Feedback – Tavia Clark

Creating Ownership

One of my primary functions (and one of my favorites) as a digital innovation coach is to create, design, and facilitate professional learning experiences for educators. Sometimes this is for an entire school district, and sometimes for individual schools. Sometimes I facilitate for large groups and other times for small cohorts of educators. Regardless of the demographics, the planning process always includes creating shared ownership.

As a reflective practitioner, I realize that I can provide opportunities to learn, but those opportunities have to be attached to a shared vision. We often discuss what good professional learning can look like and how to use data to inform our decisions, but less often do we take time to actually think about and unpack the process of planning together to create ownership. Every relationship I create with districts and schools that I serve is built on the idea that we are working together to multiply our efforts rather than duplicate them. Some of the things I find important (and therefore communicate with them) are:

Involving leadership in the professional learning process each step along the way
Creating professional learning experiences with them, not doing it to them
Creating a culture of transparency
Changing and updating professional learning experiences to be in sync with the evolving needs of the school/district

When I begin a new relationship with a district or school, I always begin with a meeting to discuss their needs, the vision for the project and beyond, and what they want for their educators and students. These meetings range from phone calls, face to face, and video chats. I also have a shared document in Drive with an agenda and meeting notes. Like all of my agendas, these notes build on each other with the most recent meeting notes and agenda at the top. I find that by keeping the notes and agenda in one place, it’s very easy in later meeting to go back to points that we made prior. And while some meetings are more informal, having an agenda helps us to prioritize and value both each other’s time and effort. You can see an example of a meeting agenda below.

Regardless of how we meet, I start by listening. I ask them to begin with the why. Then we move on to the who, what, and the how. Instead of beginning by asserting what I think will help them, I give them time to lay a foundational context. And what I find is that this usually leads to them feeling validated and heard.

I am very clear in telling project leaders that I will be including them in each step of the process – and more importantly, I explain to them what this can look like. For some, inclusion means communicating the what and how. For others, this means allowing them to help create content. And for some, inclusion is us facilitating professional learning together, as a team. Whatever they decide they are comfortable with, this is how we proceed. Oftentimes, we begin with simply communicating and by the end of a project we’ve created a partnership where they are creating and facilitating as well. Creating ownership and buy in for the professional learning process helps to ensure that the work is sustainable and that the enthusiasm and motivation will continue once the contract has ended. It also helps to give leadership more confidence in their efforts to provide quality learning experiences for educators.

It’s easy in the beginning stages of planning to meet and plan together, but it can be harder to continue this along the way. People get busy, situations arise, life happens. However, I am very clear, from the beginning, that I will work hard to bring us together not just before the professional learning starts, but in the interim between learning experiences. As a team, we have to share in the vision of the project, not just in the beginning, but as it evolves and we move forward. After each professional learning experience, I reach out to project leadership and set a convenient (for them) time and date to meet to discuss the participant feedback (from the previous session’s evaluation) and their changing needs. A few days before we meet, I share the updated agenda and notes with them, which always includes a two column chart with a summary of the evaluation data (GROWS) and my observations. This gives them more context for the meeting and also helps to show them how their educators are using what they learn, what they need/want moving forward, and where they struggle.

After we discuss the evaluation results and in general how the professional learning felt, we move on to visioning the next session. I come prepared with ideas and generally take the lead during this time (this is what they pay me for), but I include the leadership team in the process, listening to and considering their ideas alongside my own. Many times the professional learning session starts to take shape with activities growing out of a combination of the team’s collective creativity. This is also where, if they are interested or ready, we discuss using their capacity to facilitate activities and parts of the larger session. Not only does the leadership experience more ownership of the professional learning experience when they’re involved at this level, but this also helps to create transparency. They know what the day (session) will look like. They can prepare for and communicate this to participants with a sense of enthusiasm for what’s to come.

As we near the end of a contract, the communication doesn’t end. Even after the last professional learning day is over, I plan a final meeting with the leadership team to discuss the evolution of the project as a whole – both the GLOWS and GROWS that participants have alluded to in their feedback, the scope of the work (which often amazes them), and how they can move forward maintaining the effort and enthusiasm created by the professional learning experiences so far. We also discuss the known and identified capacity both within their team and their district or school and how they can utilize these people as leaders for the vision.

