are so used to RECEIVING feedback, so how
do we teach them to GIVE honest and constructive feedback??

 As teachers we think about the feedback we give to students,
how they will take it, how much they have
grown, what their tolerance level is for critique, etc. so I think that it was
a false assumption on our part that this is a skill that every 14 year old has
(no duh!). While we are eager to continue to work with our teaming people from
Cal we also realized that these surveys are designed for college aged young
adults to take – not young adolescence.

It was a hard decision not to give our girls the raw
feedback from Rachel; she put in a lot of time into compiling a lot of data and
we do think that students need to be aware about how their work ethic is
perceived by others, but it also has to be done in a way that is not
demoralizing and continues to support the growth mindset that we are all on
board with promoting.

Of course Rachel totally got this. Our next steps are two
fold;

·     
Today we will talk to our girls about giving
honest, clear, relevant, and constructive feedback to their sisters – with the
intention that even in our critiques of one another we are ALL trying to lift each
other up and help each girl become the best version of herself.

·     
We are going back to the drawing board with
Rachel – we will try this again but we will probably need to tweak the surveying
method a bit.

Here is a helpful article I found last night just trying to
look for solutions to giving feedback. It is from the Cult of Pedagogy and is
called “Moving From Feedback to Feedforward.”

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/feedforward/