I think I’m the kind of teacher where I can pretty much take feedback or criticism from virtually anyone. As a veteran teacher I have had to deal with so many different personalities and people where I treat feedback like a buffet. If I feel like it’s applicable then I take it and reflect on it, if not then I leave it on the buffet.
I didn’t realize how valuable feedback was until I applied to present at the NCTM conference in Francisco and Philadelphia. My first proposal was rejected and zero feedback was given. They sent me a nice letter that basically said REJECTED! This left me feeling like the proposal was fine but they just didn’t select it this time. Well, I submitted the same proposal but for a difference conference but this time the response was different. The Philadelphia committee wrote this ” When reviewing your proposal, the Program Committee felt that the proposal was vague and did not paint a clear picture of the specific content and activities within the presentation.” Even though my proposal was rejected I was excited about the feedback because it specifically addressed what was lacking in my proposal.
This personal experience with reeving feedback that I needed hit me like a ton of bricks because I knew that feedback was important but I didn’t realize how important until I was trying to get NCTM to accept my proposal. This experience brought back the memory of a day when my assistant principal visited my classroom. She said her concern was that there was not any feedback being given to the students. I couldn’t argue with her because I was behind on my curriculum pacing and I was trying to quickly cover the material.
” When reviewing your proposal, the Program Committee felt that the proposal was vague and did not paint a clear picture of the specific content and activities within the presentation.”
As adults we are accustomed to getting feedback that doesn’t highlight the things that we did well, however for students knowing what they did well can help students focus only the part that needs to be corrected. For example, after I have given a student feedback about a problem they have worked some students would erase all of their work instead of correcting the part they did wrong. Cool and warm feedback is feedback protocol that can be used to analyze student work. This protocol can also be used by students to analyze other students’ work as shown in the video below.
If you would like to implement cool and warm feedback in your classroom, download my emoji cool and warm feedback template for free!