Nothing about my process is revolutionary – it’s all grounded in good communication, transparency, and team work. When working with districts and schools I always try to remember that opportunity without vision is fruitless, it causes effort to be duplicated, rather than multiplied. My goal is to focus on the question, “How are we multiplying our effort to serve educators and children?” This is what I lead with and in hopes leave the district or school considering as they move forward.

Screenshot with annotations created using Nimbus.

Rethinking PD (Part 3)

This post is Part 3 in a 3 part series that will focus on building a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid of face to face PD and virtual PD. In Part 3, I will reflect on the data, what I learned, and next steps in moving forward with creating this as a sustainable and scalable model of PD. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

As I discussed in both Parts 1 and 2 of this series on rethinking PD, the virtual PD day offering was born out a need to explore an alternative option for professional learning, especially in the interim between face to face PD sessions. I know that face to face can’t be matched in its ability to truly impact learners, build relationships, and offer hands on experiences. However, I am beginning to see that face to face PD is not largely scaleable and has limitations and constraints when things like adverse weather is involved. I also realize that many districts and schools we serve have a need to see me (the facilitator) and work with me more than 4 times during a school year. In order to promote sustainability, a hybrid PD model offers the opportunity to create learning experiences, meet with small groups and individuals to provide coaching, and a chance to continue to connect with learners.

While the technical side of the virtual PD day I did with this district was flawless, there is still much room for improvement. Much of the feedback is specific to the district, the specific participants, and their prior experiences with professional learning. But, it’s still important to use this feedback as a means for growth, both of the idea itself and for me professional as a facilitator and content developer.

The goal of the live sessions I facilitated during this virtual PD day was to offer a more hands on, tutorial style session without losing the focus of pedagogy. This is not an easy feat in 30 minutes or less. I found that I had to be very specific and intentional in my choice of what topics to cover and which tools and resources to feature. The evaluation data (that participants filled out at the end of the day), showed that those who attended the live sessions enjoyed having me show and tell in small groups. I only had a few people join each live session, while most of the group chose to do the work at your own pace choice sessions. These sessions were designed to allow participants choice in topic and activity, promoting more learner agency. Most of the feedback was positive concerning the topics and choice provided.

Any time I facilitate PD, I have participants do an evaluation at the end. This evaluation changes depending on the session (whether it’s the first time we meet, the last time we’re meeting, or days in between). I created a special evaluation for this virtual day that asked more directed questions about the format, platform, scaffolding, and user experience. After receiving all the evaluations, I did my normal reflective routine and assessed the feedback for glows and grows. You can read more about evaluations, glows, and grows here.

So here’s some of what the evaluations told me:

GLOWS

Great virtual learning today…very helpful and I enjoyed exploring on my own. It was helpful with doctor’s appointment because I was able to continue working and participating in class. [This is a testament to the power of virtual learning; anytime, anywhere.]

How will I find time for all the cool things I want to try??? [What a great problem to have, right!?!]

The hands on learning aspect. [When asked what was the most satisfying part of the day’s learning experience – This is a huge glow since the learning was all virtual and we were never face to face.]

Being able to choose sessions to work on in groups was helpful. [It was nice to know that allowing choice also promoted collaborative work among participants.]

I enjoyed being able to explore on my own but having Tavia available at certain times for questions. and Tavia was great and allowed for plenty of time to explore resources and work at our own pace. [This illustrates the importance of the work/drop in sessions being an actual scheduled session during the event.]

GROWS (summarized from feedback)

Not enough time to absorb content
Too much choice
More sessions that offer concrete, tutorial style help (live sessions with Tavia)
Screencasts or video tutorials for all sessions in addition to the activities and information provided
Activities were too dense
Less scheduled sessions and more work time

The grows aren’t always easy to read, especially when you’ve been working with a district and understand more about the context of why many participants feel the way they do. While I know that many of these teachers have never had day long, hands-on PD that required critical thinking and creativity, I have to view their comments and feedback with the lens of improving this virtual PD model. In other words, I can’t get hung up on the “why” of the comment itself.

