Surviving Feedback

Surviving “the feedback cycle” A.K.A. “sorting through all the things people say about you because you aren’t used to having people talk about you at all and suddenly it happens every day.”

Criticism comes at us from every angle. This is mostly for teachers, but if you’re any other professional who gets regular criticism or are just some other type of super-sensitive person like I am who calls the whaaaah-mbulance every time someone talks smack, feel free to think that this is written for you. I get formal “feedback” from my licensure program and observers (administrators), I get it from colleagues, from parents, and most frequently, from my students. Why am I placing the word “feedback” in quotes? Because for the purposes of this article, I am calling everything from highly constructive criticism to a kid saying “you’re lame and this class sucks” “feedback” because realistically, I hear it all the same when I’m busy and tired, and the sorting process is not instantaneous. Short version: It makes more sense for me to call it all the same thing.

Choosing which feedback to hear and which feedback to internalize is a daily challenge for anyone, especially if you have a personality that is very affected by words, as mine is. When I first started teaching, back in the day of almost exactly one year ago, I took everything personally. I still do on bad days, busy days and tired days. I am not good at the whole “consider the source” thing in the moment, only in reflection. Reflective practice, journaling and future goal-setting is great, but who really has the luxury/discipline to do this routinely?? My down-time is rare and precious, and usually spent socializing (venting/crying), decompressing, cleaning or otherwise unwinding (read: Netflix and a bag of clearance Twix). All of this means that on a typical day, my reactions to any sort of “feedback” will be chronicled and… fed back, as reflection and sorting are inevitably postponed. For example, I can’t cry over a bad observation when I get the report via email at noon or have a conference about tact with a child who just yelled “what are you wearing? You look like Miley Cyrus’ mom and your shoes are for olds.” I have to either not react, or react in a witty, politically correct or stoic way. Or just say “that was rude,” I guess. I am TERRIBLE at not showing emotion, though, and I do disagree with people who say things like “never let them see you sweat” because one of the things teens need most are examples of how to handle shitty emotion in public. I have cried in front of them a couple times. I am super embarrassed about it and would not make it a habit because it’s unhealthy and just…weird, but I am also not exactly apologetic because I think it’s okay for students to know that their words and actions can affect people or that grown-ups have feelings too, and stuff. I also don’t apologize for saying things like “I feel really irritated right now.” I do, however disagree with/ apologize for reactions that place too much emotional responsibility on kids. If I cried and said something like, “look what you’re doing to me,"or something that would be much different than just taking five outside the door to regain composure. Since I know that my spirit is heavily influenced by the words of others, I have some basic ground rules:

THE RULES!!! How to survive constant “feedback” on the daily:

1. Hoard the positive. Hoard it. Save it. Print it. Cling to it. Frame it. Think of positive feedback as if you’re an animal about to hibernate during a winter of negativity and the only thing that you can do to survive the cold and famine of winter is to build a cave made of and full of nice things about yourself to sustain your freaking soul. At first, this seems egotistical. You might think “am I vain because I save every single note that says “[COMPLIMENT], MS. SMITH!!!!!” or “what will my friends think when they come over and see that my refrigerator is plastered with printed out emails that say things like “I appreciate your help, Ms. Smith.” When winter (remember, that’s my super-clever metaphor for bad times) comes, even the tiniest, most generic “thanks staff for all you do” attached to a fun-sized Snickers feels like a gold mine to me. 

More importantly, always, always, always save words of appreciation or any kind sentiment whatsoever when written by a student. High schoolers do not typically throw around kind words willy-nilly, and you will need those words soooooo badly when one calls you a bitch or says you’re lame and awful and mean etc., etc., etc. No matter how much you care and rule at your job, some will say mean stuff because they are teenagers stuck inside a building for eight hours a day and don’t necessarily know how to cope. Their lives just might be more stressful than yours. You might actually be unwittingly mean and lame and boring—bottom line: hurtful words will be said, written, overheard and possibly yelled. Learning not to take those insults personally is half the battle. Make a stockpile of their kind notes. Mine from my first year are in a frame. I have a coffee mug that a colleague gave me for working closely with her to help a student. That coffee mug is one of my most prized possessions because it’s hard for me to remember positive things that I have done when I get bombarded with negative, and these notes and emails and this mug are concrete examples of “I don’t totally suck!”

