This week, we're talking about High-Leverage Practice number 22, providing positive and constructive feedback to guide students' learning. So, Candace, I know you're constantly working with those students who are not engaged or choosing to share their minds in ways that maybe staff would prefer not to. So, how do you provide that positive and constructive feedback in your practice?

There are so many ways to provide feedback. It's one of my favorite things to do, and I look for those opportunities in every interaction I have in every classroom. I look for opportunities with students I'm not even there to work with, just because it's my favorite thing to do. And I think it's the most powerful tool that we have to support learning. Everybody wants to know that they're doing a good job, and they want to know what specifically they're doing a good job at. And I think it boosts motivation, it fosters independence. It's not just about correcting mistakes when we're teaching; it's about guiding growth and hoping that they grow in what they're doing. And sometimes they don't realize what they're doing well. They only hear what they're doing wrong. So being very specific and pointing out what they're doing well motivates them to do more things well. I think when we only point out what they do wrong, it actually has an opposite effect and motivates them to do more things wrong.

So I love the opportunity to give feedback, especially in academics. And it could be something so small. I work with secondary, so middle school and high school, and for some of these kids, they're academically behind, and they've just accomplished a task that you would expect a first grader to accomplish. But they deserve and should receive positive feedback for that, because that was huge for them. That was a big thing for them to do. And if we want to push them to accomplish tasks that a second grader should accomplish, we have to give them the praise for doing what they're doing that will motivate them. So I love to see the result of feedback. I think that if it's done appropriately, the results are so fun. It's one of the most fun parts of my job is being able to see that face light up or that confidence grow, or that the next thing that you never thought they would try to do, now they're trying to do it. It's what I live for. It's my favorite.

Oh, I know. Like, every time you and I get to have a conversation in the middle of while you're on site or when you're on your way home from somewhere, you are always so excited about those moments where you could see that shift within a student. And it does. You're right. It typically comes from some form of feedback that was provided either in a way, or just there was something different about how that feedback landed for that student to get that, like that shift in that moment. And yes, oh my gosh, you and I live for that.

And I feel like the feedback is for the student, but it's also for you. Because in the moment that you're giving the feedback, you're recognizing the growth, and that boosts you as much as it boosts the student. If you ignore the growth and you don't take that minute to recognize it, then you might miss it. And you don't see what a great job you're doing in helping the student. And the student doesn't see what a great job they're doing for themselves. So, like, it's mutually beneficial. I feel like I get a rise, I get a high from giving that feedback because I feel like I've done something. I've made a difference today. This day was not a wash. It might have been a crap day all around, but that moment, for that moment, for that student, things were good.

I think it's very important to make sure that your feedback, especially when using it for academic purposes, is important to attach that feedback to a clear learning goal. Know what your goal is. They know what the goal is. Now they've met the goal. I know I love to make lists and check things off as I complete them. That is a big deal for me. I feel very accomplished, and it might be a ridiculous list. And sometimes, just when I need motivation, I make lists of silly things and then check them off as I do them. So I think we all kind of need feedback in different ways. And for me, that's a big one. I give it to myself by making lists and checking things off.

So, making sure that it's directed to a clear learning goal, and delivering it immediately. I see this often where teachers will wait until the end of the day and say, ‘Hey, this morning in reading, you did a really great job with that paragraph.’ Well, we just lost six hours because we could have motivated growth right in that moment, rather than waiting till the end of the day and being very specific about it when you do it. So, like, immediate, specific, goal-directed, and appropriate, age-appropriate. I mean, if you tell a high schooler who's been tying his shoes for 10 years. Great job tying your shoes. That's just going to fall flat, and that's going to feel almost sarcastic rather than genuine. So make sure that your feedback is age-appropriate and development-appropriate. Actually, I'm sorryt to say age-appropriate because really, we deal more with developmentals, I think, and something we might consider age-appropriate is not necessarily developmentally appropriate.

So it's very important to pay attention to those things and do them immediately. And there are times when I've had students who have made me very angry, and then they do something that I didn't expect them to do, and they need feedback for that. And quite honestly, I am mad at them at that moment, and I don't want to say something nice. They've just said a whole bunch of mean things to me. But in the meantime of saying all those mean things to me, they also wrote three sentences that I spent all day trying to get them to write. I got to stop, set myself aside, and give them that feedback right there because that's going to motivate them to write more sentences instead of saying more mean things.

