This year at the iatefl 2017 conference I was not looking for “how to” sessions, but rather for professional development opportunities and reflections.
When I saw the title : in one ear and out the other, feedback why bother. Mainly because my experience with feedback is not so positive. Loraine Kennedy asks three important question:
Does the person we give feedback actually wants it?
Have they in fact requested it ?
How can we explore the things we want in it?
She then touches on the sandwich approach of giving feedback i.e. good-bad-good.
The different mind-set : Growth vs.mindset
Coaching conversations which can lead to mentoring
so start with :”What would you like to talk about?”
She then mentions self assessment and reflection and the funny thing is that she says there is an assumption that people can reflect and often this skill is neglected. To me I believe reflection is a skill to be yet taught as I once said to my line manager who was asking me to reflect upon my observed lesson “but we weren’t taught how to reflect”. He seemed to expect that I finds reflection and self assessment easy to do.
I Leave you with the video..It is worth watching session
Diary of a crazy teacher 