2. Consider the source. This is the hardest one to do in the moment. If you can pre-categorize, that’s great. I have five categories to make the “considering” process more efficient.

a.       Students: not fully emotionally developed and view me as authority figure (hopefully). Take everything said with a grain of sea salt because it is bigger than the regular salt-grains. They are bored, emotionally volatile, experimenting with expression and language (practicing the usage of profanity, perhaps?), and are sometimes just complaining because you’re the adult in the room and their issue is with authority. The last point will really help you get over the whole “but I was so nice to her! Why did she throw the thing and call me the thing?” Nope. Not personal. Move on. When a student has a valid point, internalize it later. Example: if student says your lesson is boring, look over it after class to determine its merit. You can’t change it in that moment. That would do several bad things: it would show the student that they can change stuff they don’t like by whining, that they have power over you and would obviously waste your class-time in the highly likely event that your lesson was actually worth-while.

b.      Parents!!! Parents are possibly the most powerful force in your professional life. Their opinion of you is very important and carries more weight than your boss’s; probably because it can become your boss’s opinion very quickly. Parents have the most vested interest in how you perform and they are the adult behind the complaining, achieving, struggling, and/or misbehaving child. Do not, however, fear parents. If you care about their child (and you do, because why else are you reading a teacher blog and…teaching) and are trying your best, your communication with them can be your greatest support. Talk to them with great empathy. ALWAYS assume the best. Assume that they care and want their child to succeed. Assuming anything else is the greatest insult you can deliver to any student’s caretaker (I mean, come on, that’s common sense). If they are seeming to neglect contact or aren’t helping, consider the likelihood that they have jobs which are possibly as time-consuming as yours and that they are raising one of your students. Repeat. They are raising—living with—feeding—taking criticism from the child you are emailing/ calling about. GREAT EMPATHYYYYYYYYYY. That said, respond to all criticism from parents with earnest desire to do what is best by their child. Take what they say from the perspective that they are a person with a life raising your student and that any shortness or anger may be (DUH) is a direct result of all the strains their life as a parent entails. Give them a break. If they say something awful, don’t have a melt-down. Go to the person right above you or another colleague and REFLECT before you react. Ask “do you think I really do this or are they just mad?” “What would you do to fix this?” Getting an administrator to have your back EARLY in the situation can protect you by showing the parent that you care enough to bring the issue to someone else’s attention—also it shows that you do not believe you’re in the wrong! Why would you tell your boss if you did something you knew was wrong? In my humble and short experience, even the initially angry ones come around if you are genuine, empathetic and convey to them your understanding of how challenging their job as a parent can be.

c.       Colleagues: If you’re perceptive, you learn who you can trust early on, but don’t make friendship your priority. Real friendships in the workplace will reveal themselves over time. Keep your private life private unless you know the person will never, ever, ever use your personal information against you at work. For example, will telling your coworker that you like to drink on the weekends make them more likely to suggest that you’re hung-over when you call in sick? MAYBE!!! Think, shawty! Human vaults of trust are the exception, not the norm. Be friendly but professional and hear their feedback as a peer. Consider their professional reputation before you make changes based on their feedback. You can’t blame your screw-up on someone else’s advice. Don’t believe me? Try it and look petty, immature and unprofessional. Also! Don’t vent about every little thing. It is sooooo tempting to commiserate with people who know #thestruggleisreal, but some people feel better about their performance when you express your own hardships. These individuals could probably benefit from “hoarding the positive” instead of using their peers’ suckiness as validation, but don’t be too judgmental because you will gauge yourself against them too to feel better at some point—I promise. Try not to, but you will. Hopefully you will keep it to yourself. (Keep it to yourself.)

