“Be brave! Take a grand risk! Let your students grade you!”
Dozens of times, I’ve said those words in a workshop, a keynote, or a Google Slam, proclaiming the benefits of real, honest feedback from the students we serve.
It’s a great time to be vulnerable, take a risk, and ask for feedback.
— Matt Vaudrey (@MrVaudrey) May 11, 2018
Teachers, give your students a Teacher Report Card: https://t.co/9vsWiy6d6u
Coach, TOSA, or Admin? Give your Ts a COACH Report Card: https://t.co/pAk6dpmzjZ
or an ADMIN Report Card: https://t.co/3x9Vym4lEO pic.twitter.com/0fUNUiY33d
Each time I — as a teacher — gave the Teacher Report Card, I took the results with a grain of salt. Of course, Keyonna would give me low marks since she was kicked out of class the day before.
As an Instructional Coach, the feedback was overwhelmingly glowing and positive, since I was the problem-solver who never had to stick around long enough to make a mistake or a tough decision. “Of course, Vaudrey is helpful and delightful!” the Coach Report Card said.
Then I became a school administrator. I knew — in theory — that I would struggle at first, that there would be many hard lessons, and that I would likely make rookie mistakes that hurt the feelings of my staff.
Reading their feedback on the first Admin Report Card was hard, probably because my ego had been padded with the Coach Report Card for the last five years. Wincing through the narratives, I found four themes, presented here with examples from my staff’s submissions.*
Energetic
Your energy and smile are such a treat!
You energy has always been the best part of you. It is infectious and I appreciate that you seem to have it no matter what kind of day it has been.
You have a positive attitude and seem to love being here.
You check in with kind words and positivity.
Too Nice
Maybe you’re too nice to the kids sometimes? Sometimes they deserve a harsher consequence than they seem to get.
Sometimes students who display poor behavior have been allowed to get away with it.
You need to be tougher with discipline.
Dismissive & Condescending
You should really try to get to know us on a deeper level.
You may hear what I tell you, but you don’t act upon it.
Sometimes [you make me feel] as if I’m not even there.
PLEASE make a real effort to not be so dismissive. We are all educated adults and deserve your respect.
Good Listener
You make me feel comfortable.
Valued. Heard.
You make me feel important.
You’re readily available to talk.
I’ve never felt like he feels he is better than any other person.
Presenting all of my Report Card responses to the staff in a packet (and the other administrators’ responses, too) generated a lot of feelings on the staff. For our teachers, the most frustrating lines from the packets were “mean and bullshit.” This was in stark contrast to the constructive feedback that was kind, but accurate.
During our chats the rest of the day, I sketched up…
*ahem*
The Feedback Matrix
Quadrant I (blue region, kind and accurate) is the most helpful feedback. An example from back in my teacher days said, “You sometimes ignore me, even if I raise my hand. You always call on the same smart kids and I feel like I’m not needed.”
Kind, but accurate. It gave me clear actions I could take to get improve in my profession (and I did).
Loads of our staff were very supportive in shouting down the comments from Quadrant III (gray region, mean bullshit), saying, “Those people are just toxic, and you’re not likely to win their approval ever.”
My hope is to move people from Quadrants II (green region, mean and accurate) and IV (pink region, kind and bullshit) into Quadrant I.
If a staff filled out the Report Card with kind bullshit (“You’re doing great! Keep it up! You’ve got a hard job!”), then they could be encouraged to be more accurate. Seeing the Admin team acknowledge the areas for growth might encourage the staff to be more honest with us.
Additionally, some people who were accurate and mean (“The office discipline is a waste of everyone’s time. I wish Vaudrey would do his job!”). Hopefully, they were encouraged to be more kind with their accurate feedback (once they saw all the meanness put together).
Regardless, it was a helluva day.
If you’re an administrator considering this, I offer three suggestions:
1.) Read every line
After sharing my results with the staff, a few teachers came up to dismiss specific lines in my feedback.
“Vaudrey’s a racist? Really? That’s total bullshit.”
My response was something like, “Thank you, but even if that person was trying to hurt my feelings, I’m looking for the grain of truth in every submission. It’s very likely that person knew that accusation would hurt the most, but I still reflected on it, looking for places to do better.”
2.) Highlight the results
The other assistant principal gave me this idea; highlighting results that hovered around a certain theme. I highlighted of my “Energetic and positive” comments with yellow, so I could see patterns and (in theory) figure out what percentage of the results.
I think researchers call this “coding for Qualitative Analysis,” but I just called it “making sense and looking for themes.”
If you choose to ask for feedback like this, it will be easy to dwell on the lines that hurt the most. First, go through your submissions (or spreadsheet) and highlight the happy ones. It’ll be easier to stomach the painful stuff if you remember that a lot of students/staff think you’re doing great.
3.) Share your reflection
When I was a teacher, I would ask students about the themes I saw in their responses. “Many of you said that I only call on the same few people. What are some ways that you think I could do a better job?” My students not only had loads of ideas that I had never considered (many from other teachers on campus), but also felt more comfortable in my class, knowing that I was willing to learn and grow alongside them.
At our staff meeting this week, several staff said they were impressed at our bravery and vulnerability, sharing our feedback with everybody, warts and all.
Hopefully, we’ll look back on that time as a moment where the whole staff began to be more vulnerable with each other and grow together.
~Matt “Energetic, Kind, Condescending, Listener” Vaudrey
*We were very clear with the staff that it was anonymous and they should let loose on us. To that end, I’ve respected their privacy here by paraphrasing and re-writing the themes. In past years on this site, I’ve published the results unedited, but that wouldn’t be fair to my staff for this year.
UPDATE: 22 May 2021 – If you want to modify that Feedback Matrix, click here to make your own copy.