From the evaluation feedback it’s clear that participants are eager for more live sessions with me (a facilitator). Most didn’t complain about the length of time of the sessions, since there was work time built in afterwards, but having the facilitator there, working with them is important to them. In considering this, I will make more of an effort during future events to schedule less sessions and make more of them live. Zoom’s limitation is that I can only run one session at a time, which has me considering collaborating with colleagues and also the prospect of using a district’s own educators to help run sessions. The idea of utilizing capacity that is already there and helping to give these educators a platform to pursue this type of leadership experience really excites me.

The feedback also reminds me that most of the time, less is more. While I focused heavily on giving my participants a lot of choice in topics, their evaluation feedback proves that many would have enjoyed less choice and longer, more focused work time. In the future, I will consider ways expand my thinking on how to gather and collect data about what specific topics they’d liked covered, rather than use previous evaluation suggestions. I am also aware of the power of video and screencasts to help participants who opt for a work at your own pace session. I thought most of the participants who consider themselves less tech savvy would attend the live sessions, while many of them ended up doing the other choices. These work at your own pace sessions weren’t scaffold enough for all learning levels, and an easy fix is adding in video, whether it’s a tutorial or just me (the facilitator) giving them clear, concise directions on how to proceed. After reviewing the feedback, this need seemed so obvious and I honestly couldn’t believe I left it out.

Even though there is much room for improvement, I consider this first attempt at a virtual PD event, customized to the school district, to be a success. As I work on this hybrid model of face to face PD and virtual learning events, I have much to consider (including all of the above). I will think about ways to not only customize, but to also use virtual events to network districts that feel isolated. I would love to be able to have two or three districts participate so that they can not only learn individually, but learn from each other. I also want to better utilize some of Zoom’s features during the live sessions – features such as breakout rooms. Another idea that I have for making these types of virtual learning experiences better for participants is to utilize their own capacity. I would love to have educators within the district leading sessions and sharing ideas with each other. Not only does this promote leadership, it also helps to build educator confidence, something we don’t talk about enough.

Rethinking PD (Part 2)

This post is Part 2 in a 3 part series that will focus on building a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid of face to face PD and virtual PD. In Part 2, I will focus on the actual virtual PD event including scheduling and planning choices that I made to accomodate my learners. You can read Part 1 here.

Planning for the Virtual PD Event
In Part 1 of this series on rethinking PD, I discussed what led to the desire to create a hybrid PD model and what it looks like currently. Creating the actual event, the planning, scheduling, scaffolding, and data informed decision making, was a long process. After posing my initial idea to the district’s leadership group during a virtual check in meeting, I was sure to include them in decision making throughout the entire creation process. It’s very important to me to create ownership and buy in with the educators I work with – making it imperative that planning is inclusive and collaborative.

About one month prior to the actual event we had a virtual meeting to discuss the upcoming PD day. With all of my districts and schools, I try to schedule intermittent planning meetings between PD sessions so we can discuss evaluation data and the evolving needs of each project. During our meeting I posed the idea of having a virtual PD event in lieu of the originally scheduled face to face PD session. There were many reasons I decided to offer this option. Travel, calendars, and imposing weather were just a few of the initial reasons – but some were more data informed. Due to winter weather conditions, the district had missed many days of school, eliminating most of the Teacher Workdays that were originally scheduled into their calendar. In an attempt to salvage one of their only TWDs, I liked the idea of a virtual event that participants could pop in and out of when they needed to, having choices whether to attend live sessions or do sessions that required them to work on their own, at their own pace.

Naturally, the district loved this idea and our planning moved forward. Since I have access to Zoom through FI, we decided to use that for our platform. The district leadership had no qualms with this, as during this very planning meeting we were using Zoom together for the first time (in hindsight, this was a smart decision). We decided to have three blocks of sessions throughout the day, with each block including at least one live event (hosted and facilitated by me) and at least two (sometimes three) work at your own pace choices for professional learning. With the cohort’s varying levels of technology confidence, the session evaluations from previous face to face PD showed that many of the participants wanted more tutorial style help implementing technology into their classrooms. So, we decided that the live sessions during the virtual PD event would be slower paced, more tutorial style, but still have a strong emphasis on pedagogy. These sessions included:

Exploring Google Chrome Extensions – where we discussed extensions for both teacher and student productivity and learning and I also showed them how to find, install, and use them on their Chromebooks
Tools for Student Reflection and Feedback – where we discussed and explored protocols, ideas, and tools to use to help encourage and foster both reflection and feedback for students
Becoming a More Connected Educator – where we discussed the power of building, sustaining, and using your PLN and tools to make this easier and more efficient

The work at your own pace sessions spanned themes and content including topics such as learner agency, the Amazing Race protocol, Digital Breakout EDU, and Google Bootcamp for teachers. In planning this virtual event, it was our hope to offer numerous types of sessions to meet the varying wants and needs (that the evaluation data pointed to) of the participants. I will discuss more of how this was actually received in Part 3 of the series.