d.      Boss people: this a broad category for the people that make the rules and formally assess my performance. Their opinion definitely matters, but the terms in which your performance is described is never to be taken as a personal reflection of your character or personality (unless of course, you are given formal feedback about your personality…). This was very confusing for me and difficult to manage when I received an observation report that read: “Meets student needs: 1= Ineffective.” For days I mulled over how I could possibly be ineffective at meeting student needs because I care so much and try so hard and blah blah blah, but I had to force myself to realize that “Ineffective” was the formal interpretation of a score of “1” and not a real adjective to describe me. I also had to look at the criteria for “Meets student needs,” and not one criterion that I believed met student needs was something that could be measured in that 45-minute observation. They were looking for how I checked for understanding of content, not how I counseled a girl crying about her breakup/home-life/friend-drama during my lunch break or tutored after school. I learned that I can only take those reports and comments as reflections of a rubric for those items which can be observed during the time frame of the observation. Period. Rubric, observation, score. Not me, just a 45-minute me in a specific, testable, measured interpretation of certain criterion generated in pre-determined adjectives. Bottom line: use this feedback to better the performance you KNOW that you displayed during the observation but do not carry the feedback into your holistic self-image. (Don’t even carry it home!)

e.       Support staff: when you get a compliment from a counselor, social worker or specialized teacher (SCIOP, EC, etc.), take it to heart! These individuals (usually) do not work as your peer and are not assessing you or competing with you. They have no reason to flatter or judge you, so their feedback is often the most constructive. For example, if an ESL teacher says “great job assisting [student] during [task],” you did a great job. Likewise if they pop in during a lesson and offer a tip for assisting a student on their case load. No salt needed for this feedback, usually. Support staff are often more under-appreciated than you are, too, so be sure to let them know when they have helped you. This feedback cycle works both ways and can create very useful professional relationships to meet student needs from all sides. These staff members might also have better insight to parents/home life as they often have more one-on-one time with your student than you.

3. Stop doing too much: When you get constructive criticism that has passed through all your protective hoops (meaning you know it’s not an unfair jab, an insincere complaint or something you otherwise unwisely internalized), don’t let that growth-suggestion overwhelm you. Break it into edible action-steps. For example, the critique that I “do too much cognitive work for my students” came from two different observers. It is true, quality feedback that if improved, can help me be a better teacher. But what the hell does it mean, practically? How can I suddenly do less cognitive work? First, I had to determine what “cognitive work” was happening in my lesson. I brought it back to myself as “all the times when students need to determine a meaning, answer or create.” I reflected on times during my lesson that I answered my own questions or over-explained. The next day, I tried “write down YOUR inference” for the meaning of a phrase rather than the definition. Very, very tiny step, but headed in the right direction, I think. The part where I will plan to place cognitive work on students inside every lesson will be more difficult, but that will come soon. I’m only a year in and can only grow so fast, which leads me to my next tip:

4. Celebrate! All growth is good growth because it is growth. Celebrate tiny successes. If “feedback” said your lessons were boring and for even ONE day everyone seemed engaged, high-five yourself and enjoy the success. I obsess over the tiniest negatives, why not bask in the smallest of positives?

5. Be gentle with yourself. Sounds like the mantra of the cheesiest yoga retreat, but really. Be gentle with yourself. If it’s too mean to say to a colleague or student, don’t say it too yourself. You would never tell a student to go home and think about how miserably they fail compared to everyone else and wallow in shame (HOPEFULLY), so don’t give yourself permission to do it either, okay??!!

That’s it, for now. I rarely have enough wisdom to fill this many pages, so when I feel enlightened

and have time to write again, I will post. Thanks for reading, teachy peeps. Xoxo.