As a current instructional coach in a public elementary school, I know how important it is for teachers to receive effective feedback that moves student learning forward in a timely fashion. Every school day counts!
While the feedback process is often a messy one, when we put students first, hard conversations will necessarily follow. Even highly skilled teachers are learning and growing every day, and an outside perspective can be tremendously helpful.
The meat of your coaching conversations should always be in person, as it leaves less room for misunderstanding, and coaching should be a two-way communication. Written communication doesn’t allow that, but it’s still absolutely necessary. So how can we make it better?
A coaching cycle should be a valuable learning process for all teachers. I know from past experience as a teacher and interventionist that receiving good feedback doesn’t happen very often. In fact, most feedback to teachers is ineffective, sometimes painful, and usually late.
I wanted to put together some examples of written feedback to teachers, provide some useful templates, and discuss ways to make constructive feedback less painful, positive feedback more meaningful, and to always remain centered on students.
It is my belief that you shouldn’t leave constructive feedback for teachers unless you’re willing to have a face-to-face conversation about it within 24-48 hours.
In fact, I think it’s wise to send a calendar invitation for the debriefing conversation at the same time that you complete the feedback form. This ensures that teachers will feel as though they have an opportunity to respond to your feedback, and you’ll have a chance to discuss the teacher’s next action step.
Positive feedback should always be specific to the teacher. There’s nothing worse than a generic, “You’re killing it! Thanks for all you do!” or “Good job!” because teachers feel like you could have crafted that feedback without ever visiting their room.
If you want a teacher to feel seen and truly appreciated, notice something specific and special about their efforts. Here are some examples.
Your written constructive feedback should be in the form of questions to guide your face-to-face discussion with the teacher, and should be grounded in hard data observed in the classroom. If you write down just the facts, followed by a question, teachers will be better prepared for a quality debriefing meeting.
Further, edit your own language and avoid using phrases like “negative feedback” or “critical feedback” when you discuss observations with teachers. All feedback that is not overtly positive is simply called “constructive” because your purpose is to focus on what might enhance students’ learning.
Administrators and other supervisors used to rely heavily on the “hamburger” method of giving feedback. The meat of the burger was the constructive criticism, and the buns were the positive feedback.
The idea was to bury your constructive feedback in the middle of a bunch of positive feedback, so that it wouldn’t hurt so badly to receive “negative” feedback.
Hamburger feedback fails for at least two reasons:
1) Teachers are intelligent human beings who know when they’re being manipulated.
2) The positive comments feel less authentic because the teacher is aware that the “meat” of the conversation is the negative part.
Below, you’ll see several different templates that I’ve used to take notes during an observation. All of these can allow you to take notes that can be turned around for a quality discussion that facilitates the learning experience for teachers.
This form is great for when you want to note just the positive things you see, and then really listen to the teacher during debrief to see how you can offer support and ideas.
This form is perfect for administrators, peers and coaches who want plenty of flexibility in their note taking framework.
Still, this one leave space for you to mark time stamps of what you’re seeing (which can be useful for teachers who struggle with pacing or sense of urgency), a spot for celebrations, and a spot for observers to ask questions or mark their ideas.
Complete the entire upper portion prior to the debrief with the teacher. Then, through your debriefing conversation with the teacher, agree upon an action step for follow-through.
One thing that works so well for our campus are “Wednesday Walks.” Every Wednesday, both administrators and all three coaches go on observation walks around our building. Each week, we spend all our time in just two grade levels.
We do our observations in “laps” over a 2-3 hour period. We plan a route through multiple classrooms, and we complete 3 laps.
Each time we enter a classroom, we only stay for 5-8 minutes before moving onto the next room. This allows us to see more of the instructional block. We might see 24 minutes of each teacher’s block, but it will be spread across the beginning, middle, and end of the lesson.
The one downside is that it’s a slight interruption each time we enter and leave the room. At first, our teachers and students found it annoying. Later, teachers admitted that it was nice that we got to see more of their lesson. It’s so frustrating for a teacher when administrators only stay for 10 minutes and see the most boring part of the lesson.
It’s a huge benefit to the feedback cycle to have multiple participants in an observation. This might be administrators, coaches, and even fellow teachers who might benefit from watching other experts in the building. This habit has allowed us to bring different perspectives to our coaching cycles. For example, our assistant principal has a strong math background, whereas my area of expertise is in the science of reading. Together, we can help one another identify areas of growth and celebrate victories across the building.
Each time we enter a classroom together, we take separate notes and keep conversation to an absolute minimum to avoid creating even more disruption.
At the end of our observations, we reconvene in our meeting room and share our thoughts. This allows us to notice the strengths throughout the building, identify trends and challenges, and make a plan to support teachers.
After a thorough discussion, we divide up our written feedback responsibilities so that we can be more efficient.
It took a lot of preparation before we sent our leadership team to do “laps” for observations. We anticipated that teachers would be intimidated by having groups of observers entering their classrooms multiple times during the block. Fortunately, our principal is deeply respected, and she explained her intentions clearly.
After the first few times, most teachers adapted to the new process quickly.
