In Defense of Student Feedback

Lately I have seen lots of professors deriding the feedback provided by students in faculty evaluations. Comments that denigrate the students' honest feedback from professionals who are paid to teach adults make me sad at best, furious at worst. Time to get off our high horses and listen.
Let's face it, we are a consumer society. Everywhere I go I am asked to rate my experience. Savvy marketers and vendors have realized that asking for feedback from consumers helps them to improve their service. While I like to think that I am not in the service industry, that is really not true. My college and my courses are in competition with private, for profit colleges and now with other online colleges both public and private. If students have choices ( and they do) ; I am providing a service that students can choose to opt out of. Shouldn't I want to hear how I am doing? Shouldn't I want to improve?
Sometimes student feedback feels great. I consistently get high ratings and my students tend to love taking my classes. I teach child development and that is a really fun subject. I provide lots of interactive class sessions and have been honing the craft of teaching for more than 17 years. We like to hear positive things about ourselves. I will take that dopamine hit anytime.
Sometimes student feedback feels terrible. I get it. I once had a student tell me that I made them feel like their opinions were wrong. I ruminated on that comment for months. My immediate response was, "of course". Students are there to learn to distinguish their opinions from actual facts. Upon deeper reflection I began to see that this student was trying to convey that they felt shut down. I have learned in the ensuing years ( yes, that comment was made years ago and I still recall it) that I have to make room for students to be wrong so that they can learn from their own mistakes and misconceptions.
Do we brood on those few "bad" comments? Yes we do. I would say that those who don't are not fully engaged in teaching and learning.
I learn from my students and one thing I learn is how to be a better teacher. The feedback questions provided by the college are terrible. I make my own and distribute via Survey Monkey so that I can get better feedback. I have found that my annual subscription to Survey Monkey is well worth the cost. In fact, I have brought my responses to my faculty review to compare with what the college gets. The feedback I get is richer and helps me to improve my courses. I ask about the assignments, the feedback I provide, the choice of textbooks, availability of the professor and provide space for any other comments. Students are amazingly forthcoming. My survey starts with, please take five minutes and provide me with feedback to help me improve the course. I provide a mid and end of semester survey, each with a slightly different question base.
I also go on Rate My Professor to see what types of feedback students are providing there. I have seen many of my colleagues roll their eyes and scoff when Rate My Professor is mentioned. I later look them up and they tend to be the ones with lower ratings. Interesting food for thought.
Again, when I read what students write, I think it through and try to decide if I can make changes based on the feedback provided. One student commented that while she enjoyed my class, there was lots of writing for a class that was not English. I reviewed my assignments and realized that nearly all of my assessments were essays. I switched those up and provide students with options that include, making a cartoon, creating a video webinar, PowerPoint, Prezi, or anything they can think of. I don't give exams so I have to think outside the box when assessing students' mastery of the material.

Let's get down off of our high horses and listen to our consumers. Our courses and teaching will benefit! 

Pedagogy of Kindness- An Experiment

Last summer I read a blog about A Pedagogy of Kindness by Catherine Denial.  It so moved me that I decided to try and shift what I did with students this fall.

