EPISODE #328

Hey, builders, before we begin, I have a quick question for you. Are we connected on social media? The reason I'm asking is because as much as I love giving you the podcast episode every single week, I'd love to take our relationship deeper. So if we're not connected on social media, let's connect.I'm on LinkedIn at Robyn underscore MindSteps. I'm on Twitter at Robyn underscore MindSteps. I'm on Facebook at Robyn Jackson.Please, let's connect so we can keep the conversation going. Now, on with the show. You're listening to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast, episode 328. 

How do builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students in spite of all the obstacles we face? How do you keep your vision for your school from being held hostage by resistant teachers, uncooperative parents, ridiculous district policies, or a lack of time, money, or resources? If you're facing those challenges right now, here is where you'll find the answers, strategies, and actionable tips you need to overcome any obstacle you face. You don't have to wait to make a difference in the lives of the people you serve. You can turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have.Let's get started. 

Hey builders, welcome to another episode of the School Leadership Reimagined podcast.

I'm your host, Robin Jackson.Today I want to talk about feedback, right? Because feedback is, for a lot of us, it feels like a bit of a gamble. There are some teachers who welcome your feedback, who are excited to hear what you have to say, who invite you into their classrooms. There are other teachers who really resent your being in their classrooms and, you know, you give them feedback and it just doesn't land.You're working really hard. You have to give feedback anyway, but you take it seriously. You go in, you see things that need to be addressed in a teacher's classroom, and you spend a lot of time carefully formulating your feedback.And yet there are several cases where your feedback gets ignored. And it's almost a gamble about who takes your feedback and who doesn't. Even people who have been receptive to your feedback in the past, if you say the wrong thing, everything changes and all of a sudden they don't want to hear your feedback anymore.

There are a few reasons why that happens. And today I want to talk about why your feedback can get ignored, even when you're right, even when what you're saying is what the teacher needs to be doing. And there are three reasons why it can happen.Now, the first reason is probably to me the most obvious reason, but it's the reason, even though it's obvious to us, because of the way we've been trained, we've been taught to ignore this, right? And it has to do with the fact that we give one size fits all feedback. Our training teaches us to do this. So no matter who the teacher is, we've got our rubric or our instrument.We've got our, you know, our favorite feedback strategies, and we just sit down and have the same feedback conversation, no matter who the teacher is in front of us. Every once in a while, we might get taught, okay, this is what you do for a resistant teacher and this is what you do for a receptive teacher. But that is such a, just a weird distinction, right? Because it often doesn't work because there may be, the reason a teacher may be resistant is going to vary from one teacher to the next.

So just saying, oh, if somebody's resistant, try this, it should work. And we tried it and we all know it doesn't work. Or just because somebody's receptive, try this and it'll work.And we've tried it and it's destroyed the rapport that we have with the teacher. So having that, those kind of blunt distinctions isn't what I'm talking about. One size fits all feedback means that we approach every feedback conversation exactly the same as if the teacher in front of us is exactly the same, and that teacher is not.And so what we need to be thinking about is we need to be thinking about how do we differentiate the feedback we give to teachers? I mean, it makes sense, right? We expect teachers to differentiate for students and to go beyond just high, low students, but to really think about what students need and to do thoughtful groupings of students. 

Why don't we do this with our feedback?

Why don't we do this with our PD? And if you don't match your feedback conversation to the teacher in front of you and what that teacher needs, then your feedback is going to fall flat because you're not giving the teacher what they need to grow, to improve, to get better. So sitting down with a teacher with their instrument in front of you and following those feedback scripts that they give you, you know, the ones where they don't even sound like what real people talk like, you know, oh, I wonder about that.When have you ever sat down with a friend and you have, you're trying to give your friend some feedback, maybe even some tough feedback. Maybe your friend is dating a toxic person and you are seeing the damage in the relationship and it's urgent and you really want to sit down and give your friend feedback. Are you going to sit down and say, you know, I wonder about the choices that you've made lately with regard to your significant other? Or are you going to say, hey, you know, Johnny's great, you know, he's, he's, he's strong-willed, but you know, he, he beats you and that's not good.But on, on, you know, he, he, he is, he always says he's sorry. We don't give them hamburger feedback. 