Scheduling & Scaffolding the Virtual Event
While our event was very strategically scheduled, we made it clear to the participants that they would be able to work at their own pace throughout the day and choose to either participate in all 3 blocks of time, or only two if they needed to use more of their TWD for planning for students. I created a schedule via Google Docs that had the session titles, session links (both the virtual events and the work at your own pace choices), and the session descriptions clearly noted. I also color coded the schedule so that it was easy to follow. Anything highlighted in yellow was a live event through Zoom, while all the green events were work at your own pace choices. The schedule blocks were only 30 minutes long, with a work time and drop in for support block immediately following (see below).

The work time/drop in for support block was a great addition. I would be live through Zoom so that participants could drop in to ask me questions about the work they were doing for the virtual event, or anything else that they needed help with. While this particular feature wasn’t utilized as much as I had hoped it would be, it was vital in setting up scaffolding and safety for those participants that wanted to get more assistance while learning.

In an attempt to promote collaboration and communication, I also included a 30 minute Q&A session at the end of the day. It wasn’t mandatory for participants, but many of them attended to ask questions about classroom management and Chromebooks (they are in the beginning stages of implementing their 1:1 initiative). I really enjoyed the flexibility, openness, and opportunity to connect that this chunk of time offered.

There was also a mandatory opening and closing session that all participants were expected to attend. During the opening session (and due to the logics of each school in the district being very close in proximity), participants were asked to meet face to face in the high school library. This allowed the district leadership team to ensure that everyone was able to access Zoom, the schedule, and understood the logistics and procedures for the day. The closing session that afternoon was via Zoom, so participants were able to work from school or a remote location. During the closing session we did a quick reflection for takeaways from the day, shared our biggest pieces of learning, and did the FI evaluation.

An important piece in scheduling this event came in the meetings I had with leadership along the way. In order to make sure they felt comfortable with the tech being used, we planned a practice run one week before the actual event. This gave them the chance to have not just the leadership team I work with for PD, but all of their school administrators participate in a quick event via Zoom to familiarize themselves with the tool. Doing this trial run gave the leadership (boots on the ground during the actual virtual event) confidence in both the tool and their ability to facilitate the learning that day.

The actual event went off without a hitch. All of the district’s technology worked perfectly, as did the Zoom platform. And while there are certainly points of improvement for the content and facilitation, everyone was pleased with how easily accessible the day’s sessions were. Our ability to be prepared, use data to inform decision making along the way, and focus on preparing leadership for the actual day of all helped to create the a great first attempt at this virtual learning day.

In Part 3 of this series I will discuss the evaluation data from participants, areas of improvement and growth, and next steps in making this type of model scaleable for other districts and schools.

Rethinking PD (Part 1)

This post is Part 1 in a 3 part series that will focus on building a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid of face to face PD and virtual PD. In Part 1, I will focus on what led to this hybrid PD model and what it looks like currently.

What Led To the Need for a Virtual PD Option
Through my work at Friday Institute, I’ve visited many districts (LEAs) and schools across NC. Much of the work that I do is providing face to face professional learning experiences for educators. Oftentimes this model includes approximately 3-4 visits to their district or school during a given school year – with each visit consisting of a full day of professional learning (6-7 hours). Sometimes this learning is facilitated PD, and sometimes it’s coaching or learning walks.

One of the districts I’ve served this school year is located in a remote part of Western NC. They are a 6 hour drive from where I live, which makes traveling for PD difficult, especially during the months when weather is not favorable. Because of their location, weather that might not seem treacherous in other parts of the state, can shut down their normal day to day operations causing them to miss multiple school days. Another factor with serving a district that has a very remote location is trying to plan the actual face to face PD days around both their calendar and the chance of adverse weather. Generally, we have to plan for PD at the beginning of the school year, a session in early fall, and then two more well into late winter or early spring. This causes a huge gap of time between PD sessions 2 and 3, often leading to a disconnect between myself (the facilitator) and the learners.

