Finding 4
Cultures of Trust Encourage Ongoing, Honest Feedback
Connection: “It’s critical to have genuine feedback,” one teacher declares. “Too many schools pay lip service.” At the schools we visited, in keeping with the ongoing theme of truth-seeking and trust, professional feedback is ongoing and open. While it can be critical, the spirit of “we’re all in this together” seems to mitigate hurt feelings and maximize purposeful energy. Feedback is valued and recognized as imperative to the culture of the school.
Description: Deliberate structures and routines, as well as a strong informal culture of open discourse, provide the space for this professional pondering and honest growth in the schools we visited. As one faculty member at a suburban day school explains, “We really try to be who we say we are. We address issues, and if we can’t, we find a process to address them.” Another teacher notes “There’s so much collegiality that I feel I’ll get the time and a straight answer. I never feel blown off by anyone.”
In many public and private schools these days, it’s not uncommon to observe a “code of silence” between professionals. This unwritten norm could be expressed as “I won’t comment on your teaching practices if you don’t comment on mine.” The
resulting absence of genuine exchange makes offering feedback feel like a dangerous intrusion or affront. In contrast, at many of the schools we visited honest feedback is regularly and genuinely encouraged, and results in an atmosphere free of risk and full of inspiration and energy. Each professional is trusted to benefit from new opportunities for growth. The more direct collegial coaching is exchanged, the more those new to the school feel empowered by the culture. They’re clearly signaled
Adults caught up in growth and learning apparently inspire students to do the same. One parent’s comment demonstrates how the interactions of faculty radiate across the culture and to the students: “They have the courage to self-examine and they telegraph that,” he says. “A very prominent question from the adults is, ‘Are we being true about what we’re trying to accomplish?’ Not surprisingly, this is a place where [my son] could be who he is.”
An administrator puts the matter simply, in explaining how such cultures come about and why they’re so important to learning environments. Referring to the ongoing process of continuous improvement built into her school’s culture, she comments, “You can’t grow without feedback.”
Replication: Our schools used a wide variety of structures to promote communication among adults. Some prominent approaches include:
- Faculty meetings and other traditional settings devoted to “speaking your mind,” and other meetings focusing entirely on “what’s working.”
- Frequent examination of curriculum: “What’s being taught and why is it relevant? What else needs to be taught? What is no longer needed?”
- Teachers enlisted to design the student report card and portfolio system, presenting ideas and seeking feedback from other teachers.
- Dissolution of traditional subject area departments, because these build competition for resources instead of interdisciplinary collaboration and student-centered (rather than department oriented) communication.
- Teacher evaluation systems that include informal feedback, videotaping and feedback, as well as periodic peer review and periodic formal self-evaluation.
- Small faculty groups that mentor and support each other, meeting on a regular basis with “an obligation to listen to yourself and to listen to others” and to engage in “a process that leads to creative solutions.”
- A faculty that frequently weighs in on decisions that impact them or the direction of the school, so that it’s “rare that one person makes the decision.”
Themocracy
[...] Finding 4 [...]