I believe in building relationships with students. I was a community college student myself and understand the struggles faced by students juggling busy lives and trying to make better lives by going to college. I believe that no student signs up for a class to fail. I believe that every student deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. I have approached my students with kindness and compassion. I realized through reading this blog that I still had work to do.
Late Work
I have always had late work policies. I have never really thought deeply about those policies, but just did what "was always done". I had all the reasons typically assigned to this policy. You know them. I felt justified in this policy when a student would fall hopelessly behind and be unable to catch up. I told myself that he or she was just not ready for the demands of college. That it was my job to teach not just my subject matter, but also real world skills. Oddly enough, there were many policies I had changed due to student feedback, including different ways to demonstrate competencies, student created rubrics, providing more time in class to begin working on assignments, and more!
However, late work was not something I felt comfortable changing. I did allow work to be turned in up to one week late for a reduced grade and always said that I would not take work after that deadline, but the reality was that I always did when a student would approach me and ask. Catherine's post had me thinking about those students who don't ask, but just quietly drift away. Was I helping them?  So, I decided it was time to change this policy.
The Experiment
I decided that for this semester in all five of my classes, I would rewrite my late work policy. Here is what I came up with. All work turned in early or on time may be revised to earn any points lost ( formative assessment). Any work that was turned in more than one day late must keep the grade earned. I provided feedback to both the on time and late work about reasons for missing points. When a student submitted a late assignment, I told him/her that they could improve the next assignment by heeding the feedback on this one. I did not ask for reasons for late work ( I never have). I do not ever want to be the arbiter of what is or is not too much for someone to handle. One person's crisis is another person's everyday life.
Results
Students were overwhelmingly appreciative of the chance to make up work. I was not inundated with late assignments. Most students turned in their work early or on time and revised as needed to make up missing points. It should be noted that I do provide each student with an overview of their grade and recommendations for how to improve at weeks 4, 8 and 12 in our 16 week semester. So, students who are beginning to fall behind early can be "caught" and provided guidance for how to catch up.
I still have a few students who never turned in any work, despite my requests and follow up. I do have several students who are finishing this semester right now with at least a C where in the past they would have failed. I will check my success rates for this fall against previous semesters, but right now I think they are improved.
Next Step
I will continue with this change. I did have a few students who never turned in any work. I will make a revision that at mid-semester failure to turn in any work will result in my dropping you from the class. At a certain point, it is not possible to catch up and I think that allowing students to believe that they can completed 16 weeks of work in less than 8 weeks is unfair. If they have struggled for the first 8 weeks, there is no reason to believe that they will not continue to struggle for the remainder of the semester.
The email response from a student who is returning to Community College despite having an advanced degree really made me realize how worthwhile this policy change is:

Presentation for Quality Start San Bernardino

Mindfulness, Stress and Behavior
Looking forward to my presentation tomorrow and Saturday in San Bernardino for QSSB. 
This event is fully booked

QSSB is hosting their 3rd Annual Early Childhood Conference on June 28th & 29th (7:45 am- 5:00 pm) and you are invited!  Be among 600 early care educators that are expected to attend this free two-day conference and improve your professional and personal growth!

You must register for each day separately. You are registering for June 28th only on this page. If you want to attend both days, register for Saturday June 29th as well.

What can you expect?

Workshops and trainings!

Workshop topics include:

• Meaningful Interactions
• Environment
• Health and Safety
• Nutrition
• Music & Movement
• Self-Care & Wellness
• Mindfulness
• STEM
• Infants &Toddlers
• Children with Special Needs

New friends and peers - Network with peers in the same field as you and build relationships and connections beyond the conference.

 Giveaways - All attendees will receive goodies to take home.

Respecting Children...

I follow a preschool teacher forum on Facebook. Preschool teachers post information to share with each other and of course, lots of questions. Mostly, I am amused by the anecdotes that they share and sometimes I will offer some advice. A week or so ago a teacher asked what to do if the children asked to use the bathroom during circle time. I was astounded at the rude and disrespectful comments from these preschool teachers.

"Just tell them to wait." " Make them go before circle." "Just say no." These were the quotes that were among the most frequently used comments by the other preschool teachers. I replied that if they asked to use the bathroom, then let them! My reply was met with similar disrespectful comments about how everyone will have to go then and how disruptive it would be to the circle time activity. I finally replied that the children are more important than the activity.

How is it that preschool teachers value their agenda more than the needs of the children? Where did we go wrong when we were teaching them how to teach? Are we as professors respecting our students? Our job is to model for the adults how we want them to behave as teachers.

Often we dismiss children's requests that are not aligned with what we want them to do. We dismiss the physical need that children have to move, to wiggle, to engage with us and with others, to eat, to sleep and to eliminate when they need to. Our dismissal of their needs, their human needs is to our detriment.
Children want and deserve respect. Respect children's desires. Respect their ability to know what their body needs.