I share all of that, not to set up a situation that seems insurmountable (we’ve been doing this on our team for years), but to lead into why I felt a need to explore an alternative option for professional learning, especially in the interim between face to face PD sessions. I know that face to face can’t be matched in its ability to truly impact learners, build relationships, and offer hands on experiences. However, I am beginning to see that face to face PD is not largely scaleable and has limitations and constraints when things like adverse weather is involved. I also realize that many districts and schools we serve have a need to see me (the facilitator) and work with me more than 4 times during a school year. In order to promote sustainability, a hybrid PD model offers the opportunity to create learning experiences, meet with small groups and individuals to provide coaching, and a chance to continue to connect with learners.

What We Know All Good Professional Learning Experiences Should Have
There is a plethora of research on best practices and models for sustainable and impactful professional learning experiences (see works consulted at the end of this post). Whether we are creating face to face learning experiences or virtual ones, there are some common threads that must be present for learners to feel that the experience is both sustainable and impactful (also, please note this list is in no way exhaustive).

Is Content Focused
Professional learning must be content focused. It is very important to give learners not just what they need, but also what they want. Taking into account their passion to learn makes the learning experience much more meaningful and helps to ensure that they will take and use what they learn and explore during a session. Content focused PD experiences have specific learning goals and are grounded in things like solid instructional practice and seamlessly embedded technology use. These learning experiences must also be structured so that learners can see curriculum and pedagogical connections. It’s important for them to be able to visualize and then actualize how what they’re learning will effect student outcomes.
Allows for Active Learning
All professional learning experiences should give learners a chance to actively learn and use content. Educators need time to not only explore resources, information, tools, etc., but also the time to put these things into practice. Sometimes this is facilitator led activities and sometimes this is self-paced exploration, modeling learner agency, that results in some type of product that they can immediately use with students. By creating environments where learners are given the chance to actively engage, we are making it safe to take risks, fail forward, and test and iterate ideas.
Models Good Instructional Practices
In planning and facilitating professional learning experiences, we have to model solid pedagogical practice for learners. Modeling these practices allows the learner to see it in action, helping him/her visualize this for their own students. It is important to also include here embedded technology use, time for reflection, and opportunities for both giving and receiving feedback. As we create PD that models good instructional practice, it is also important to promote the idea of learner agency. Learners should have choice and be given opportunities to drive their own learning.
Promotes Collaboration
Professional learning experiences should have time built in where participants can learn from each other. This might be guided or scaffolded learning activities where learners use each other’s expertise and skills to solve problems or create new products or understandings, or it may be team challenges that they complete using each other for support. Regardless of how, learners need time to practice collaborating in a safe space.
Builds in Time for Feedback and Reflection
During any learning experience, learners must have time for both low stakes feedback and to reflect on not only what they’re learning, but how this learning makes them feel, what they will take from it, and how the learning could have been more effective. It is can also be helpful to institute a feedback loop to help teachers monitor implementation of the things they learned during PD.
Is Sustainable
Planning and preparing for sustainability can be hard but is so necessary for any kind of professional learning. When my phase of the work is done with a district or school, it’s important to leave them with momentum, capacity, and expertise to continue on. In order to create sustainability, PD must include coaching and expert support. These should be available throughout the learning process, as well as in the interim between sessions. It is also important to provide follow up to help learners implement what they’re learning. Follow up happens throughout the process, but there should be scaffolds in place for this to continue once the PD is over with.

What Does Virtual PD (A Hybrid Model) Look Like?
My goal is to create a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid model. Virtual PD would be used to supplement face to face PD experiences in the interim and would feel much like a face to face learning experience. Often we visit a district or school approximately four times a school year – a hybrid PD model (face to face + virtual PD experiences) offers the opportunity to continue learning and build on concepts already learned, create coaching experiences that are ongoing during the school year, and model instructional practice that affords learners agency.

Using a platform, such as Zoom, the facilitator can create virtual experiences that are much like face to face PD. With only one facilitator, each time slot (session) would offer one live virtual learning experience and a few self-paced, on your own learning experiences.