We sit down and say, girl, what are you doing? Or dude, she's, she's, she's, she's, she's destroying you.We don't sit down and use that kind of language when we are giving people feedback in real life. So these scripts, these one size fits all scripts that we're using don't even mirror the real language of somebody who cares. So it automatically sets up like this artificial kind of context.Not only that, but there are, there are, people are at different stages in their development. And so I see a lot of people who go into a classroom that's a disaster. The classroom needs a lot of different stuff and they give people these high level master teacher level strategies and say, if you do that, you will fix the classroom.Now, technically they're right. It would address the classroom. 

But a person who's struggling, a person who is missing significant parts of their practice can't take a high level strategy and implement it effectively based on one feedback conversation.You have to build people's capacity. And so, you know, it's the equivalent of, of, of seeing somebody drowning, right. And yelling from the sidelines, use, use a frog kick and a breaststroke to keep your head above water.They can't swim. Why do you, why are you telling them to do these things? That feedback is completely inaccessible to them. And so what you need to be doing instead is throwing them a lifeline, helping them to catch their breath and then going through the process of teaching them how to swim after the danger is over.But we don't do that. We give them the same feedback, whether they are struggling or whether they are master teachers and, you know, listen, master teachers get the worst feedback, right? Because they are giving, they are being given feedback that was designed to address issues in the classroom, but they don't have any issues in the classroom. So a lot of times with the master teacher, we give them feedback that is nitpicky because we felt like we have to say something.

We have to give them some kind of critique. 

No you don't. If the lesson was darn near perfect, then you don't have to find some thing to nitpick at.That doesn't help that master teacher grow and be incentivized to grow. In fact, it can be demoralizing. But because we only have one feedback conversation we have with every single teacher, one framework that we use, no matter who the teacher is in front of us, we run the risk of ruining the relationship.We run the risk of giving them feedback that they can't implement. And so they have no choice but to ignore your feedback. The second reason that your feedback is often easy to ignore, even when you are right, even when the feedback is accurate, is because our feedback conversations rob teachers of ownership of their practice.This one bothers me a little bit because a lot of our training about how we deal with teachers assumes that teachers don't want to be effective, assumes that the reason that teachers are doing the things that they're doing in the classroom is because they don't care or they don't know. And so we have to rush in and make them care, motivate them, make them know the thing that they don't know, you know, instruct them. And we end up in our feedback overly compensating for a teacher's practice because we assume things about the teacher that are just not true.

We try to teacher-proof teaching. And as a result, we rob teachers of their ownership over their own practice. You know, as a builder, and you should know this by now, as a builder, we don't do feedback like leaders do.You know, leaders come in and they ride in on their white horse with their cape flying. I guess if you had a cape, you don't need a horse, but you get my point. They come in as the hero and they want to deliver the teacher from their bad practice with their feedback.And if you are the hero, the teacher can't be the hero because there's only one hero, right? So if you come in with the cape on as the expert coming in and giving teachers feedback about their practice, then you position the teacher by default as the broken one. You position teachers by default as the unmotivated one, as the stupid one, as the one who doesn't understand. And you're going to come in and save them from their own bad practice.I wouldn't listen to you either at that point, because your teachers are, for the most part, working hard, doing the best they can. They knew you were coming, so they're not going to give you their worst lesson. They're giving you the best lesson they can give you, or sometimes they're not giving you the best lesson they can give you, because they would teach differently if the rubric weren't hanging over their head.But they're giving you the lesson that they believe is most aligned with whatever it is they think you are looking for. 

And when it doesn't land, or when it's not quite where it needs to be, it's not because they weren't trying. So when you go in as the hero and you want to kind of fix their practice, you not only position them as the one that's broken, but you do so with an underlying assumption that they weren't already working hard and giving you their best.And so automatically, the conversation is not only imbalanced, the conversation has an underlying layer of insult. And so even our best intentions, you know, going in, we see something and we want to show the teacher so the teacher can fix it, because it's about the kids. You know, that's what we always say.We go in and if we go in with that assumption, we are treating the teacher as if the teacher is broken. And if you treat me as if I'm broken, it triggers defensiveness in me. It makes me worry and suspicious of you.

