Category: Feedback

Lately I’ve Read

There are so many great things out there to read. Here are a few I’ve really enjoyed in the past month.

“No Such Thing As Offline” by Justin Barber

As designers the prospect of shaping these experiences is exciting, because it comes with a great realization that the next generation of users are designing the tools and the output as much as we are.

I love when I read something outside of the education realm that has many applications for teaching and learning.  I enjoyed this article’s discussion of cultural competence and the shift from passive consumption to interaction and creation.

 

“Wish For More Self Control Can Backfire” by Cari Romm

…When people are forced to confront the gap between their ideal and actual levels of self-control, they end up psyching themselves out: Performance suffers because people with a strong desire for self-control sometimes disengage and withhold effort…

This is a great read, especially for all of my type A brothers and sisters. I find the idea that the more we want something, the harder it can become to attain, to be very intriguing.

 

“The Inefficiency of Words” by Robert Cormack

Inefficient words make it too easy. They fit into texts and short Twitter copy. They keep us from rambling. They confine us to mundane truths.

I have written about words before – my love of them, their power, the importance of choosing the right ones, and the power and danger of things left unsaid. Naturally, this article caught my eye. I love its discussion of the way our tech laden world is helping to shape our use of language. It definitely made me think twice about not just what I’m tweeting, but the words I chose when I write, speak, and communicate with others.

 

“Staying in the Discomfort Zone” by Julie Zhuo

The key to growing while staying in the same job is setting new challenges for yourself. Expect more of yourself than anyone else does.

Julie offers awesome tips and advice in her weekly mailing list where she answers a reader’s question. I particularly enjoyed this piece about stretching and pushing ourselves to function with a certain amount of discomfort, while still remaining intentional in our thoughts and actions. She ends the piece with solid advice about how to remain in the discomfort zone and use this to your advantage.

 

“Bored Out of Their Minds” by Zachary Jason

Yet we’re still keeping them in the kind of education system… that wants nothing from them in terms of their own ideas. School has already decided what matters and [what it] expects from you. It’s like an airplane: Sit down, strap in, don’t talk, look forward. Why would it be meaningful?

This should be required reading for every educator. Students become increasingly bored as they get older. This article pinpoints the research behind the reasons why this happens and gives practical, important advice for how teachers can counteract this boredom by making curriculum more resonant, personalized, and meaningful for every student.

 

“How Elon Musk Learns Faster and Better Than Everyone Else” by Michael Simmons

Learning transfer is taking what we learn in one context and applying it to another. It can be taking a kernel of what we learn in school or in a book and applying it to the “real world.” It can also be taking what we learn in one industry and applying it to another.

One of the first people I think about when the word genius is mentioned is Elon Musk. I am so intrigued by his work and his ability to know so much across so many fields. This article breaks down a little of what makes him so special through discussion on the expert generalist and learning transfer – concepts that can both be applied to education, easily. I also enjoyed the focus on exploring personal learning practices.

 

“How to Make Feedback the Focus” by Arthur Chiaravalli

Most importantly, however, is what students do with the feedback once they’ve received it. As Dylan Wiliams points out, No matter how well the feedback is designed, if students do not use the feedback to move their own learning forward, it’s a waste of time.

Feedback is a crucial piece of assessment. This piece focuses on how to make feedback more powerful for students – offering feedback without scores or grades and being reflective and intentional about why and how we assess students in the first place. Emphasis is placed on student agency and ownership and how we can leverage feedback, both from teachers and peers, to help build these.

 

Reflection

Over the past month, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about reflection. This hasn’t been easy – I’ve actually stopped writing and walked away from this piece multiple times. It’s not that I don’t value reflection (both for professional and personal growth) but the act of reflecting requires vulnerability, which is something that I struggle with.

As much as I’ve tried to write about something else, it seems that I keep coming back to this. Whether through conversations with friends or colleagues or the random article showing up in my inbox – I can’t escape this topic. So, despite my fear of appearing vulnerable, of sharing this part of myself, I am going to discuss the role reflection is playing in my life currently and how I can be more diligent in my efforts to give myself time and space for reflecting.

In a recent conversation with a colleague, I was forced to take a hard look at my impact on our team. The work I do wasn’t in question, but the role my actions and words play on building a more connected team was. No one wants to hear that they could be responsible for negative impact. And I especially don’t want to hear this since I’m new to the team and my goal, since arriving in October, has been to be a positive spark.

Immediately following this conversation, I decided that I had to take time to slow down – to think more about the role I play on our team and how I can act as a bridge, rather than a roadblock. I have to own this – I have a responsibility to take a step back and reflect on my actions and words. And not just think about these things, but to use this reflection to actually create actionable change.

I read an article recently from Harvard Business Review about the importance of making time for self-reflection, even when you don’t want to. Even when you hate it! Not only was this article timely for me, it gave me some good questions to start with:

What are you avoiding?
How are you helping your colleagues achieve their goals?
How are you not helping or even hindering their progress?
How might you be contributing to your least enjoyable relationship at work?
How could you have been more effective in a recent meeting?

For the past month, I’ve journaled and worked through these questions – considering my impact on others. The result was two, awesome conversations with my supervisors where I was able to clearly articulate my professional goals, my learning and growth, and how I think I can be an integral part of our team’s work moving forward. Without taking time to reflect, I am certain these conversations would have gone differently. My reflection allowed me to stop feeling victimized – something that will absolutely always hinder progress.

I’ve also made a commitment to myself to spend more time reflecting on the learning experiences that I design and facilitate for others. After I travel and deliver content to educators, I always look at their evaluations of the sessions and read any other reflections that I ask them to complete. I engage with this feedback – but not in a way that feels effective enough. In the past, I’ve been more interested in how my participants felt about me, as their facilitator:

Did they like me?
Did I deliver content in a way that was not condescending?
Did they enjoy my humor and anecdotes? 

While this helps to make me feel better about myself, unfortunately, my lack of true reflection does little to help my work evolve and grow. Generally, building relationships with people I am working with is not hard, but my confidence in my ability to design creative and innovative content is something I struggle with. And this is one of my goals – I want to design content that has real impact on both educators and students.

Reflection requires us to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. True reflection (the kind that really makes you dig deep and helps you grow) makes us expose ourselves to the possibility that we aren’t perfect, great, or sometimes even good. The thing is, that’s okay. It’s what we do with this knowledge to affect change in our own lives and practice that really matters.