Friday, June 15, 2012

Processing student feedback

For a class evaluation, I gave my students a form based on the NBPTS World Language standards.  For a variety of reasons, mostly accidental, I only ended up giving it to my Spanish II and my Spanish I classes.  By nature, these students are the ones most inclined to like class; they signed up for it, after all.  For that same reason, though, they're the ones most likely to call BS if there's a problem, I think.  I've just finished going over them, and here are some of the highlights:

On a scale of 1-5, in both classes, I averaged better than 3 in every category.  My median and mode scores in every category were also 3 or better. 

The 2 categories I did worst in were "forming constructive relationships with students and families" and "knowledgable about how students learn language."  As far as forming constructive relationships, the dissaatisfaction can come from a lot of different angles.  I wish I'd asked a more specific question.  Is it the "family" part I don't do so well on, or is it the "students" part, or is it the "forming relationships" part?  I know I don't call home as much as I should to say nice things about students.  I'm working on it, but it takes a while.  The "students learn language" one was surprising to me.  I thought I did pretty well.

My consistently lowest scores were from my Spanish II class, who mostly came away with the impression that I don't value diversity and I don't understand the different ways students learn.  In short, I think, they don't think I valued them as individuals.  That's too bad, because I loved them as individuals. 
 
One of the classes thought things went better in the first semester, when I spoke more Spanish, than the second semester.  They seemed to think we had more fun.  The other class thought it was fun most of the time.

I got pretty high marks for knowledge of language, culture, and assessment.  The last one sort of surprised me; I keep trying to re-vamp my tests to they test what I want the students to know, but I don't think I'm there yet.  One student wasn't fooled.  S/he gave me generally high marks, except when it came to assessment. 

The students all think I know Spanish really well, which is good, because I do.  I feel like I'm sort of cheating putting that question on there in order to make myself feel better.  (Not that I feel bad, but I knew I was going to score 4 or better in that question.)  But if I don't ask it, how will I know if my students don't believe I can speak Spanish? 

Here's the takeaway: I know my stuff, but I'm not connecting with the students in a way they understand.  Some of that may just be the nature of trying to connect with them in a language they don't speak, but connecting with students is a good goal to work towards.

1 comment:

Jenefer Maron said...
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