Honor Student Feedback

One thing my students know about me is that I take their feedback seriously.

At any moment I am ready to pivot my instruction to better fit their overall mood for the day, and I take their comments or concerns into consideration for future lesson plans. In fact, some of my best ideas have come from these moments!

For example, I passed by a student’s desk on the way across my classroom, when a student said, “Ms. Lkova! Can we watch Hamilton?” I looked into it, saw it would fit wonderfully into our American Revolution period, and adjusted my lesson plans for the week accordingly. The students loved it, and have come into my classroom singing catchy lines from Hamilton ever since.

Another example is when three of my students wandered into my classroom from next door where they were TA’ing. They originally stopped by to ask a quick question, but one student mentioned that it’s difficult for her to see the Smart Board with the way the seats were laid out. Before I knew it, all four of us were rearranging the seats in several failed arrangements, until finally we reached a consensus. My new classroom layout is better than ever, and I have seen immediate improvements in student engagement and behavior as a result.

Of course, there is a fine line between taking feedback into account and letting students dictate the classroom. You're still the teacher, after all! A story comes to mind when I had to shut down student feedback rather than accept it:

“Ms. Lkova,” one of my students whined, “why do we have to do the test TODAY? It’s Friday. We should do it MONDAY!”

“Barry (not his real name),” I replied, “the last time we had a test on Monday, you said Mondays should be off-limits for tests and that we should do it FRIDAY!”

My students’ thoughts and feelings mean a lot to me, but of course we had the test that day — AS I PLANNED. 😊