Why More Surveys Should Be Conversations

with some ways I shifted in this direction recently

If I had to guess, many who are reading this just recently concluded their school year—while others, like me, are on the cliff’s edge of summer break.

This is a time of many hustling-and-bustlings and to-do lists alongside reflecting-back and imagining-forward; a time of commencing and farewelling and emptying as much of our classrooms as we can into already-overflowing recycling bins haphazardly positioned throughout the hallways.

It is also a time of end-of-year surveys.

There is a logic to this, yes? At the end of anything is a reasonable time to ask for feedback, to measure how things went with a goal of them going better in the future.

As someone who is admittedly a fan of check-in surveys, this would appear to be right in my wheelhouse. A carefully-crafted Google Form with questions paralleling previous years so I can move into deliberate reflection once students have left?

You betcha. Been there, done that, many a time!

However, while I still believe there can be value in an end-of-year surveys, I found myself shifting a different direction this year.

Toward conversations.

In this post, I want to lay out two ways this showed up in the classroom last week for me, along with a bit of a reflection as to why I think this is a needed shift away from our reliance on more-traditional surveys and feedback forms in education.

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When a Google Form Becomes a Slide Deck

Going into an end-of-year lesson I had previously slated as a time for a closing survey via Google Form, I had an odd schedule blip that left me with 30 more minutes than I had anticipated.

My response? I took the seven questions I had been planning on giving via Google Form and quickly turn them into a small slide deck to share with the class.

The desks were already circled up seminar-style from a seminar the previous class, so I explained to students once they were seated that we were going to try something different.

“We’re going to go through this survey together,” I said, settling into my own chair at the front of the room. “And we’re going to talk about it as we go.”

The first question: What was the best/most important unit of Semester 2?

Each student had an index card in front of them to jot down their answer, and then we went around one at a time as a class—in case you’re curious, they were roughly split between Unit 4 and 5!—before I asked them to share their explanation with a shoulder partner.

Then because this was a conversation instead of a survey, I had a chance to follow up and ask them to explain aloud why they selected a particular unit—as well as what it means for a unit to be “the best” or “most important,” anyhow?

As I explain in the video a bit later on in this post, the most memorable moment from this sequence came after the fifth question (pictured above) about what skill should be focused upon next year.

The near-consensus in my classroom of sophomores? Speaking.

Given how quiet this group of students had been for long stretches of the year, I think I was visibly perplexed initially. However, I did manage to ask the simply follow-up of “why,” and one of my most quiet students raised their hand:

“When I finally became comfortable sharing my ideas and interpretations in front of the class, it didn’t just help this class. I started sharing more in other classes, too.”

Many of their classmates nodded, and my surprise settled into a newfound awareness.

Could I have been surprised when looking at a Google Sheet later in the week as I reviewed the results? Sure, I guess so.

Does that come anywhere close to the feeling of listening to that student’s explanation around the value of centering speaking skills while the rest of the class affirmed that priority?

Nope, not at all.

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Making the Survey Into Something More Tangible

I’ve shared before about the role of our classroom values as well as the course vision I present to students and families at the beginning of the year, and often people ask: how do you decide on what they should be?

My strategy: asking students at the end of the course to “pay forward their experiences” by giving feedback on our values, core beliefs, and course vision.

Often through an end-of-year survey.

Again, though—this time with my AP Literature junior classes, I had the same inclination as I did with my sophomores: this doesn’t need to be another survey.

So I borrowed a box of glue sticks from a colleague, grabbed some scissors, and had students create their own “power ranking” of our classroom values/core beliefs as well as the eight prongs of our course vision—determining which mattered most to them, which they’d “get rid of,” and what potential new ones to include next year?

Each group was responsible for their own assemblage (see pictures above!), which meant that they were discussing with each other during this brief activity. These discussions then became whole-class shares of what they had decided upon, including what potential values to consider next as well as additions to the course vision.

The opportunity to hear students offer different potential additions to the course vision was a peak moment of this school year—and while it required a bit more supplies than a quick Google Form, it also required quite a bit more conversation.

And that “requirement” was a very good thing.

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Why Shifting Towards Conversation Matters

Surveys create data and spreadsheets. Conversations create trust and rapport.

I imagine there are those reading this who would quickly point out that “conversations” are not nearly as reliable data points, given that not only is it hard to capture quantifiables accurately in a genuine conversation, but conversations are also minefields of peer influence and bias—not to mention the way the teacher at the front of the room likely plays a factor in how they facilitate them.

Yep, 100% agree!

However, I don’t care.

Because I’m reminding myself what my own priorities are as the year comes to a close: affirming the voice and experience of students and gaining a better understanding of how it went in order to be better going forward.

Since I was the one in the room, I guess you’ll have to take my word for it, but I trust what my students told me—and yes, I think that’s indicative of the culture we’ve built over the year, including my owning-up to mistakes frequently and inviting suggestions from them to make our course better. Over the school year, I have been backwards-planning towards these very end-of-year conversations since Day 1, doing what I could to design for and foster a classroom community that was capable of having conversations like this.

More importantly, though, students didn’t have to wait and wonder what the results were to these questions (or if I even looked through them). Instead, they saw my surprise real-time and were able to share feedback not just with me but also with the rest of the classroom—a reaffirmation of my trust in all of them.

This isn’t just about the classroom, either. I think this applies just as much to a principal in a school building or a facilitator at a professional development session.

Be honest: think of the last anonymous survey you filled out at the end of a PD experience with an outside presenter—did that build trust? Did that make you feel heard? Was the information that you hastily filled out (maybe?) while packing up even helpful for them?

We are in a moment in education, at all levels, where trust is the ballgame—it has never been harder to gain and never been easier to forfeit.

No matter how well-intended surveys are at the end of the year, I cannot help but think of them right now as a missed opportunity to not only learn more, but build trust while doing so.

By having a conversation instead.

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To continue a good habit I’ve tried to lean into in 2026 and underscore the idea that the work of teaching must be community work, my goal is to end each post going forward with a handful of other education writings and listenings that resonated with me over the past week.

Just like when you stumble upon an incredible idea or strategy from another teacher that got left in the copier—we’ve all had that experience, right?—I hope this section can be a place of fortunate stumbling-upons going forward!

• The Most Important End-of-Year Task by Ruth Poulsen, which makes the case for cutting other things as a teacher and educator but always making space for end-of-year reflection: “June reflection is probably the most important gift you can give your future self.” (I fully concur!)

• At What Cost? by Audrey Watters, with this week’s newsletter pushing back against the notion that saving time for teachers with AI does not come at a cost—including this hammer of a closing line: “If we’re worried about what the push-button classroom will do to students, we should probably stop demanding teachers become button-pushers as well.”

• What it looks like when a 9th grader realizes how TikTok works by Mike Taubman, who continues to generously share different entry points into what AI Literacy can actually look like in a high school classroom with a minute-by-minute breakdown of a stand-alone lesson he recently delivered.

• The problem with “teaching consistency” by Christian Moore-Anderson, who opens this post by writing, “Education is caught in a debate over autonomy and cohesion.” Yup. Worth reading the rest of this piece, too, as well as checking out his new book Teaching Meaning: What Works When Telling Isn’t Enough?