Nobody wants to be the broken one. Everybody is the hero of their own story. 

And if you want me to act like a hero, you need to treat me like a hero.And a lot of our feedback context don't do that. You know, they instead, they go in and it's almost like you're, you know, you're holding your notes to your chest and then you peek down at your notes, the secrets that you're going to now give to the teacher and dole out to the teacher. And the teacher's just waiting, you know, on bated breath to figure out, did I pass? Do I still have a job? And all the power rests with you.And then we wonder why teachers don't go and implement our feedback the way we gave it to them. We didn't give them ownership. We, the feedback, the feedback conversation itself robs teachers of all ownership over their practice.You have the answers and they're just waiting for you to tell them the answers, which is why a lot of teachers come into our feedback conversations with the attitude of, look, just, just tell me what you want me to do. And their practice becomes performance instead of professional. And it's a, they, they are, when you come into the classroom, they are trying to figure out what is it that you're going to write down and anticipate.

It's also why we feel like we have to leave notes when we leave the classroom because the teacher's so stressed out about what you're going to say that we, we feel like we have to leave them something so that they can focus, which you know, as soon as you leave the room, they're going to stop whatever they're doing. Hey, kids talk amongst yourselves, whatever, just don't bother me and go read your paper. And then what you write on that paper, they're going to carry for the rest of the day because they don't have any ownership over their practice.If our feedback practices actually kept the ownership where it belonged, which is with the teachers. If our feedback practices actually fostered increased ownership over their practice, you could come in a classroom and a teacher would just continue teaching and you don't have to worry about leaving a note because they're not worried about what you're saying because you've been having an ongoing conversation and they know what they're going to be working on because they own their practice. But instead, because we set things up and listen, this is the way we were trained.This isn't our fault. Even we know on some level that this is messed up like that. The whole power dynamic of a feedback conversation is messed up.We still bear the scars of our own bad feedback that we used to get. So we know it's messed up, but we have been told over and over again, this is the way you do it. This is how you give great feedback.

Here are all the coaching conversations you can have. Here are all the phrases you can use. Here is a list of 87 sentence stems that you can use to start your feedback conversations.And maybe if you pick the right one for the right teacher, it might just work and the teacher might not hit you. That's how we've been trained. But the reality is that if our feedback is going to work, if it's going to take effect, we can't be the heroes.Our feedback has to make the teacher the hero. If our feedback is actually going to get implemented in the classroom, we can't own it. 

The teachers have to own it.

Hey builders, real quick, before we get on with the rest of the episode, I want to talk to you about the 100% collective. If you are interested in becoming a builder and developing that 100% mindset, then the 100% collective is for you. Not only do we have monthly masterclasses, live masterclasses, where I show you how to take some work that you are already doing, but do it like a builder. Do it in a way that it's more effective, more efficient, in a way that takes the work and stops it from being drudgery and makes it actually something that feels meaningful, that moves you forward. We also have done-for-you toolboxes with all the tools you need to be able to implement. And we have step-by-step playbooks that lay out the entire process for you, so you don't even have to think about it.You just take the playbook and you can implement it right away in your schools. And we have a supportive community. So this is a safe place where you can bring your challenges, and there are other people, other builders just like you, who are encouraging you, who are applauding you when you win, and who are giving you their experiences as well, so that you can learn from each other.

If you are tired of just kind of going through and doing the work the way you've always been doing it, and you're ready to stop being a leader and to start building something amazing, the 100% Collective is where you need to be. Join us at buildershipuniversity.com slash community. Now back with the program.Third big thing that makes our feedback easily ignored is that there's no follow-up. We kind of know this, right? We blame ourselves. We say, you know, I really need to get in classrooms more.I really need to follow up with the teacher, and we're busy. So when I'm talking about no follow-up, I'm not talking about scheduling. I'm not talking about you got to get more classrooms.I'm not talking about, you know, let's make a fancy color-coded feedback schedule that might work for you. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is at the end of the feedback conversation, we just kind of like, okay, so there it is.

