Totally Obvious and Incredibly Effective

Jackie ♦ February 17, 2009 ♦ Leave a Comment

Sometimes with teaching, you stumble upon an idea that seems so obvious you can’t believe you never thought of it before. And then you try it, and it works, and you kick yourself for not having done it all along.

This past week, a colleague of mine and I were chatting about our ninth grade students. Ninth grade is our first year in the Upper School, and it is also a major entry point for students who haven’t come from our middle school. Those of us who teach ninth grade are in almost constant contact, trying to figure out how best to support our students as they make this academic and social transition.

His brilliantly obvious idea was to have the students come to class with three goals for the spring semester, and three strategies they think could help them toward that goal. Then the students could trade them and learn from each other, maybe even form study buddy connections, and we could also keep them as a record to refer to as we meet with the student.

So I tried it, and it worked so well. Not because my students all had concrete goals or strategies, but precisely because many of them didn’t, so I had the chance to offer personally tailored feedback, encouragement and suggestions. I spent over an hour writing them individual emails with advice, and have also shared some of the emails with parents and advisors, who have thanked me profusely for doing so. Of course, it’s easier for me to do because I teach part-time and have smallish sections, but if you standardized the form, or did it as part of a class blogging assignment, I think it would be do-able, and worth the investment in time.

I’m used to student evals at the end of each semester from college students, but that just assesses my performance, not theirs. In fact, I think most professors will agree that the student’s performance colors those evals more than students might want to admit, but there’s no mechanism for them to assess themselves. Since my ninth graders are just starting out on their journey, I like encouraging them to assess themselves as junior scholars, and I welcome the chance to offer help, not matter how much of it gets heeded.