An important aspect of creating a sustainable virtual learning model is supporting learners during the actual event. There should be live, virtual support with the facilitator built into the day (between sessions, scheduled “office hours”, or even Q&A sessions). This support and scaffolding has to be advertised and communicated so that learners understand its role and how to access this support during learning. One drawback of a one facilitator model is that while live virtual experiences are happening, the facilitator will not be available to answer questions and offer support to those learners choosing to do self-paced activities. To counterbalance this, there should also be on the ground support in the school or district that is being served. This could be Instructional Technology facilitators, Media Coordinators, etc. – It’s important to recognize and utilize the capacity in the district or school. These people should be available during the event to assist learners with questions and technology issues that might arise. It is also helpful to offer a backchannel or way that learners can “ask” questions or make comments that can be seen synchronously and asynchronously by the facilitator and other learners.

When planning virtual PD, an important thing to consider is the overarching theme or learning goals for the day. Will the experience be a buffet of topics or will it focus on specific learning goals? Both options work in different ways.

How We Got Started
Before exploring the virtual PD option for this district, I had visited them for two face to face sessions – one in October 2017 and one in January 2018. Both sessions were very learner focused, hands-on, and offered much time for feedback and reflection. I also have each learner complete an evaluation at the end of each face to face PD session, giving me feedback and reflection on their experience as a learner. Digging into the evaluations from both the October and January face to face sessions gave me some grows to consider moving forward:

- - There’s a huge perceived divide in technology confidence and ability from the learners themselves. Many of the learners feel that a small group (5-6) of their peers are very advanced and are bored during PD because I have to slow down for those that don’t catch on as quickly or need more help. The interesting thing about this is that those that are considered “more advanced” give very positive feedback regarding the PD experience and never complain that it moves too slow. Again, this points to perception and the need to help build technology confidence in those that are lacking this.
  - Some of the learners feel that the face to face sessions are too content heavy. They stress that only having an hour during an activity that includes pedagogical practice and embedded technology use, is not enough time to dive in and explore content. They enjoy the hands on applications of instructional practice and technology use, but some wish that learning could be less “theoretical”.
  - Some learners simply want tool instruction. They want the basics on all of the tools that I feature (in application). Unfortunately, while this may be a request, it is not in line with best practices in professional learning and would do little to benefit instructional practice. Since this need seems to recur in the evaluations, the district leadership team and I discussed that this is a perfect use of their capacity – using their tech staff and media coordinator to do some of the “basics” training when it is needed or desired. We are still working to find the best way to accomplish this.
  - Some comments on prior evaluations mentioned the need to be able to work at their own pace and have more choice in their learning. This call for more learner agency helped to drive some of the decisions in what to offer during the virtual learning event.

After I reflected on the evaluations from the two prior sessions, I considered how to know when my learners would be ready for this type of experience. Due to our time constraints in both planning and implementing the actual virtual learning day, I was not able to construct a formal readiness quotient, but I have started to think about what this would look like. This is an important question to consider before thinking about creating a hybrid PD model (which I will address further in Part 2 and 3).

There is much planning that must happen prior to a virtual learning experience. I met with the district team multiple times to explain the idea, go over the data that led to this decision, and to get their input on content, their capacity to offer support, and the availability of technology for the event. We also had a test run one week before where we tested the technology and platform from various places in the district to make sure that everything would run seamlessly.

In Part 2 of this series, I will outline the actual event and talk more about the planning and scheduling choices made to accommodate learning.

Works Consulted:

5 Strategies For Better Teacher Professional Development. (2014). TeachThought. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/5-strategies-better-teacher-professional-development/

5 Ways to Transform PD with Best Practices for Learning. (2018). Activelylearn.com. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.activelylearn.com/post/transform-pd-best-practices

Effective Teacher Professional Development. (2018). Learning Policy Institute. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professional-development-report

Glows and Grows

I don’t remember when I started using the terms “Glows” and “Grows” for reflection. When I try to trace it back in my work (and in my head), I think it came from my friend and she-ro Buffy Hamilton and the phenomenal work that she does with students and teachers. Whatever their origin, glows and grows have become my way of thinking of positive and critical feedback and reflection. I use this both during professional learning experiences that I facilitate and personally as I’m trying to be a more reflective practitioner.