Here you go. And then we try to get them to be reflective, like, so what do you think about this? And a teacher can't say what they really want to say a lot of times, which is, this doesn't make any sense to me, or I think you're being nitpicky and unfair, or that is not the way that I teach, or the things that they, the real reactions, they can't say that. So they say, oh, this is interesting.I'll think about it. I'll try to do that. And you're like, okay, great.And then we move on and we think, oh, look, our feedback landed. They're going to try to implement it. We don't create space for true reflection.And again, a lot of that has to do with the imbalance of the power dynamic. So we don't create that space for true reflection. And then the other thing that we don't do is we don't have a specific next step.Either we give people a laundry list of things to do and then we're like, you know, so I'll be back in the spring and hopefully you've had them all fixed by now. 

Let me know if you need any help. 

Maybe work with, I'm going to have you work with our instructional coach.I'll have her follow up with you. That's vague and vaguely threatening, right? Or we sit down and we have the feedback conversation and then we, you know, try to ask one of the 87 reflective questions that we were given at our last training and we get the pro forma answers from the teachers if we get answers at all. Sometimes they just look back at you like, are you kidding me? Or you're trying to get them to reflect on feedback they don't even understand.So it's really hard for them to reflect. And then we think that's the end of the conversation. Or we give some vague thing about, you know, work on these things and, you know, let me know if you need any help and we move on.There's no clear call to action. There's no clear next step for the teacher. And the next, and even if we do give them a next step, they're very hard to implement or hard to even decipher, right? If you want really effective feedback, at the end of the conversation, there should be an opportunity for the teacher to talk about how they're going to take the feedback and use it.

And then your follow up is, okay, so I'll check back in with you in two weeks if I get to stop by your classroom and we can take a look at how it's going. Or let's have, you know, I want you to try it and implement it over the next two weeks and then let's have a conversation about how it's going and maybe we can take a look at some student work and see if this has made a difference in student work. There has to be some specific next step.And that's, we treat each, that's a problem. We treat each feedback conversation as a standalone event and then there's no follow up. And then the next time I show up in a classroom, I'm starting from scratch.

I bring out a blank new piece of paper and it's like that other feedback conversation never even happened. Rather than treating feedback like an ongoing conversation. So I go into your classroom, I identify your one thing.This is the thing that really you need to work on right now because it makes everything else different and better. And then I help you see that. Then you start working on it.Then when I come back, instead of looking at everything, I'm looking at that one thing. How are you making progress on that one thing? And then I'm giving you feedback around that one thing. And then you're giving me feedback on how it's working and the additional support you need.And you keep, and then we're seeing, because if I pick the right one thing, we should see growth. We should see a difference from one classroom visit to the next. Not only in the teacher's practice, but in the student's performance.And so now that ongoing feedback conversation takes me out of the land of gotcha. Takes me out of the land of trying to find grows and glows and all this other stuff. And puts me in the land of seeing consistent improvement in a teacher's practice that results in consistent improvement in student performance.And the teacher and I are partners in that process. Now, if you recognize that you're doing some of the things that I'm talking about today, well, now you know. Now you know why feedback can feel like such a gamble.Now you know why it feels awkward for us and awful for a lot of our teachers. Now you know why some teachers will implement your feedback and other teachers ignore it. Now you know why feedback conversations may result in a thank you very much and a polite nod and no change.Or hurt feelings and eyes rolling and blank stares and uneven implementation. It's not you. And it's not because you need to get into more classrooms.And it's not because you haven't found the right feedback script yet. Or you used the wrong reflective questions. Or you didn't put I wonder about in front of the phrase.

The reason that it's happening is because the way that we were trained to do feedback. 

Number one, it is a, it creates a one size fits all scenario where people don't get the feedback that they really need. Feedback that reaches them where they are in their practice at that moment.Number two, it's because our feedback robs teachers of ownership and creates this power dynamic that's uneven. So the teacher can't partner with us. There's no room for it.It positions the teacher as broken and you as the hero. And that doesn't create room for partnership. And or ownership.So the teachers don't take ownership over their practice. And they just kind of leave it up to you to tell them what to do. Or you know, write them up. Or if you don't show up, then they don't do anything differently because there's no power. They have no power in the process. There's no ownership in the process.And then number three, our feedback is just kind of thrown out there. Every conversation is a standalone event. There's no follow up or follow through on our feedback.That's the way we were trained. That's the way that most feedback systems are set up. And that's the way that we are expected to give feedback.

