Mirror, Mirror: Reflections on My Professional Fingerprint
by Terri Weiss
Every September, in the first few days of school, my shiny-new eighth graders receive letters. These are “critical” letters from former students on how to survive a year with me. They are not corrected for grammar or spelling. They have no marks on them from a red pen. They are still in the former students’ own handwriting. The new eighth graders work in small groups to determine the rules of my classroom, and have a blast doing it. They giggle when they discover that I have a fear of monkeys, and that I will only reveal its source on Halloween. They nod knowingly when they read how being late to my class will result in a classic Mrs. Weiss “teacher death stare.” They look up wonderingly when they read about how disrespecting another student or a substitute teacher is the one thing that is so unacceptable to me that I might hold a grudge against them for more than a day. They smile when they realize that the final assignment of the year is that they, too, might write a letter to a future 8th grader as their last legacy to the middle school.
Of course, this is a fun way for me to launch into the collaboration and community building that is the hallmark of my class, but it’s also my litmus test for my teaching. All throughout the year I pour over my quarterly feedback letters, making notes about what worked and what didn’t. Every summer I review my feedback lists: What do they really remember after spending 180 days with me? What did they feel was important? How did they grow? Not all the feedback is positive, but it’s always kind. And I always take it very seriously, because it is the question I need to always hold in my head: Who am I as a teacher? What is my fingerprint, and am I touching that fingerprint in the right places?
I have found over my dozen years in education that utilizing students’ feedback is perhaps the only true way to reflect objectively on my professional efficacy. As Peter Seldin (Pace University) writes, “The only direct, daily observers of a professor’s classroom teaching performance are the students in the classroom. Students are thus a potentially valuable source of information about their professors’ teaching.” (335) The same is true for the classroom teacher, and it is particularly true because of the traditional isolative nature of the profession.
After working years in the business world before coming to education, I found the biggest challenge upon entering the classroom (after learning how to schedule bathroom breaks for plan periods) was that there was little to no way I could know daily how effective my instruction was. In the corporate world, feedback is constant and unsolicited. One is invariably working in conjunction with others and one’s performance is steadily evaluated. Not so in education. Tradition dictates that many teachers go into the classroom, close the door, and hope they are doing a good job. Of course, one or two times a year an administrator comes to observe, but in these days of objective “ranking” the feedback is often merely a transcript of a teacher’s lesson with a numerical assessment from 1-4 assigned in categorized boxes. No conversation develops to understand why the teacher made his or her pedagogical choices. Few, if any, comments are given which can illuminate how effective the teacher is, nor are there suggestions about how teachers can improve. In fact, it is the rare administrator today who takes the time to have a conversation with the teacher being observed at all.
This is not surprising, however. Teaching is a profession where the instructor certainly purveys knowledge, but the act of instruction entwines content knowledge with the personality and passions of the instructor so intricately that any critique is inherently personal and sensitive. Selden explains, “Because teaching demands a monumental investment of self, it predisposes professors to sensitivity toward criticism.” (342) It is no wonder, then, that many states use these professional rubrics which attempt to categorize pedagogy into little boxes of criteria. But anyone who has ever stepped foot into a classroom knows that no boxes or descriptors could ever quantify the complex and intricate decisions one makes daily to bring understanding and enlightenment to children.
To attempt true, constant feedback, I’ve adopted the letter writing system. Quarterly, students write to me with their opinions on what we’ve been doing and how they are feeling in my English Language Arts class. They have the right to complain to me about classroom policies or assignments they felt were unfair or not working. They can request particular activities or writing styles that they enjoy. They can express their fears about success, their joys about progress and their wishes for a better classroom. Often, this feedback is painfully honest to me. That wonderful series of lessons I thought was so exciting and engaging is reported to have fallen flat by my students. That wonderful literary connection I thought was so inspiring is the one my students suggest I jettison for the upcoming year. Sometimes they critique my instruction, sometimes my grading policies, sometimes my methods. Most often, they critique themselves, giving me the opportunity to see clearly where their frustrations in literacy really lie.
In his book, Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones, Thomas Newkirk writes, “Difficulty, disappointment, resistance, and failures are inevitable in the profession of teaching.” (164) Like me, he worries about professional isolation not only limiting professional growth in teachers, but also encouraging attrition in new teachers who are without supportive professional learning communities. He asserts, “it has always seemed to me that great teachers are great not because they are constantly engineering revolutions in their classroom – but because they are alert to the small changes, the small victories. This alertness allows them to reinforce and acknowledge those changes, both to the student and to themselves.” (172)
Certainly, there are many methods of remaining “alert” in teaching. Establishing professional learning communities, having respected teachers observe and critique lessons, pressing administrators for more valuable feedback from observations, and even videotaping one’s own lessons are all common methods many utilize to reflect and improve one’s pedagogy. But my many years in marketing taught me plainly that the best way to know what’s working and why is to go straight to the source. For me, formative and summative feedback letters from my students is the ultimate key in my own growth in the teaching profession.
This past year, my students’ letters spoke passionately about the literature we read and the projects and writing we did. They wrote to me about how To Kill a Mockingbird made them care about inequalities in race, and how Anne Frank made them really think about how we treat those who are closest to us. They encouraged me to continue the interactive “Holocaust Museum” experience I helped create this year (especially since we were lucky enough to find an Auschwitz survivor to give us her story live in our cafeteria). Many suggested that I dedicate two days to the project so that fewer classes of students could walk through the exhibit at a time, allowing for a more hands-on experience and more time to ask me questions about what they see, hear and touch. This year I am carefully constructing lessons that built on creative writing and the development of one’s voice. These were areas where my students last year expressed interest as readers and writers. They know I take their comments and critiques seriously, and so I believe they take mine seriously, as well. Each year my letter feedback creates a community of learners with myself as a fellow learner. We work together every day. We learn how to listen to each other with respect. We learn to support each other especially when we make mistakes. Thanks to the letters, we know each other’s’ names by the end of week two, and by the end of the year we sometimes shed some tears that our classroom communities will be physically disbanded.
In the final letters of the year I hope to see that many of my students feel the impression of my fingerprints. Nichole, a former student, includes in her letter, “Now I know what you’re thinking! This teacher is weird. I know I thought that my first few days, too. Well, the bad news is she’s never going to be normal. But the good news is that you will learn to like weird. She’s weird because she’s not just teaching you stories.” Nichole is right. Teaching for me is not about teaching my content, it’s about opening minds to the possibilities of thoughts, ideas, and dreams that can change the future. Hopefully I’ll live long enough to watch my students make the differences in the world that we so desperately need. And in the end, I’ll have a giant box of letters which show me how maybe my teaching played a part in creating that future.
Newkirk, Thomas. (2009) Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones: Six Literacy Principles Worth Fighting For. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Seldin, P. (1997) “Using Student Feedback to Improve Teaching.” To Improve the Academy, Vol. 16 (pg. 335-346). Stillwater, OK: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1392&context=podimproveacad
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