Feedback is how you know an adventure is complete. Even if it is in stages. I love feedback, specifically, I love critical feedback. I often will immediately scour through my surveys at the end of the year and look for areas that need improvement. I always feel warm and fuzzy from a child’s comment about me being nice, awesome, or their favorite teacher. That is the ultimate compliment. Because that means that I can single-handedly change a student’s day. These comments are on my surveys each year. However, I often find myself looking through the feedback for the points that sting a little or the ways to make my classroom better.

I look for… “It was boring.”

I look for… “I didn’t like when we did…”

I seek out the… “class went so slow when….”

When we stop improving, we stop growing and adapting. Engagement is the ultimate tool for feedback. Because in engagement, resides respect, safety, and compassion. Now, the end of the 2019-2020 school year felt a little different. There were so many variables out of our control as teachers. Just to name a few: Online learning, technology, fear and trauma associated with being quarantined, illness, racial and social disparities, homelessness, students with disabilities and ELLs facing learning from home, and more. Finally, with the protesting in response to the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and more, and the inability to talk about these issues face-to-face, my survey felt superficial. I knew what didn’t go right. But, I knew that the key was to still ask my students what they thought because their opinions matter. I finally got the courage up to look at their responses from the end of the year. This post is a report of my findings of perceptions as to me as a teacher, evaluations of face-to-face learning and online learning, and their overall journeys with their own reading this year. It is important to note that you will see 68 responses to my survey. I had 140 students this year, but the variables of online learning that made connecting with all students difficult, also presented a barrier to administering an end-of-year survey where all voices were heard. This is feedback in and of itself.

What a year this has been! 2019 is coming to a close tomorrow with New Year’s Eve, and I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for sharing this blog space with me throughout the past year. In January 2017, I started Writing Mindset as a way to reflect on teaching. Now, I focus on the ability to not only reflect on teaching, but to also constantly share ideas and learn from others. This blog has been and continues to become a passion project that is an outlet for my learning through teaching. It is also a space that is teaching me so many things. I am always in the role of a student when I am working on Writing Mindset. What I love most about education is trying new ideas and learning new strategies as ways to give and receive information. I am a Questioner, but more so, I am a person who loves to reflect on what went well and the things that did not go so well in my classroom and in life. 2019 was a rollercoaster of reflection. I was awarded the Michigan Council of Teachers of English Middle School Teacher of the Year, I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone by presenting at conferences, and with 48 total blog posts in 2019, I wrote more than any other year so far on the blog. I lend that to being wildly passionate about mentor texts, but I also feel like I am getting closer to why this blog exists in the first place. Writing Mindset is a way to use writing to access mindfulness, mindset, and overall wellness. I can see 2020 becoming a year when I focus more on the whole teacher. This includes the mental, physical, emotional, and intellectual health of anybody in education. Our wellness is an access point to more complex issues in education. As I said in the winter break post recently, our health is their health. Too many of us are unhappy, and too many of us are unhealthy. I can’t wait to explore some of the ways teachers can continue to be happier and healthier in 2020.

As we close out 2018, I am so thankful for this tiny blog space that I share with you all. In January 2017, I started Writing Mindset as a way to reflect on teaching; however, it has transformed how I do business. I am constantly on the lookout for writing inspiration for the blog, and how I can put new ideas into my classroom to share. I sent out a newsletter to subscribers today talking to them about 2018 accomplishments. So much has happened this school year already that it seems a bit poetic to talk about endings…when we are in the middle. However, the end of 2018 marks many accomplishments in terms of blogging, writing, and reading.

What is it that students want?

This was the question I asked my sixth graders in an alternative assignment to giving them an end of the year survey. I know some of the usual answers that sometimes we as teachers don't take as seriously (and maybe should) and I also was hopeful of the answers that may seem surprising and shocking. I have included both in this post to start a conversation. 

The past week has been a whirlwind of starting to wind down and say goodbye to the 2016-2017 school year. Students finished their Common Growth Assessment writing test and also their last blog post. The final days are both bittersweet and painful. Mainly because everyone wants a break, but also because it isn't any fun to say goodbye.