There is another way that builders do. And because it's such a different thing than how you were trained, you often don't hear about it. And so you feel like feedback that there's only that's the only way I was.That's the way I was trained. That's the way I was expected. That's how I'm rewarded, right? Like, oh, great.You got all your observations in on time. And it becomes more about serving the instrument than it does about serving your kids, because ultimately the purpose of feedback is so that teachers get better. Because as teachers grow, every time they grow, more kids get served.Every time a teacher gets to the next level and whatever evaluation instrument you're doing, more children are successful. So there is a fix and I'll talk to you about a little bit more next week. 

But let me just tell you now we are doing a new masterclass inside of the collective.So if you are a member of Buildership University and the collective, look out for the email. And it's it's called the four feedback conversations masterclass. And it's about it's a way to help you differentiate your feedback based on the teacher who is in front of you.So you can give teachers the right feedback for where they are in their practice. Feedback that not only recognizes where they are, but helps them move to the next level. And it is a conversational framework, not a script, but these are frameworks that show you how to give teachers feedback in a way that helps teachers maintain ownership, but still allows you to say what it is you need to say.And it's about having clear calls to action. But those calls to actions are, again, differentiated based on the teacher in front of you, so that when you have these feedback conversations, not only will teachers not ignore your feedback, but they'll implement it. 

And you can see improvement from one feedback conversation to the next.

So those of you who are in BU and the collective know that that's coming. The announcements are inside of of our of our group, our private group. So you can look for those announcements.There'll be emails coming to you to show you how to sign up. This is part you have to sign up, but this is part of your membership. We have a few tickets available for people who are not in BU or the collective.So if this is intriguing to you, you'll want you to go to buildershipuniversity.com slash masterclass. And you can get you can purchase one of the tickets that we have available for the public to be a part of this masterclass. And in the masterclass, not only am I going to give you the training, but you're going to get the toolkit.This thing, it's a book. I mean, this, sorry, not sorry. It's a book.It's got examples of what these conversations look like. It's got worksheets to help you kind of map out the conversation ahead of time so that when you get in front of a teacher, you know you're giving the right conversation. It's got how to tell what teacher needs, what kind of, you know, everything you need to be able to do this.

So when you go to the masterclass the next day, if you're walking into a feedback conversation, you've got everything you need to be able to have a powerful feedback conversation. And when people use these four conversational frameworks and they match them to the teacher in the right way, they see tremendous growth. I mean, from one classroom visit to the next.So that's coming up. And then next week, I'm going to talk a little bit more about feedback because I want to talk about and take on some of the things that we were taught to do that just don't work. I'm going to get in trouble for that episode, but it's important because there's a lot of stuff that you were taught to do that's actually making your feedback worse, not better.That's next week. So check out the masterclass. Come back next week to the podcast for part two of this feedback series.

But in the meantime, I want to challenge you this week that as you are thinking about your own feedback process and thinking about how teachers respond to it, are you seeing one of these three things happening? Do you see that that you're you you feel like you're relying on the same conversational approach no matter what teachers in front of you? And even if you tweak it slightly, it's basically the same thing. And you just don't know what else to do. So you've got this one thing you're doing and hoping it works for everybody and seeing that it doesn't.Or do you feel that power imbalance in those conversations? Do you feel like like. You have to be the hero and give the teacher some deep insight and that a teacher is supposed to be grateful for your deep insight. Thank you for coming and rescuing my practice.And do you feel that power dynamic? And does that feel weird to you? And do you feel like a lot of times the feedback conversations just kind of end, but there's no expectation of follow up or the follow up expectations are so restrictive and prescriptive that you that that it almost feels like the teacher has to do what you say and then you get frustrated when they don't. If you're seeing those dynamics happening in your own feedback, that's doing feedback like a leader. It's because you're doing feedback like a leader.But the good news is that you don't have to do it that way. There is another way, a better way that makes the feedback much more seamless, much more enjoyable, much more easy, much more easy, easier to to be able to help teachers and where you can see greater results from one visit to the next. But the difference is you have to stop doing feedback like a leader and start giving teachers feedback like a builder.I'll talk to you next time.