But What If The Feedback Is...Bad?
Discussing common pitfalls that might make teachers resistant to student feedback
A common theme of many posts and discussions on The Broken Copier is the importance of not just valuing student voice but actively finding ways to center it in the classroom. From this post on “Collecting and Using Student Feedback Throughout the Year” I wrote for Edutopia over the summer to Jim’s system of frequent check-in questions on his digital exit tickets (which I’ve also started now using), I think it is fair to say that we are both 100% aligned on prioritizing student voice.
This is why a response to something I posted on Twitter—and yep, we’re still officially calling it that on here—caught my attention.
I had recently shared some survey questions I used to ask students for feedback on our instructional units so far this year, and this was the incredibly-thoughtful follow-up, shared with permission:
Why I loved this follow-up question? I believe it hits on two main obstacles that sometimes keep teachers from leaning into student feedback more frequently—and, I’d offer, this is a trend that also shows up with administrators being resistant to teacher feedback, too, at times.
So in this post today, I want to try and tackle both those obstacles separately, including some suggestions based on strategies that have worked in my classroom.
Obstacle #1: Struggles with Low-Quality Feedback
This is a very real thing: what if students don’t offer much feedback when you ask for it?
My first thought here is to accept that quality of feedback is always going to vary. Even though I like to share really cool student feedback online, of course there are always the opposite: super-quick responses that just “did the minimum” and moved on.
And that’s okay.
I’d argue that the most important thing is creating space for the feedback and then, once you collect it, making sure to share that feedback back to students and giving them a chance, if you can, to interact with it. (For example, this week my AP Literature students will be going through their own class suggestions in a recent survey collaboratively—you can see them here—to consider and discuss what they and others suggested for our classroom community.)
However, it can still be hard to spend the time trying to prioritize student surveys and then not get the quality of feedback you want—so here are two things that have worked for me in the past:
Include multiple-choice and limit the number of things you ask. I love the multiple-choice data points because it can become a really cool system to track changes over the year (here is my ongoing tracker for this year so far), and then I really try to avoid asking for too much else—usually just one specific written-response question from students on any given survey.
Be precise about what you are looking for as far as feedback. This is actually a skill I try to center in our peer-writing workshops: advocating for what you need from feedback. In our classroom, a lot of times I’ll ask for 2-3 sentences minimum on these survey questions, and even will showcase exemplar feedback from past classes. I also try to emphasize how giving meaningful feedback is also a skill—and feedback that is specific and actionable makes the biggest difference.
Does this immediately improve the quality of all feedback? Of course not, but I do think it makes a difference—and better feedback is better than no feedback any day of the week.
Obstacle #2: Concerns About Negative Feedback
However, this leads to the other thing that I believe often gets in the way of valuing consistent feedback as a teacher (or administrator, for that matter): the fear of negative feedback.
It’s easy to ask for feedback when things are going well. Yet too often, I think, teachers pull back from feedback during the harder seasons of the classroom despite the fact that these are the most important times to center student voice.
My immediate suggestion if this is your concern: do not stop giving surveys and centering the feedback in your classroom.
Especially if you have already set this precedent, your “stepping back” from student voice will be felt within your classroom—and not in a good way. I’d be willing to bet that most teachers have moments in their career where they’ve felt this “retreat” from feedback in their own building—which is why it’s even more important to not replicate that retreat within your own classroom.
Still, we are all human and receiving negative feedback is really hard. So here are three additional things I’d offer here:
Keep in mind that centering less-than-positive feedback builds credibility. As difficult as it is to lean into student feedback when things aren’t going well, in a way it is a much more authentic practice. It also models for students how to take ownership and respond purposefully to less-than-stellar feedback, which is an important skill for them to develop for themselves, too.
Be aware of the tendency to fixate on a handful of negative responses. We’ve all been there, right? You might give a survey to 100 students and get only 2-3 negative responses, but those 2-3 negative responses live in your head for days on end. I’ve been there many times over! Especially with a large sample size, though, I think it’s important to anticipate these and to keep them in perspective—and definitely to not let them get in the way of honoring student voice in your classroom.
If there’s a particularly negative or even hostile response, try to follow-up one-on-one. In my October pulse-check survey, I had one student leave a long, thoughtful response on not only why they were having a really difficult time with my teaching style, but also why it didn’t seem to align with our classroom values. That hit hard! My response, though? I immediately pulled that student aside after class to thank them for their feedback, which then led to a great conversation with them offering several suggestions and us getting back on the same page. Surveys are impersonal, and sometimes the solution, I think, is to make them more personal but responding in-person.
Still, Centering Student Feedback Is Difficult
And for all those out there doing your best to make this a priority in your classroom, my main message?
Thank you.
Our education system as a whole doesn’t do nearly enough to center student voice, I’d argue, and if you are doing your best to make changes to prioritize the voices of students in your classroom, that intention in itself is a win.
Don’t stop—and let me know if there’s anything I can do to support you in that process. As I noted in our latest Kicking The Copier mini-pod, this work is as tiring as it is meaningful, and therefore we need to support each other in that vision for what “better” looks like in all our classrooms.
And centering student voice? Without question, that’s a core ingredient to making that “better” a reality.
Take care of yourself, and keep listening to students.
—Marcus
(And I’ll add: if you’re an admin, keep listening to teachers!)