Many times, it’s not practical to turn around our written feedback within the next 12 hours, and sometimes it’s a challenge to get that feedback to teachers within 24 hours. We must remember that this feedback is so important to teachers, and those who are less confident will sometimes be anxious until they get a response.
It’s always best to give a thumbs up and a smile in the hallway, or send off a quick text message that reads something like this: “Thanks so much for welcoming us into your classroom. There were lots of celebrations in your room today. I’ll send more formal feedback within 48-72 hours.”
If your leadership team saw 8 teachers that day, divide up the texting as soon as you get back to the meeting room. That way, teachers will be guaranteed some informal and verbal feedback within a matter of hours. This will support your campus morale and ensure that classroom observations are a positive experience for your teachers and staff.
Another idea that may present itself is a quick pat on the back and a smile before you leave the classroom. Your verbal feedback can be positive and immediate. Don’t get into the weeds right in front of your students. Again, convey positivity and gratitude and let them know you’ll have some ideas for them in writing within 48 hours or so.
Whatever you do, don’t delay your written feedback. It will lose it’s magic if too many days have passed.
Your observation notes should include timestamps as often as possible. Here’s an example of timestamped observation notes:
8:52 Entered classroom and class was choral reading objectives.
8:53 Teacher is beginning phonics warm up routine. Great use of movement and whole brain strategies. 100% participation for entire warm up routine.
8:59 Teacher is giving instructions for partner reading. Calling kids with popsicle sticks to restate behavior expectations. Good wait time demonstrated for Julio.
9:02 Transition to tables and partner reading. Transition takes 2 minutes and 32 seconds.
9:05 All but 6 student begin partner reading. Those six pulled to teacher table.
9:07 Teacher begins a small group lesson on spelling pattern /ar/. Chin tapping the syllables and then spelling the syllables one at a time. Using Popits for segmenting sounds. Teacher is making notes on printed Google sheet.
9:11 Using positive narration to support on-task behavior for partner reading.
9:15 Excellent redirect for JaMarcus.
Below your time stamped notes, you can include a spot for Constructive Feedback and another space for Positive Feedback. I like to call these sections “I Wonder…” or “Ideas” and “Celebrations.”
Good coaching includes observation, informal positive feedback, written feedback, a discussion, and an agreed upon action step for follow through.
There’s nothing more overwhelming to a teacher than being given an action step without a logical starting place, or something that can’t be mastered in a week. Here are some examples of weak action steps:
These action steps will fail with teachers because they don’t give concrete next steps. They seem entirely too vague and leave the teacher wondering “but how?”
A great action step is bite sized and can be accomplished in one week with some explicit modeling and perhaps some co-teaching if necessary. Here are some different ways you can phrase your action steps to feel more doable and motivating to teachers. These should be discussed with the teacher in detail, and then written down somewhere that both the coach/admin and teacher can easily access it in the future.
We use the Get Better Faster framework for our coaching. Get Better Faster teaches us about the importance of choosing the highest leverage action step in the “waterfall.” This means we choose a bite-sized action step that is likely to have a waterfall effect and improve other elements of the classroom as well.
For example, asking a teacher to incorporate teaching methods like Aggressive Monitoring when they haven’t yet mastered the basics of classroom management isn’t likely to be successful.
Likewise, you’d never ask a teacher to begin data conferencing with students when their assessments aren’t high enough quality or targeted enough to be analyzed.
Some things just have to come first, so choose an action step that is likely to have the greatest impact on student achievement.
One of the most damaging things a coach or administrator can do is offer feedback that is not based on recent research, particularly when it comes to phonics instruction. Do not challenge the expert in the room if you don’t have the same level of training that your teachers have when it comes to quality instruction.
This is another reason why observation is better in groups; there’s likely an expert in the room who can offer quality feedback in this case.
Please do not assign letter grades to your teachers for their observations. After all, you do not see what they do all day every day; your time in their classroom was only a small window into their successes and challenges.
Giving teachers letter grades for their performance on an observation is degrading. They are not your students and you are not their teacher. You are both professionals who are learning and growing together in community.
In our state, we receive letter grades like P for proficient and A for advanced for our summative feedback. These are all based on a rubric with lots of opportunities to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses. That is hard enough, but it’s vastly worse to give teachers an A, B, C, D or F for their work in the same way you might assess students.
One great way to elevate the discourse in your professional learning community is through peer feedback.
Teachers often have wonderful insights for one another, and can offer powerful, authentic praise and encouragement.
They may also have fresh ideas that can support the observed teacher, which are sometimes better received than if those same ideas were delivered by a coach or admin.
When peer feedback and peer-to-peer modeling happens regularly on your campus, you’ll find that it becomes a valuable part of your campus culture and ideas start being exchanged much more readily.
Consider providing a strategic peer feedback form when teachers observe one another, which will help ensure a positive tone and productive follow-up conversation.
The best feedback form here is a simple checklist you can create with elements you want the teacher to notice. Then, leave space for notes and questions at the bottom.
Here is an example:
Focus of Modeling – Student Engagement
Observation Checklist: What Do You See?
