In the Teacher Leadership class I took talked about the importance of getting feedback from stakeholders. My admin I sat and had a few conversations.
For my teacher and student stakeholders I’ve done a series of surveys. For students the format is:
- What is your favorite part of the news show?
- What is your least favorite part of the news show?
- How could we make your least favorite part better?
Feedback is a balance. To support the school district’s initiatives, it’s important to maintain a sense of unity between the school-level programs and the county-level initiatives. It’s essential to consider feedback from both staff and students, it’s equally important to ensure that this feedback does not detract from the county initiatives. You can’t sacrifice coherence for popularity or simplicity.
Some feedback I took. The student shares were people’s favorite part (the video I do during a classes Moring Meeting). I am going to keep doing them. Students liked pictures of school events. I can do more of those and play them during the required Minute of Silence.
Feedback was mixed. As an example, many students did not like the mandated Pledge of Allegiance. But, feedback was all over the place. Too slow. Too fast. Please feature more students. Please stop having students do it. I felt that gave me license to experiment. Over the next few weeks I am trying some different styles of Pledges. I’ll then resurvey teachers and students on which they liked.
Some feedback I felt I could not take. Some students wanted to talk about current events, like sports or the weather. My school’s morning news is pre-recorded. Any talk about current events would be at least a week after the event happened.
Afterwards I made a video (spread over two days) walking through all the feedback and talking about what I would try to do over the next quarter. I want to take their feedback seriously and inspire me to try new an interesting things.
Notes For Kevin 