I describe glows as the positive things we see, feel and hear. Whether it’s an artifact, lesson plan, student work or an experience we’re commenting on, there’s always something glowing. Grows are not quite the opposite of glows, or at least I don’t like to think of them that way. To me, a grow is anything that can be suggested to elevate the work or experience. I like to think of it this way because it leaves room for feedback even on the most amazing things we see, feel, hear and experience.

Each time I facilitate a learning experience with educators, I do a final evaluation at the end of the session. Both because my supervisor expects this data and because I want to know how the experience I designed resonated (or didn’t) with my colleagues or audience. We have a standard evaluation through Google Forms that we use in all of our school and district PD projects. At the beginning of this school year, I considered the questions I was asking at the end of PD sessions and decided that I would add a few more questions to my evaluations. I am very interested in sustainability – the idea that after I leave once the PD is done, the momentum and excitement created will carry on. That the people I’ve had the opportunity to interact with will continue to feel empowered, inspired and move to a model of redelivery and delivery for their colleagues and peers. Basically, I want to make sure the learning doesn’t stop once I leave a place.

Some of the questions I have added to my evaluations to solicit more qualitative data are:

What did you learn today that you will use to inform your instruction and design learning experiences for your students?
What did you learn or accomplish today that you will teach or share with a colleague?
How have you shared what you learned at the last FI PD session with your colleagues or students (or even people outside of the building)?
How have you found ways to elaborate and expand on what you learned at the last FI PD session in new and different ways?
In what way(s) have these FI PD sessions impacted or changed your practice? If they haven’t, please explain why.

I realize that by adding extra questions structured around sustainability, I am opening myself up to critical feedback. To me, however, this is a necessity. I aim for growth and the only way I can get there is to ask and then act on the feedback I’m given.

It occurred to me during a recent conversation with a dear friend in which he asked me some specific things about the way I approach my evaluations and reflective practice, that I have yet to share my specific process for reflecting on feedback.

I like to look at my evaluations the day after I facilitate PD. This gives me time to rest and reflect before I take into account how the learning experience resonated with educators. I collect my evaluation data through simple Google Forms. This data feeds into spreadsheets. I have an evaluation for the first day of PD (the kickoff or session 1), an evaluation for the sessions in between and a final evaluation for the last PD session with a group. All three types of evaluations are separate, but feed into one spreadsheet (in separate tabs). This allows me to sort and look at individual contracts or look at PD as a whole.

When I begin unpacking data, I use a simple coding system to quickly mark the comments, suggestions and questions that I want to come back to during my reflection. I mark grows with green – this is anything that gives critical insight into how the learning experiences could have been improved. Grows include things like what people found most challenging, learning that they are still yearning for, suggestions for making the session more comfortable and what they would’ve changed about the experience. Then I study the data for glows, which I mark in yellow. For the glows, I don’t include every positive comment. Instead I try to focus on the qualitative data that gives actionable praise. I tend to mark comments about how the learning experience will inform instruction, what they learned that they will share with colleagues, how they will expand upon their learning and how their practice has changed as a result of the session(s).

I immediately use this data to create reflective notes for the district’s or school’s upcoming PD sessions. These notes are also great when I have planning meetings with district and school leadership about the direction we are headed.

After creating my notes and spending time reflecting on the experience, I collect all of the glows and grows into a separate spreadsheet. This spreadsheet has a tab for glows and one for grows. On each sheet, I have a row for each separate contract. I add to them on a revolving basis, inserting dates and my own notes and comments. The purpose of these sheets is to collect all of the data in one place where I can look at it over the course of an entire school year (or contract). At the end of a district or school’s contract, I will examine the data to get a complete picture of the work’s effectiveness, educator growth and suggestions for sustainability for them moving forward. This data helps me see if changing my practice based on the feedback I received, makes each forthcoming session more effective. I also use it to help me answer two major questions I’ve been focusing on:

Are you doing/designing/creating work you’re proud of?
How is your work (not you) impacting the future, building something, and empowering others?

While this approach is simplistic, it helps me to focus on the work and how this work helps the educators I serve feel engaged, challenged, inspired, intelligent and empowered.