Yeah, I love how you're talking about how this is a two-sided experience, right? It's not just that I need to notice and figure out what I need to provide feedback on, but it's through that process. There's a staff experience in how we're perceiving or then how we are communicating or how we're dealing with our own stuff, so that we can perceive and communicate those things. But then, yes, the whole focus is for our students to be learning. But it's like it's both-and. I don't think that I've considered how interrelated an experience this High-Leverage Practice is between staff and students for it really to be done well.

So I'm wondering, like you constantly are, providing so much feedback to students, and I know you're always doing it in a way that you're modeling that feedback and those kinds of styles or strategies for the other staff who are in the room. Because we're not in any one location all day, every day, all week, all month, all year. So you're really trying to maximize your feedback with that student, but you're trying to do it in such a way that those staff sort of notice what it is that you're doing.

I'm wondering if, as you've been almost like giving like two-fold feedback there, is there anything that you have noticed as just an ‘aha’ for staff, where if you've provided feedback in a certain way for a student and seen that shift come from them, where staff are like, ‘Oh, I didn't even think about that.’ Do you have any of those kinds of moments that are top of mind for you?

I had a situation with a student who could not complete a task. They were given a task that, despite multiple efforts and creative ways, we just weren't getting this task accomplished. But the student was trying. And so my feedback was helping that student understand how they approach the task. ‘Like you've done a really great job trying. I'm really proud of how hard you're trying here.’ Or ‘I like the way that you thought about that, or the way that you move that paper to work better for you.’ It could be something so tiny. And I've had the staff say I didn't really think about providing feedback on the process. I was looking at the end results.

I'm like this student in this moment is probably not going to get that positive feedback if you wait till the end result, because it's becoming very clear that we're not going to get there. So I'm looking for other things, and I see this kid trying, I see him getting creative, I see him thinking through, I see him taking a deep breath. I mean, thank God you took a deep breath. You're learning to self-regulate, and that's something I want to teach you to do as you proceed through education because you're going to face challenging tasks. So I think that was a kind of a big ‘aha’ moment, I don't have to wait until we've reached the goal. I can compliment the way that they're trying to reach the goal.

Yeah. That learning process, as opposed to the learning product. Like the learning outcomes, we're not only going to say thank you for completing or mastering whatever that may be. It's all the little things. And I really appreciate that you were noticing things that weren't even academics, because I think sometimes when we're talking about providing that constructive feedback when it comes to learning, we're thinking almost more in micro skills.

We know the learning outcome that we need to hit, and we know all of the other learning targets that need to be hit along the way so that we can get to that outcome. But that example you just gave wasn't any of that. It was all of those soft skills, and that frustration tolerance, and the choice to continue to engage even though that product or outcome isn't happening, hasn't happened, and honestly may not happen in this moment unless we catch all of those little pieces along the way. Like you're noticing those positive choices that the student is making around the learning activity, which is what is going to then make learning so possible in that moment.

In that moment, you had to see that the student was actually trying. Like, you weren't just getting frustrated with the student not performing or not getting through their task as fast as they need to, or they've just got this history of not doing their work, and so they just don't do their work. Like, you had to see ‘oh, no, actually, they are trying.’ And I think sometimes staff struggle because they just see the repeated lack of outcome, and then that just becomes, in some ways, like their expectation, which then is really, really hard to find good moments of ways of providing feedback because now the kid's already meeting those expectations because you've built almost a new expectation based on that lack of performance. So I guess, like, how do you still see the potential behind students when there is such a history of lack of performing?

That's my little victories that I talk about all the time in every classroom, like, celebrate the little tiny things, the little steps. I'm asking you to write something that I know with in with a student. This student strongly dislikes writing. If he picks up the pencil, he gets feedback from me. Like, all right, first step, great job. Then, when he writes a letter, he gets feedback from me. Great job. It's little victories instead of looking at the whole end picture, which we so get caught up in.

So in the story that you were giving, you're talking about working with a student who has rarely actually performed that task. They rarely made it to the outcome, either a learning outcome or even just completing the task. So in that moment, how are you choosing to see the potential that is in that student as opposed to, I mean, just taking that history and letting that somewhat become like your new expectations of what that student is capable of doing?

