I am aware that this blog post is a week late - I'm trying to catch up from having a very sick little boy.
I really connected with this article. I have a daughter who was on the receiving end of ineffectual feedback last year. She kept getting a B on her writing assignments, with no indication of what she had done well or what she needed to improve on. When she would ask the teacher, she was told "just keep turning in quality work". When I went to the teacher and asked her to define "quality work", she could/would not. My daughter is a very hard worker and takes her grades very seriously. If she isn't getting an A, she assumes it is because she has missed something, or done something wrong. Therefore, she wanted to know what she needed to work on in order to improve and was given no constructive feedback at all. I was concerned for the other students who really needed a lot of help, how would they improve at all?
The quality of your feedback is incredibly important to the success of the child in the future. You need to make sure that feedback is focused and specific to the learning targets (especially for those students who are even farther behind) in order to focus the efforts on specific areas of improvement. Fortunately for my daughter, most of her teachers have been significantly better at providing this type of feedback.
My comment is a little late too. While I was learning how to cook in a real restaurant after 5 years flipping burgers I remember getting the same vague kind of feedback.
ReplyDeleteSince I needed to know how to do everything and wanted to know I I was doing things correctly I'd always ask, "Is this right?", How long do I cook this?" and similar questions.
I'd always get answers like, "You'll know.", "Cook it until it's done." I got so frustrated at first because I wanted to know exactly but no one told me. Eventually I started working with a very excellent chef there and he provided the mentoring and the feedback I needed to really learn how to cook.
Interesting to read about your personal experience. Really a great lesson in how powerful feedback truly is.
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