We have to be very mindful of the unconscious prejudice that we have. Students show us one thing, and we can struggle to see potential outside of that. So I think it's really important to always kind of check yourself and make sure that you're giving them the opportunity to learn, not assuming they'll refuse to learn, and then celebrating every little victory on the way to that path. It could be something as small as picking up a pencil, or if they've never done that before. If you've told them to write, and they won't even pick up the pencil. But today they picked up the pencil. Let's celebrate that victory because we're one step closer, and we all respond better to positive feedback. And the goal is to get them to write. And if they won't pick up the pencil, they're nowhere there. So, picking up the pencil is completing an academic task. We are one step closer to what it is we're trying to do. So I think allowing them to change, allowing them to grow, and not sticking them in kind of a box in our minds is step one, because they'll change, they'll grow, they'll surprise you. Be open to those surprises, because those are the best days.

For sure. But I think those surprises, like, we have to then continue to notice. Like, we need to continue to say, ‘okay, this is where they've been. But I'm choosing to believe that there is more than that. We just have to figure out how to get there.’ And any of those, like you're saying, those small wins, those little victories, like, any of those little pieces that are moving us closer in that direction of what we're still holding true as, like, a potential for that student, call it out. Let them know, like, sometimes they don't even know because they just know that they haven't hit that outcome or that goal, or they haven't exactly hit that completion point in the way that their staff are expecting them to.

So I think I've worked with a lot of students, they don't even give themselves credit for all of the things that they are doing, which is even getting them to show up in a way that they could learn and really, like, make that progress happen. And I think for staff, sometimes we just forget, because for us, it's our occupation. We just show up and we do the education thing. And we kind of forget how many different choices really need to be made in that student experience so that they can actually show up and engage in the learning that we're trying to get them through.

And I think it's important to mention that not all feedback is going to be great or positive. It doesn't mean that it has to be negative. But there are times in which our feedback is in the form of a correction, where we are trying to get a student to learn something that they don't know how to do. And the odds of them doing it right every single time are fairly slim. And so what we want them to do is the correct way. And so sometimes we need to provide correction. And I think we can do that in a positive way if we look at that feedback as part of the journey and not a judgment, and that we do those things privately. We do not want to call students out and embarrass them in front of their peers. Praise publicly and correct privately so that the student knows what they did wrong, what the actionable next steps are in order to correct that, and then allow them to ask questions and reflect on that and make that correction a part of a process that the student is involved in.

I oftentimes hear teachers, you know, they're busy, and they're walking through the classroom, and they're like, ‘That's wrong.’ And they keep walking. ‘You did that wrong,’ And then move on. And then the student just sits there like, ‘Well, I just wasted my time.’ So I think making it part of the journey and not just such a ‘nope, you didn't listen.’ It's probably what they heard, or maybe they didn't listen. Sometimes they're not listening. But anyway, around it, if we want to get them to learn what it is we're teaching, we have to provide that correction as well. And that needs to be in a meaningful and safe place for them to receive correction and be able to move past it, to do things the way that they should be doing them.

Yeah, thank you for calling out that just because this High-Leverage Practice says positive doesn't mean that we're only ever noting what they are doing correctly. Like that's the concept of constructive, like we can note what they are doing correctly as well as what they are not doing correctly. But how we are providing that feedback is what makes it constructive. So literally everything you just listed off is the difference between ‘nope, got it wrong,’ and just being corrective as opposed to then providing the support, noticing some of those other things, marrying both the what I'm noticing you're doing and let's make sure that we're shifting these aspects of your learning so that you can continue moving in that learning trajectory, that it’s that both-and. And together you can be corrective in a constructive way. And that's what this High-Leverage Practice is talking about, providing constructive feedback for those learning outcomes.

I love the classrooms where I see students looking for feedback. They've grown to expect it, and they value it. And whether it's ‘That's not exactly correct,’ or ‘Here's how I would rather you do that,’ or ‘Wow, you did such a great job on that.’ They look for it, and you'll see a student do something and then look to the teacher, waiting to see what kind of response they're going to have. So those are classrooms in which I know that the teacher is intentional and consistent with their feedback, and the students crave it, they're looking for it, and they're far more motivated because of it.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing everything that you see in those classrooms. I know you're always working with the students who are typically not engaging and giving a lot of pushback to staff. So the fact that you are leveraging feedback in such constructive and positive ways, and you have seen so much growth out of students in those moments, as well as even just the staff perspectives of those students as they start to see that student shift. Thank you so, so much for engaging in this conversation with me.

Yep, thank you.